Air Intelligence by Field Controls

Indoor air quality is a topic of considerable public interest in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Mark Lundberg has been thinking about it for far longer.

The Product Director for Field Controls helps develop new blower products, empowering facilities managers to move clean air into their buildings and make sure air is circulating to difficult to reach places.

While some companies are keen to give their customers a cookie-cutter solution, Lundberg and Field Controls look to understand what the client wants to accomplish and what their space looks like before making a sale.

“There’s a lot of blower managers out there where you can open up a book and say I need A, B and C. That’s the blowers I want. Great,” Lundberg said. “We’re the guys that say, I have an A, have a B and have a C, but tell me your application so I can tune it to fit exactly what you’re looking for. So, you get the best product for your money and the bang for your buck. It’s more tailored to fit exactly your need, not one-fan-fits-all.”

That means plenty of innovation and nearly constant design of new products and testing to make sure things are working as expected and actually will perform the task at hand. One of the biggest challenges is creating a small product that still has plenty of power but isn’t sucking up loads of energy.

“That’s the trifecta you’re looking for – being able to produce more airflow and higher static with less power as compared to everybody else that’s out there,” Lundberg said.

Tim Barton, Director of Air Treatment and Product Management for Field Controls, has been thinking about it for a long time. Barton can give a thumbnail history of purification and filtration techniques from the 1950s to today; however, the COVID-19 virus is something unlike anything we’ve faced on a societal level.

Even so, Barton is confident that ultraviolet germicidal irradiation can have a role to play in keeping buildings safe once people are back in them.

“It has been proven that the energy that we have, and (have) tested, that Ultraviolet C energy, is very effective with viruses and coronaviruses, but we just don’t have the actual data of how much dosage of ultraviolet wavelength light is required to affect and slow the COVID-19, specifically,” he said. “That’ll be coming. We have mathematical estimates, so we know anecdotally we can be effective with that, but we can’t say within absolute that this is the pinpoint dosage required.”

Even before the pandemic, Barton and his team were looking to create the top solutions for people wanting their residences or businesses to have an improved indoor environment.

“Our lamps at Field Controls are found residentially to be the most potent, high-output, intense UVC germicidal lamps you can find,” Barton said. “And why is that important? It’s important because we want to capture the contamination that’s in your air, from a germicidal standpoint, viral, bacterial and so on.”

In essence, Barton and Field Controls think about the air around you so you don’t have to, and they may play a part in making life that much more comfortable for us to return to post-pandemic.