A startup wants to change air purifiers the way Dyson changed vacuum cleaners. AirTulip Sleep is a plush headboard that doubles as a high-quality air filter. As you sleep, it’s designed to envelop you in a bubble of clean air, ensuring you’re breathing cleanly during this crucial time for your health.
Where COVID-19 meets fluid dynamics
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, de Jong says that he recalled that magical moment and thought about how advanced air-filtering technologies could help against the virus.
However, he also knew that those clean room installations are large and expensive, integrated into the ceilings and floors of places like chip production facilities, medical facilities—any building that requires an ultraclean environment. (De Jong’s awareness extended beyond that one experience at the airport. His father ran a factory that built clean rooms and clean room equipment.)
His AirTulip Sleep operates more like a clean room, using laminar flow, a principle of fluid dynamics in which a stream of particles flow in layers without any turbulence or mixing.
“Normally, you create a thermal plume above your head, pulling dust toward your nose and mouth,” de Jong writes. “This flow shields you from it as well.”
De Jong claims that the AirTulip’s laminar flow creates a clean air bubble around your upper body during the night. It also runs silently and without a discernible breeze on your skin.
These promises are bold, and tough to validate, but de Jong says his air-purifying headboard has been tested in a Dutch technical university where the company designs and makes its products. “We already built multiple products to test with early testers,” he says. “One of them is running for over six months with already impactful health improvements.”
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