Can ifD (MESP) air filters break with strong enough electrical arcs?

Science, Engineering, & Tech
1

I foolishly opened my Honeywell HFD-120-Q with it plugged in (don’t do that) and got electrocuted because I didn’t bother to look up how the air filters in it worked. When sliding the filters back in, it almost looked like the filter had it’s own capacitance and sparked when plugged into the terminals that supplied current through the filter. (Which apparently is 10.2kV)

I know electric bug zappers don’t break because of bugs being killed and causing minor electrical shorts and arcs as they hit it, but I just want to know if the same principal applies to these filters. Are they sheets of specifically charged metal that are durable enough to take a few electrical arcs or is it really sensitive and arcs could damage it? The closest thing said on the page below is that efficacy is decreased when moisture is present, meaning electrical points of contact do cause that loss but only temporarily because it’s due to humidity.

https://www.darwintechnology.com/technologies/

They are also called MESP filters under a different apparently Chinese trademark. (Micro Electrostatic Percipitator. Company claims it can cure public spaces of COVID.)

https://en.airquality.com/landing-hepa.html

I’m lucky I’m alive. 10.2kV with enough amperage means I’m dead.

3

Could also be an electro static filter:

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1 Like
4

There’s many brands it goes under though, so I want to know if arcing could affect it. So far to my understanding the amperage is low enough it doesn’t affect humans. (but like a bug zapper, it has to affect smaller objects)

5

I would guess there is protection built in to protect the HV-Generator from unwanted discharge, can’t even take an educated guess without seeing the circuit though.