System for treating the air in the cabin of a vehicle via an air filter with an RFID tag

A system for treating air in a cabin of a vehicle;

• said system comprising:
• a casing having an inlet opening through which air is to be taken from an outside environment;
• a filtering device fluidically connected downstream of the inlet opening and configured for filtering contaminants comprising at least one material among dust, aerosol and vapour contained in said air;
• and
• an air conditioning apparatus sealingly contained within an inner space formed in said casing;
• said air conditioning apparatus being fluidically connected downstream of said filtering device and being configured to be fluidically connected upstream of the cabin of the vehicle in which said system is to be installed;
• wherein said filtering device is configured for being replaceably mounted in a housing formed in said casing;
• said filtering device comprising a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag containing identification information about the filtering device;
• wherein the system comprises an RFID reader mounted in said housing and configured for being proximal to and co-operating with said RFID tag to read said identification information, when said filtering device is mounted in said housing;
• wherein the system comprises a control unit connected to said RFID reader and configured for receiving said identification information read from said RFID tag and for executing predefined operations as a function of said identification information received;
• wherein said identification information comprises an individual identifier datum univocally associated with the single filtering device carrying the RFID tag;
• wherein said identification information further comprises a total usage datum representative of a period of time during which the filtering device carrying the RFID tag has been operatively used;
• wherein said control unit is configured for updating the total usage datum of said filtering device stored in the RFID tag by the RFID reader;
• wherein said control unit is further configured for storing the updated total usage datum into a memory while associating said updated total usage datum with the individual identifier datum of the filtering element carrying the RFID tag;
• and
• wherein said control unit is configured for executing the following operations:
• reading the individual identifier datum stored in the RFID tag by the RFID reader;
• reading a last total usage datum stored in the RFID tag by the RFID reader;
• reading the last total usage datum stored in said memory and referred to the individual identifier datum associated with the RFID tag in proximity to the RFID reader;
• and
• comparing the last total usage datum read from said RFID tag with the last total usage datum read from said memory.