Not exactly. To be comparable to the good air filter products, you'd want to build a cube of air filters and attach the fan so it pulls air through the cube. Fun DIY project, but it's not for everyone. There's a good YouTube video for it.

The DIY cube air filter even has its own Wikipedia entry:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corsi–Rosenthal_Box

Next time try your library. Many offer free access over the web.

For best filtering, place the filter so air is “sucked” through by the fan, rather than “pushed”.

(Quite possibly what you meant; I just found “in front of” easy to interpret in either way)

HEPA filtration only matters if you have a clean side and a dirty side. Most air filters exhaust clean air into the same room as the intake, so all that matters is clean air delivery rate [0]. It's often possible to get better clean air delivery rate using higher flow through a less restrictive non-HEPA filter.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_air_delivery_rate

The removal efficiency of the filter is built in to CADR, so say a MERV-14 filter with higher air flow and a HEPA filter with lower air flow can have the same CADR.

The Wikipedia article does not discuss the 2 (different!) methods of calculating CADR but this does: https://frdmtoplay.com/nagivating-air-purification/