Purify the Air Supply

Has your time spent indoors increased during the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of stay-at-home and shelter-in-place policies worldwide? Your challenge is to use the International Space Station (ISS) as inspiration and develop a system to monitor and/or purify indoor air. It is entirely up to you whether the system you design is able to be used on Earth (for example in homes, businesses, transportation, etc.) and/or in space.

Ártemis Project

Summary

The main goal of this project is find a way to prevent the contagion of infectious diseases, especially coronavirus, due suspended splutters on air in closed environments. The solution proposed is to apply scientific knowledge of physics and biology to capture these splutters that could be contaminated with coronavirus and sterilize them. This project is important because it aims to provide more safety for people in crowded places, avoiding the contagion of infectious diseases.

How We Addressed This Challenge

The electrostatic collector fits within challenge 8 - Purify the air supply, because it is a solution that has as a main goal purification of indoor air, always trying to keep free of pathogens such as viruses and bacteria, using electrical discharges capable of generating a corona discharge, to capture these suspended particles, and UV radiation, which is already a known method for eliminating pathogens.

How We Developed This Project

The reason why we choose this challenge was the concern not only of the air quality, but also in the fact that the virus can be transmitted by it. There are studies and solutions on contaminated surfaces, but no commercial air decontamination solution that can be used in the presence of humans or with the potential for global scalability.

We try to go beyond collecting for data analysis and predictions. we wanted something that would solve the problem right there, as soon as possible, obviously data analysis is an important  aspect for the current era, and with the advancement of technology is possible that, in the future, the proposed solution is more for collecting and analyzing air data than for on-site solution. However, we believe that at the moment the biggest concern is: when will we all be able to stay in the same room again?

We searched within the data made available by NASA studies that would give us scientific basis on UV light together with ozone gas as germicidal agents, we also looked for articles to ensure the safety of users, as ways to control or decrease the emission of ozone as a by-product of corona discharge and UV light.

Tags
#Science #galactic_impact #hardware # air_purifier #air_quality
Global Judging
This project was submitted for consideration during the Space Apps Global Judging process.