Ctrl+Z - Space Apps Challenge

Ctrl+Z| Purify the Air Supply

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.

VRYO

Summary

Indoor ventilation strategy using satellite data to inform the user about wind direction and air pollution to know which door/window to have as an inlet and outlet for airflow according to its specific geographical location, thus replacing the contaminated indoor air with fresh air from outside. In case satellite data reports bad air quality, the air purification system VRYO will be placed at the inlet. VRYO consists on a structure, which size varies depending on the inlet it is made for, that uses moss to filter air so gets purified as it passes through.

How We Addressed This Challenge

As people shelter in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the air flow and its quality inside their living spaces gets reduced. This project offers a strategy backed up by NASA’s and its partner agencies for the Space Apps COVID-19 Challenge data on the best way to get fresh air back indoors without spending extra money on remodelations or replacements. It also offers an innovative and low cost air purifier that won’t need replacement (VRYO) for those places where the outdoor air quality is really low.

How We Developed This Project

Motivation

Breathing fresh air shouldn’t be a luxury, however, the high costs of air purification reflect otherwise. Seeing this need, we devised a simple low-cost eco-friendly system so that people with low-income can use it without problems; especially in these moments of crisis where stay-at-home and shelter-in-place policies worldwide causes the air supply in most houses to be in need of purification.

Everyone in the Ctrl+Z team has a talent for engineering so we knew that the way we could help the most was finding a solution for this challenge.

Our approach

After long hours of research and personal knowledge it was concluded that poor air quality is mainly due to reduced air flow and the lack of natural air purifiers such as plants. Thus VRYO was born. Using the resources of nature whose purpose is to restore clean air in the surrounding spaces, the data provided by NASA’s and NASA's partner agencies for the Space Apps COVID-19 Challenge satellites were used to verify air quality and locate specific areas where a system like VRYO is more than necessary. This way, people who do not require it are prevented from making an unnecessary purchase.

We were inspired by the technology and living conditions within the International Space Station (ISS), where research and experiments on the use of plants have been carried out in order to make plants the way to supply adequate air for human consumption; At one point we tried our hand in exploring the field of electrolysis in search of a solution there but it turned out to be a relatively complex field compared to other processes used here on Earth, therefore we focused our time on finding a solution using pre-existing wind and oxygen. We experimented with different cell designs for VRYO, doing our best to avoid the usage of bars since they give a feel of imprisonment, creating instead a sight that brings relief when looking out the windowand fresh air when looking because we do not seek to stress but to give relief to people, and that when viewing your window it is something pleasant and fresh; hence our proposals with shapes of rhombuses or hexagons, occupying the largest area without invading the view but at the same time exercising their function.

We had complications throughout our project, one of them was finding a filter for the geographical places where purifying the air is necessary. We knew that we could use the existing filters that are implemented in ventilation systems, but we wanted to innovate an eco-friendly, economic option, with low or no energy consumption, adaptable to the needs already prescribed, and that it doesn’t need constant maintenance. In addition we found other possible solutions to the problem but they deviated from the main objective of the challenge, which resulted frustrating at the time.

We relied on software specialized in engineering modeling and another specialized in simulation to design the prototype and simulate the movement of indoor airflow, making known the behavior of air particles within different contexts. Later, as a team, we form the image of the brand that we want to reflect, providing a natural solution to the problem, but one that also stands out as it is fresh, innovative and reliable.

By continuing our research we found open data studies that show that the average adult breathes between 5 to 6 liters of air per hour (7.2 m3 to 8 m3 per day), equivalent to the air filtered by 22 trees a day. With this information we concluded that the best option for VRYO is moss to purify air since the air contamination absorbed by moss is 10.42 gr per m2 per day. In other words, 1 m2 of moss is equivalent to 22.9 trees.

For our model and calculations we adapted to the most common dimensions in house windows, giving a total area of 1.228 m2, more than enough to supply a person with clean air. Now, if the system is used in bigger airflow inlet more air will be purified. Another reason to choose moss and not any other plant species is that planting and maintaining a traditional tree costs to maintain around $ 95 per year. A moss tree costs about $ 2.80 per year.

If we only had more time..

There's only so much you can do in 48 hours and we know this. This is why we made a list of details we overlooked for the sake getting things done. The following are things we would like to go indepth in the future.

Moss testing and experimentation.
Further investigation about different moss species for all the different types of climate.
Incorporate vertical automatic watering system to VRYO.
Create an online platform that tells the user where to geografically place their airflow inlets and outlets and if its necessary to instal VRYO filter in the inlet according to their global coordinates.
Study different living spaces with extremly reduced indoor airflow to determinate when and where an air extractor (which would be design to be eco-friendly) is necessary in the outlet to help indoor air ventilation.
Analize how much airflow passes through VRYO to make better design decisions when it comes to the moss and cell placement.
Further investigation about window/doors dimentions to design better according them.