Awards & Nominations
Odinson has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Purify the Air Supply
Lightning - Air purifier
Summary
The equipment developed by our team is a small and fixed air purifier. Unlike those that already exist, this device can purify larger environments such as rooms full of people in a few minutes. The air enters the lower end due to the conduction of a ventilation mechanism. Afterward, the air is channeled into its interior, follows a helical path around an ultraviolet light, and then passes through an activated carbon filter that retains any larger particles or impurities to finally be expelled.
How We Addressed This Challenge
With the spread of coronavirus, purifying the air has become an important challenge. Lockdown and social distancing measures were applied to reduce the fast spread of Covid-19. However, the time spent on indoor spaces has increased. Studies show that the virus can also be spread through the air. With that in mind, air-purifying in enclosed spaces becomes essential, especially in crowded places.
What is the Lightning?
The Lightning is a small and fixed air purifier. Differently from other devices, it is projected to purify the air of larger environments, such as rooms with groups of people, in a few minutes. Also, it does not use heat, as many similar equipments, increasing its efficiency. Besides that, our product uses low-cost materials and with a simple and effective design, it becomes a very viable option.
The product, besides an innovative design, is very versatile. It can be fixed on the wall or arranged on a flat surface with the use of the support besides being able to be used in diverse environments such as residential, commercial, hospital and vehicles. Improving the quality of the closed environment would be possible to reduce the numbers of people affected not only by the coronavirus, but also by others respiratory diseases contagious, in the short and long term. In addition to making it possible to soften containment measures and consequently collaborate with the resumption of many sectors of our economy.
Thinking about this, we created an air purifier for internal environments. In our equipment, the air enters the lower end due to the conduction of a ventilation device. As a result, the air is channeled into its interior, follows a helical path that takes place around an ultraviolet light (UVC), and then passes through an activated carbon filter that retains larger particles of impurities to finally be expelled.
The UVC radiation is the most aggressive and acts as a germicide, since when a microorganism comes into contact with its radiation, the virus (including the Coronavirus) has its protective cover and its destroyed genetic material, using it completely inactive and interrupting the contagion cycle.
The carbon filter has very peculiar characteristics due to the manufacturing process. The process guarantees high flexibility and carbon activation also gives it an electropositive charge, to attract as an impurity. The molecules of chemical products and other impurities get trapped in the small pores.
How We Developed This Project
Since we are mechanical engineering students we thought that this project would fit best with our abilities, challenging us to find an innovative solution to the problem. We started to think about the challenge once we signed up to the hackathon, we brainstormed a few ideas, read the material provided by NASA. When the hackathon started, on Saturday morning, we merged our ideas and came up with a conceptual design of an ultraviolet based air filter.
Initially, we used the Airocide as a basis for our idea. Throughout the rest of the day, we had mentoring sessions and watched the live streams about the different steps of the hackathon, and our project started to get better and more refined. The mentoring sessions were very helpful some mistakes were corrected and our ideas improved. On Sunday we finished the concept, the initial design of our device and prepared our pitch.
We used many tools through the whole process, shared documents on Google Docs, boards on Trello, online meetings on Google Meet and Discord, SolidWorks for modeling our device, Wix for the design of our website, and CorelDraw for the images of our logo.
Project Demo
Data & Resources
GOVERNAMENTAL (EUA). NASA. HOME AIR PUFIFIERS ERADICATE HARMFUL PATHOGENS. [S. l.], n. 1, p. 1, 30 may. 2020. available in:<https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2013/cg_4.html>
GOVERNAMENTAL (EUA). NASA. INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION. AIR PURIFICATION.[S. l.], n. 1, p. 1, 30 may. 2020. available in <https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/advasc.html>
GOVERNAMENTAL (EUA).NASA. CLOSING THE LOOP: RECYCLING WATER AND AIR IN SPACE.available in <https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/146558main_RecyclingEDA(final)%204_10_06.pdf>
Kowalski, Wladyslaw & Walsh, Thomas & Petraitis, Vidmantas. (2020). 2020 COVID-19 Coronavirus Ultraviolet Susceptibility. available in <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339887436_2020_COVID-19_Coronavirus_Ultraviolet_Susceptibility>
Kowalski, Wladyslaw. (2015). SARS Coronavirus UV Susceptibility. 10.13140/RG.2.1.4332.1680. available in <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284691618_SARS_Coronavirus_UV_Susceptibility>
(BRAZIL). CORONAVÍRUS: RADIAÇÃO ULTRAVIOLETA É A NOVA ARMA PARA DESINFECÇÃO.[S. l.], n. 1, p. 1, 30 may.2020. available in:<https://veja.abril.com.br/saude/coronavirus-radiacao-e-nova-arma-para-desinfeccao/>
Matsushita, Taku & Suzuki, Hideaki & Shirasaki, Nobutaka & Matsui, Yoshihiko & Ohno, Koichi. (2013). Adsorptive virus removal with super-powdered activated carbon. Separation and Purification Technology. 107. 79-84. 10.1016/j.seppur.2013.01.017.
(BRAZIL) FILTRO DE AR/ CARVÃO ATIVADO..[S. l.], n. 1, p. 1, 31 may.2020. available in <http://tratamentodear.com.br/filtro-carvao-ativado/>