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.

Purilight

Summary

Have you ever thought if light purified the environment without harming humans? According to Columbia University, this is already feasible. Using the far-UVC light principle, it is possible to sterilize 99.9% of the environment and surfaces in just 25 minutes. We have developed a lighting panel for environments with a large circulation of people, which helps companies and governments to reduce the spread of Covid-19 in their spaces.

How We Addressed This Challenge

Air filtration goes far beyond the coronavirus and is fundamental to humanity's next steps. After each epidemic in history, human relationships have changed. And this time, will be not different. It will be necessary to rethink public and shared spaces, whether indoors, on the street, or in the office: New sanitary measures will need to be adopted. Urbanization, design, infrastructure and education concepts. The challenge goes far beyond creating a product / service capable and economically viable, but of the marriage between such different areas and themes. It is necessary to create a solution that interacts with all points of this problem. Finding a way to remove the Sars-CoV-2 virus from the air in a comprehensive and socio-economically viable way is the real challenge.

How We Developed This Project

The proposed project is an innovative solution with a transformative proposal, scientifically validated, capable of generating strong socioeconomic and environmental impacts around our daily lives and in the main global business activities, benefiting individuals, organizations and biodiversity. The solution is scientifically validated by recent experiments in physics conducted by Columbia University, USA. The panels are based on lighting calculations made by the engineers components of group in accordance with brazillian regulatory standard NBR 5101 that establishes the minimum requirements for lighting public roads. The project responds to the air purification challenge in a concise and innovative way. The next steps in the solution are the creation of a MVP, according to the calculations developed by the proponents of this project, and subsequent testing on public roads. Some challenges to be overcome (points to improve): definition of the speed of this implementation, the intended scalability rhythm and the investments made.

Project Demo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXy4phlmIR4

Data & Resources

- Long‐term Effects of 222‐nm ultraviolet radiation C Sterilizing Lamps on Mice Susceptible to Ultraviolet Radiation

  • Nozomi Yamano
  • Makoto Kunisada
  • Sachiko Kaidzu
  • Kazunobu Sugihara
  • Aiko Nishiaki‐Sawada
  • Hiroyuki Ohashi
  • Ai Yoshioka
  • Tatsushi Igarashi
  • Akihiro Ohira
  • Masaki Tanito
  • Chikako Nishigori

First published:29 March 2020

https://doi.org/10.1111/php.13269

- Coronavirus Lingers in Air of Crowded Spaces, New Study Finds

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-27/coronavirus-lingers-in-air-of-crowded-spaces-new-study-finds

- COVID-19 no Brasil

https://liibre.github.io/coronabr/

Ponnaiya B, Buonanno M, Welch D, Shuryak I, Randers-Pehrson G, Brenner DJ. Far-UVC light prevents MRSA infection of superficial wounds in vivo. PLoS One. 2018;13(2):e0192053. Published 2018 Feb 21. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0192053

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5821446/

Welch, D., Buonanno, M., Grilj, V. et al. Far-UVC light: A new tool to control the spread of airborne-mediated microbial diseases. Sci Rep8, 2752 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-21058-w

- Researchers studying ultraviolet technology to dampen virus

https://www.post-gazette.com/news/health/2020/04/09/Ultraviolet-technology-far-UVC-light-disinfectant-COVID-19-coronavirus/stories/202004080113

- NASA SEDAC Global COVID-19 Viewer

https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mapping/popest/covid-19/

- John Hopkins University CORONAVIRUS RESOURCE CENTER

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/

- NASA SEDAC Population Estimation Service

https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mapping/popest/pes-v3/

Manuela Buonanno, David Welch, Igor Shuryak et al. Far-UVC light efficiently and safely inactivates airborne human coronaviruses, 27 April 2020, PREPRINT (Version 1) available at Research Square [+https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-25728/v1+]


Tags
#airquality #airpurification #faruvc #socioeconomicimpact #covid-19
Global Judging
This project was submitted for consideration during the Space Apps Global Judging process.