Our project fits the challenge “Purify the Air Supply” as it tackles the purification of the air in an innovative and creative way. By making use of buses, at the same time we develop a safer for people and more environmentally sustainable way of using public transportation.
We understand that for a project to be relevant and impactful it needs to be firstly simple and secondly affordable. With that in mind, we constructed a system that could be easily added to the current model of buses used in our home town of Florianópolis for a cost that would add up to be only 2% of the total cost of the vehicle.
Afterward, the product could be adapted to be installed in other means of public transportation and air conditioning systems (hospitals, offices, schools, etc.)
With the arrival of the new coronavirus and the restrictive measures decreed worldwide, thousands of small businesses and workers in the secondary and tertiary sectors are suffering from the unknown of unemployment and the economic slowdown. All over the world, the intention to reopen the economy in a safe and controlled manner is hindered by the difficulty in ensuring that public transport does not become a focus for the spread of the virus. Studies in China have shown that the virus can reach an infection radius of 4.5 meters and remain in the air for up to 30 minutes in closed environments such as buses.
Brazil is now the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic and for that reason, public transportation is suspended until second order. That, added to the fact that 29% of Florianópolis, the capital of the state of Santa Catarina, population depends on public transportation to commute to work and as the main source of transport, makes this a priority to be solved.
We saw that as an opportunity to solve two problems with one solution. As well as making public transportation safer for the people, we aim to transform the buses into mobile air purification modules for the city’s air.
The idea behind the project is very simple: as Covid-19 is mainly transported by droplet suspended in air, our system clears the air with the usage of a UV light, ventilates the internal space, expels potential causes of infection and leaves a safe environment for the passengers. This, coupled with a highly effective (99,995%) HEPA N6H14 air filter, could mean that each bus that this technology is implemented on would be capable of removing from the air approximately 75996.2 µg of particulate matter PM2.5 every year, which is the main pollutant of Florianópolis atmosphere according to the data extracted from NASA and WHO. To maintain the internal space clean even with the bus stopped, the doors are equipped with air curtains, adding another protective barrier for the passengers.
To validate and illustrate our concept, we used various engineering softwares such as Ansys to simulate the air flow and Solidworks in conjunction with AutoCad Inventor to generate the geometry of the prototype.
https://youtu.be/cwTWqZxn244
OMPS-Suomi NPP L2 NM Ozone (O3) Total Column swath orbital NRT
Global Annual PM2.5 Grids from MODIS, MISR and SeaWiFS Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) with GWR, 1998-2016
OMI/Aura Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) Total and Tropospheric Column 1-orbit L2 Swath 13x24 km V003 (OMNO2) at GES DISC
Global 3-Year Running Mean Ground-Level Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) Grids from GOME, SCIAMACHY and GOME-2
https://www.ibge.gov.br/cidades-e-estados/sc/florianopolis.html
https://moovitapp.com/insights/en/Moovit_Insights_Public_Transit_Index-countries
https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(outdoor)-air-quality-and-health