Our Challenge is use the International Space Station (ISS) as inspiration and develop a system to purify or monitor indoor air. As The ISS is modular space station in low Earth orbit , The Station uses the life support systems, They must not only supply oxygen and remove carbon dioxide from the cabin's atmosphere but also prevent gases like ammonia and acetone which people emit is small quantities.So even the air in space is undeniably rare, managing it is no small problem for ISS life support engineers, Now, The world is living a nightmare which is COVID-19 pandemic. The system we designed is be able to used on Earth ( Homes, Businesses, Transportation,etc) and in space, Adding a device which contributes the ultraviolet waves to the air conditioning system in any place That we could clear up the air from the Virus.
As we should be familiar with the importance of indoor air quality to support human health in our homes and other buildings we choose this challenge. ISSS was our inspiration and the catalyst that guided us to our idea.
First we built, developed and managed the team. We selected members with various skills and disciplines. After that, we started to share opinions and create a positive work environment. We cooperated together, distributed tasks, and set effective performance standards and preserved it. At each stage, doing different studies and drawing on different experiences
The ISS project has benefited us in many points:
· As ISSS engineers believe that the mix of environmental contaminants on the station is a big challenge, they try to find ways to filter air and water .this helped us to look at the biggest challenge facing us, which is the spread of the virus and work to fight it in all ways
· they start to select effective materials to filter the air and find how these materials will react to contaminants this helps us to study more and get more information about the virus's mechanism and try to study and find new substances that attract and collect molecules from viruses to determine which would be most effective for use in filters.
· As they use the Long Duration Sorbent Testbed to let them know how long those materials will be effective, this guide us to the necessity of using this test to test the materials, too
· the purpose of their project was to extend the lifespan for life-support systems on long-duration flights to Mars and beyond and our purpose was to maintain the health of people because this type of pollution may have serious repercussions on public health.
· NASA engineers have been key players in the design, fabrication, and testing of the equipment that keeps astronauts safe in space we play a big role to use UVC in a good way that not harm the people as it can damage human DNA, causing health problems such as skin cancer or cataracts, but through the device, the rays won't be exposed to air because it will only be inside it
To design the device, we have studied its mechanism of work and design it on the Solid Works application and we will use a source of UVC and it will be with radiation lamps and we have conducted studies on the time taken to sterilize and we asked physicists to verify our information and make equations.
The most important challenges that we faced was how to calculate the time taken for sterilization and we resolved it by making sterilization continuous throughout the time as the polluted air enters and exits clean and it is a continuous process where no one is hurt