Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been spending most of the time indoors, because of social isolation and lockdown enacted in various parts of the world. With this, an important factor arises to be concerned with human health, that many are unaware of its importance, that is the indoor air quality standards. In this sense, we know that there are two ways to allow healthy and safe air indoors: purify and monitor. Air purification is a procedure carried out by devices with the function of reducing harmful concentrations in the environment of two specific groups of pollutants, non-biological pollutants and biological pollutants. Monitoring, on the other hand, is the action of identifying and quantifying pollutants in the environment in order to obtain air quality data, helping to manage spaces to promote comfort and safety. Our project addresses these two aspects for a quality air, because we understand that they are complementary. Then, we developed in a single system, an innovative device capable of not only purifying, as several products on the market does, but also monitoring pollution parameters and identifying pathogens in the air. Using as inspiration the highly effective air purification technology developed by NASA and the biological filter developed by ESA to be used at the International Space Station (ISS), we coupled in electrical sensor technologies and biotechnological tools capable of monitoring and identifying pollutants, with emphasis on the recognition of the presence of microorganisms, among them the SARS-CoV-2 to create the AirSaber. Our differential, therefore, is the microbiological monitoring of the air, a gap found on Earth, where the air will not be collected by technicians and a gap found on the ISS, which will no longer require the transport of samples to the ground, allowing safety during a prolonged occupation in the space, being possible in both, the analysis in real time, on site, without laboratory in a safe and practical way.
AirSaber gathers all the force to promote health and well-being in indoor air on Earth and in space!
Our team is multidisciplinar composed of university students in biotechnology, engineering and advertising, because of that we wanted to choose a challenge that every teammate could pitch in and we also wanted to create a product. So, we found the challenge “Purify the air supply” that could allow us to do it.
To develop our fisical project we used both the SOLIDWORKS and the AutoDesk Fusion 360 Softwares, BioRender.com
Our team faced some problems regarding the prototype construction and in which way the air collections that must be humidified before the gICD starts its analysis.The achievements were the extensive knowledge in the area of indoor purification air quality. We conducted a lot of research and group discussions in online meetings which brought the group together.
On NASA’s Space Products Development Program at the Marshall Space Flight Center, a product that was primarily designed to reduce ethylene gas, produced by plants was developed. This gas is not wanted because it accelerates the decomposition and ripening of fruits and vegetables at the space station.
The technology consists of a device, called “scrubber”, in which air is sucked into tubes coated with thin layers of titanium dioxide (TiO2) and when an ultraviolet (UV) light source located in the tubes reaches TiO2, the ethylene is converted to water and carbon dioxide, both beneficial to plants. However, this technology was able to remove all types of unwanted organic particles from the air, such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, odors, volatile organic compounds in general and started to be applied commercially as an air purifier, becoming a NASA Spinoff.
Air purification is essential to have a quality ambience, even so monitoring and detection of contaminants. It is also an important factor to inform and alert about the atmospheric safety of an environment, as well as promoting the elimination of possible sources and the correct asepsis of the place.
Knowing the existence of this highly efficient purification technology, our team decided to develop an indoor air quality monitoring product that could be applied to existing NASA technology.
Our team also relied on technology produced by the European Space Agency (ESA) together with a Dutch company that created a method for detecting pathogenic bacteria in an air filter for use on the ISS.
The technology consists of using bacteria in a filter that converts air contaminants into water and carbon dioxide. This technology was improved after questioning whether the use of non-pathogenical bacteria in the filter could become pathogenical bacteria. For that reason, an alert system was created using tapes with fluorescent compounds containing specific pieces of genetic material (DNA and / or RNA) exclusive to these pathogens that, when they come into contact with a harmful bacterium, this tape, when analyzed under microscopy, would emit a color, identifying the presence of the pathogen.
It is known that the monitoring of indoor air quality consists of the analysis of three central parameters: comfort and air renewal, level of soiling, measured by physical and non-biological pollution indicators and microbiological contamination, assessed by biological pollution indicators.The first two parameters are determinated by physical and non-biological pollution indicators while microbiological contamination is determinated by biological pollution indicators. Currently, pollutants of non-biological origin can be detected with electronic devices (sensors) with direct reading, as well as physical parameters, such as humidity and temperature, for example. However, when we refer to pollutants of biological origin, there is currently a gap in their assessment. It is not done directly and "in loco", depending on the collection of samples and laboratory analyzes performed by a technician.This fact increases the detection time and prevents the monitoring from being carried out with the recommended frequency, generating a longer time of exposure to a possible contaminated environment.
In addition, ISS relies on sending air samples from the station to Earth for long-term environmental health monitoring. Our technology can solve this problem because it can be applied to on-board analyzes, replacing the need to return air samples for analysis on the ground.
With that in mind, we developed our project in order to promote a quick and effective assessment of air quality in indoor environments both on Earth and in space. In addition to the use of analytical tools already established for monitoring physical (temperature and humidity) and non-biological (carbon dioxide and particulate material) parameters, we have implemented a new technology for biological pollutants: the AirSaber technology. AirSaber by means of biotechnological tools is capable of detecting with high precision even in low concentration pathogenic microorganisms, such as viruses, including SARS-COV2, fungi, spores and bacteria present in the air in the form of aerosols directly in a single equipment, safe, practical and optimized way unlike today. Viral analyzes currently take many hours to have an effective diagnosis, AirSaber has a coupled technology called Graphene Immobilized CRISPR Diagnosis (giCD) also developed by our team and which has the power to perform a complete analysis of the air and can be done in just some minutes. Any environment that has AirSaber will have air purification and a report containing all viral, bacterial and gas data offensive to humans. With this in hand, urgent measures can be taken to control the emission of these pollutants and pathogens in order to promote the best possible air quality.
Our AirSaber technology is composed of:
But how does it work?
The air first goes through the equipment with the help of exhaust fans, inside the equipment the air will pass inside multiple sensors and filters, being one of them responsible for lysing the cells, exposing the genetic material. Once the genetic material is exposed, a condensator will capture these particles and the humidity of the air transforming them into a liquid. With the press of a button, the analysis process will start, the condensate liquid and the reaction buffer will be pumped to the injector needle into a well in the gICD, inside the well, the reaction starts where the enzyme reacts with genetic sequences of interest generating a fluorescent signal, this signal will be read with an optical wave-lenght sensor. The resulting air will be clean and the results of the process appear in the display, indicating the parameters of the air and the result of the biological test.
DEMO VIDEO: https://youtu.be/qkQ0FPLSMEY
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