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Capture and thermal inactivation of airborne Covid-19 particles
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- Author(s) / Creator(s)
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For centuries, people have been fighting airborne transmitting diseases like the common cold virus, influenza or Measles and Tuberculosis as examples of more fatal diseases. Certainly, one of the most catastrophic viruses among the airborne transmitting diseases is Covid-19 which has taken millions of lives in the past three years. Although vaccines have significantly diminished the rate of deaths, periodic emergence of different variants like Delta and Omicron proves that vaccination is not a substitution for the virus-spread controlling methods. Subsequently, it is still necessary to prevent the spread of the virus from the very beginning by using masks and sterilizing the air in indoor spaces. In the present work, a novel method for both trapping and inactivation of the airborne transmitting pathogens is provided. Contaminated air passes through multiple layers of fine woven meshes while the mesh is acting as both a filter to remove the airborne particles and also as a heating element to raise the air temperature. D50 = 0.9 μm which means that 50%-removal efficiency occurs for 0.9 μm particles in this device. According to the exponential relationship of the temperature and the exposure time models, taking the air to high temperatures like 150°C provides 3-log virus load reduction (i.e. 99.9% inactivation of the viruses) in a fraction of a second. Numerical simulations are conducted using ANSYS Fluent software and experimental tests are in progress to validate the numerical data.
Part of Proceedings of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering International Congress 2022
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- Date created
- 2022-06-01
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- Type of Item
- Article (Published)