Designing of a Large Scale Automated Composite Book Sanitizer Machine

ABSTRACT

The era of sudden eruption of the COVID-19 infection, since January 2020, drew much attention of the world due to its impact turning into a large-scale issue for all the countries, and thus an alarm of Corona Pandemic was declared all across, by February 2020. The same adverse effect was sensed by the middle of March 2020 in India too, when the declaration of total lockdown in the country was left as the only option which was implemented on 24th March 2020, by the Government of India. Such sudden development of hopes and apprehensions in the minds of all in India, sparked a thought of reducing the scope of spread of and infection due to this deadly virus to a considerable amount, mainly in the process of the exchange of various kinds of reading materials including books, by the students, in the post COVID-19 scenario.As a preparatory measure, this thought got converted into the development of a book sanitizer to be housed in the Library of the North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, on the initiatives shown by the Dy. Librarian, which led the authors, in My 2020 to take up the project of developing an appropriate device The objective was to generate a device which sanitizes the books and other hard form reading materials maintained in the Library and remains free from contamination of the Corona virus to the maximum. For that, a book sanitizing machine is developed in a span of nearly three months. The device, named as Automated Book Sanitizing Composite Machine (ABSCoM) works on the technique based on the principle of UV-ray irradiation, integrated with the thermal exposure of the books in a controlled manner. A special feature of automation is employed to monitor the parameters of critical temperature set for the exposure at which the SARS virus is reported to get destroyed. Additionally, the time of thermal exposure of book and the relative humidity level of each book in the stack of books loaded in the device for sanitization is also monitored through microcontroller system and a bell alarming component. Sufficient care for maintaining the quality of the book post sanitization, as original, is the additional key factor in developing this device. © 2021 IEEE.