ABSTRACT
This paper describes a robust autonomous disinfection tunnel to disinfect external surfaces of COVID-19 virus such as clothes and open body sections in public places such as airports, office complexes, schools, and malls. To make the tunnel effective and highly efficient, it has been provided with two chambers with three disinfection processes. Due to the multiple processes, the possibility of neutralizing the virus is quite high and higher than other solutions available at this point for this purpose. Chamber 1 sprays the solution of a disinfectant on the person. This solution can be either a dilute solution of approved chemical or any Ayurvedic/herbal disinfectant. Once the person enters chamber 2, he/she is exposed to hot air at 70 °C along with far-ultraviolet C rays (207-222 nm). Both chambers function autonomously by detecting a person in a chamber using ultrasonic sensors. The proposed tunnel is developed under industry-academia collaboration jointly by Technopark@iitk and ALIMCO under the ambit of the Ministry of Human Resources Development and the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, respectively. The tunnel is referred to as the 'Techno Advanced Disinfection Tunnel' (TADT).
ABSTRACT
With over 7 million people infected globally and over 5 lakh deaths reported worldwide by COVID-19 virus, World Health Organization (WHO) has declared it as a pandemic. India is also suffering badly because of the current crisis, with more than 4 lakh people infected and 13000 deaths reported as on 20th June 2020. There is no respite in sight as of now as the numbers continue to increase exponentially with each passing day. The only possible control to the virus is the availability of a vaccine, which will take a few months to be available to masses. Till then, the global economy has to start reopening slowly with several precautionary measures in place as advised by the WHO, such as mandatory wearing of masks in public places, frequent hand washing, practising good personal hygiene, and social distancing. Recently, the government of India (GoI) has also opened its economy with all the precautionary measures in place. Disinfecting of places of work, modes of transport, hospitals, and common areas is emerging as a mammoth challenge. With the objective of arresting the spread of COVID-19 virus and providing an efficient solution to the above problem, a portable disinfectant device is designed. Undertaken as an Industry-academia collaboration, it is a joint initiative between Technopark@iitk (IIT Kanpur Research and Technology Park) and Industry. The novelty of this device lies in its innovative design that combines spraying of sanitising liquid and UV light-based disinfection methodologies. For this, the device uses two separate disinfection systems: (1) the pump-nozzle assembly for spraying the disinfectant, and (2) UV-C radiations to increase the virus kill efficiency.
