Shillong(Meghalaya ),May 13: A collaborative team comprising of faculty, scientists, doctors and industrialist have developed a Covid De-Incubator chamber to disinfect the clothes and commonly used daily wear items.
After more than two months of research discussions, trials and testing, by the members of the team comprising Hirak Ranjan Das from Royal Global University, Dr. Dinesh Bhatia from North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, Dr. Kalyan Kumar Das, Assam Engineering College, Industrialist Dipak Kalita and Prof. Animesh Mishra from NEIGHRIMS, Shillong, the machine has been made compact and cost effective.
“The prototype-testing has been completed and field trials are under consideration. The machine works under the concept of high temperature heating and humidity,” Das informed .
He also said that the temperature is maintained between 75°C degree to 80 °C with humidity levels maintained at 80 percent to 90 percent for required time period to decay the corona virus and reduce its half-life substantially.
“The machine can be used to sanitize Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), Wool, Polyester, Acrylic, Polypropylene, Cotton, Newspaper, steel, leather products etc,” he said, while adding that the machine is easy to deploy and can be installed at homes and public utilities such as banks, shops, hospitals, offices, bus stations, railway stations, airports etc.
The machine can be auto-sterilized and gets disinfected after usage. It also reduces the use of chemicals and reagents to do sanitization. The machine can also be used to clean the infected clothes with detergent.
They are working on improving the device further by adding Ultraviolet radiation which is considered to effectively eliminate the virus in less than five minutes with auto off with temperature and humidity displayer. In short time span the investigators have received interest from several persons regarding the machine.
The machine has been developed after taking into consideration the findings of research work conducted in Beijing on Covid-19 where it was observed that with each degree rise in temperature and each percent humidity increase, the contagiousness of Covid-19 goes down significantly.
This research also showed that higher temperatures of around 38°C at 80-90 percent relative humidity led to some decrease in virus activity within 24 hours.
However, if the dried virus was stored at high temperature of around 38°C and high relative humidity of over 95 percent, there was a further significant degradation in virus activity at each point in time.
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