2021 Team
IONS vs SARS-COV-2
Up to now, SARS-CoV-2 pandemic caused close to 1 million deaths worldwide, but other year after year respiratory pathogens, such as H1N1 (i.e. Influenza) cause close to 0.5 million deaths each year (source: WHO). Additionally, the subsequent lock-down will imply an economic impact, for the moment, estimated at 5% of global economy (source: UN). Nowadays, most recent scientific papers assert that both respiratory viruses have same main transmission via: by air associated to aerosols. CDC, among others national health protection agencies, has encouraged to engineering new solutions in order to reduce infection probability, urging to focus on permanent hotspots: hospitals, crowded events and mass transports. Solving this need, we have created low-cost air-purification systems able to reduce air pathogen rate at same time that no chemicals are expelled consequently those systems are consistent with human presence & manufacturing materials and, obviously, suitable for most of air- conditioning systems. Our early prototypes have shown (lab-tests) ability to reduce virus, associated to aerosols, rate from 90 to 99.9% each time flow cross our purification systems.
Our solution is a scalable & adaptable system, human & materials compatible, wastes have not a big virus accumulation and imply low pressure loss over existing air-conditioning facilities, converting those systems from a propagation source of viruses to a cleaning system.
Team Lead
Raúl López
Affiliation
Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (Spain)
Lead Mentors
Peter Hansen
Germán Gonzalez Serrano
