UV LED disinfection product prototype now done

Posted by $ jbrenner 3 years, 7 months ago to Technology
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Several Gulchers are going to be a Zoom call with me about this on Sunday, 4/25/21 at https://fit.zoom.us/j/4725447207 at 3 PM Eastern, 2 PM Central. All Gulchers are welcome to join.

Some of you know that I have been starting an ultraviolet LED disinfection product we call the VersaTILE to be sold through http://www.chem-freesolutions.com. See https://www.floridatechvirtualshowroo... first for more detail than the company web site has on our current status.

It uses LED's at six different wavelengths to ensure that proteins and DNA are disrupted for all types of pathogens and microorganisms. While you could use it at home, it really is not price competitive with some competitor's UV lamp technology (like PhoneSoap). I look it at step one in a multi-step process.

1) Build a disinfection product.
2) Put it into HVAC systems as a replacement for your UV lamp and eventually modify it so that it can be integrated into a self-disinfecting HVAC filter.
3) Put it in sterilizer boxes of various sizes, such as lots of items touched by students or customers for cleaning lots of items simultaneously.
4) Build a UV photography and photogrammetry system so that we can "visually" document that items are not sterile prior to disinfection and are afterwards.
5) Develop a process in conjunction with partners to reflect enough UV light such that sufficient light gets into the "nooks and crannies" of porous materials (like clothing).

There are a lot more applications for this than are currently on our web site. If interested, contact me at jbrenner@fit.edu.

The video linked in the URL is a senior design video by my Florida Tech students (also Chem-Free Solutions employees). Ultimately this came out of my Basics of Making class. If you have any future John Galts who want to be properly trained, I am kind of like Quentin Daniels (the Utah Institute of Technology professor in Atlas Shrugged). If interested in either my nanotechnology minor or chemical, biomedical, mechanical or aerospace engineering, contact me at jbrenner@fit.edu. I can address the electrical/computer engineers and computer science people, too, but not as well.

SOURCE URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P8wFPbmGMk


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  • Posted by mccannon01 3 years, 7 months ago
    Just curious, but can this technology be adapted to sterilize water to get away from chlorine or the need for boiling? Let's assume the water is absent of clouding particulates.
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    • Posted by $ 3 years, 7 months ago
      UV light can disinfect water, but that field is already saturated with competitors.
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      • Posted by mccannon01 3 years, 7 months ago
        Thank you. I should have done a search first, but the ones I am already aware of are 1) very large very expensive industrial systems and 2) lower life span tube type systems requiring a ballast. Your LED solution caught my attention (low power, longer life).
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        • Posted by $ 3 years, 7 months ago
          Low power and longer life are definitely the plusses of such a system for now. I am pretty sure that the amount of viral and microorganismic shedding from HVAC filters is underestimated. Occasionally, HVAC systems start to struggle with humidity control; I think at those times that the HVAC systems become breeding grounds for contamination. I don't have proof for that yet. We will conduct such experiments eventually, but I need to generate sales and crowdfunding at this point to fund such work. While I am fairly wealthy, I am not a bank.
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          • Posted by mccannon01 3 years, 7 months ago
            "...struggle with humidity control; I think at those times that the HVAC systems become breeding grounds..." I believe you are correct on this point. If I recall correctly, the first known outbreak of "Legionnaires Disease" was shown to be sourced from moisture in the HVAC system of the hotel in Philadelphia.

            Here's a quote from Wikipedia: "Sources where temperatures allow the bacteria to thrive include hot water tanks, cooling towers, and evaporative condensers of large air conditioning systems, such as those commonly found in hotels and large office buildings.[24] Though the first known outbreak was in Philadelphia, cases of legionellosis have occurred throughout the world.
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            • Posted by $ 3 years, 7 months ago
              Wikipedia in this case is accurate. The cooling coils definitely are an issue. Hopefully Abaco can shed a little more light on that tomorrow.
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              • Posted by mccannon01 3 years, 7 months ago
                Agreed. I've seen less than stellar performance from Wikipedia often enough, especially if a leftward political slant can be injected into an entry. I added that after I wrote the first paragraph.
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                • Posted by $ 3 years, 7 months ago
                  On apolitical topics, Wikipedia is usually accurate and suprisingly well-documented because it is in the self-interest of the authors to be accurate and complete.
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 3 years, 7 months ago
    Our massive HAVAC system (at a hospice hospital) - (Ps, the virus has never been in the building that we can prove), could benefit but we also need to address air flow at the entrances and exits. Is your product now or in the future appropriate for these situations?

    We have pretty much given up on the surface of things do to new studies about how viruses transmitted through the air on dust and other particulates and do not drop down to the ground or flat surfaces as much as we thought. (sorry, should have saved the article)

    What have you seen in testing surfaces for viruses...are they there more than in the air?
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    • Posted by $ 3 years, 7 months ago
      Pathogenic transmission very much depends on which pathogens you are talking about. COVID is airborne. Others are surface-based. Some can be both like Clostridium difficile, which was the proverbial "final straw" for my mom in 2015. C. diff is a much bigger problem in assisted living facilities because of the number of people who have become incontinent.

      Hospital and assisted living facility HVAC systems are likely to be our main market in the long term. In the short term, you could use our VersaTILE to replace the UV lamp in your HVAC, but ultimately we will make more money on this once we integrate it with HVAC filters into "self-disinfecting filters". We are ready to start taking pre-orders now. We have one working prototype and several more that will be ready in a couple of weeks. After that, we will start a serious sales and crowdfunding campaign.

      Several Gulchers are going to be a Zoom call with me on Sunday, 4/25/21 at https://fit.zoom.us/j/4725447207 at 3 PM Eastern, 2 PM Central. All Gulchers are welcome to join.
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      • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 3 years, 7 months ago
        I'll be at work and if slow, I'll jump on. Self disinfecting HAVAC filters sounds like an interesting solution...presently we have hepa filters, obviously.

        It is interesting though, that we have never seen covid in the facility and in spite of that they say it's been floating around...or maybe it's not?
        Either way, it's a puzzling observation.
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        • Posted by $ 3 years, 7 months ago
          Most facilities are quite good at keeping unhealthy people out, and people are smart enough not to spread disease intentionally.
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          • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 3 years, 7 months ago
            Of course, we tested temp in the past year but yes, knowingly sick people do not come here but it would also seem that the unknowingly sick have.
            My point, in the past year+ I have not witnessed a sick person, anyone, including patients, with flu like symptoms out of 1000s of people per month...not even in the town where I live,

            You'd think with a pretty high rate of supposed covid, I would have witnessed the disease.
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            • Posted by $ 3 years, 7 months ago
              The COVID rate is made to appear much higher than it really is. My university routinely has about 10 cases per week, with a max of 19 I think and with about 100 people each week having to self-quarantine out of a total of roughly 5000 people. The majority of transmissions came from off-campus sources, mostly students' family members. One of the students in the video, for instance, caught COVID, when she went home to Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving. In the summer, we had a company employee who took a higher paying job elsewhere later get COVID from a housemate last summer. We all had to self-isolate for a while, but there was no spread in either case.
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  • Posted by kddr22 3 years, 7 months ago
    still using my plug in uvc and ionization air cleaners
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    • Posted by $ 3 years, 7 months ago
      One of our future products will be a sterilizer box for room air purifiers like you are using. In a disease situation, one of the major concerns is moving the room air purifier from room to room to clear many rooms of potential COVID contamination.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 3 years, 7 months ago
    A few years ago, I had a notion I could save money on a circuit board with LEDs like that by making it out of FR-4 instead of Al. I put loads of large vias connecting to the back. The back of the board was all exposed Cu, no soldermask, to be connected to a heatsink.
    I put the rated power through the LEDs, and the FR-4 started smoking within less than a minute. The vias had too much thermal resistance.
    The good thing is Al PCBs are inexpensive now.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 3 years, 7 months ago
    Are there any rules or device classes for UV LEDs similar to IEC 60825 for lasers? Intuitively, this would seem as dangerous as a Class 3 laser. It's fine unless someone foolishly stares into it.

    How could you document things that were not sterilized prior to disinfection?
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    • Posted by $ 3 years, 7 months ago
      Yes, there are some rules, and they are not that much different than those of similar power lasers. We supply generic 190-540 nm UV safety glasses along with our products.
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