Design and Development of a Portable Disinfectant Device

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.