A new air filter capable of killing the coronavirus instantly
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Posted on July 9, 2020
A team of researchers from the University of Houston (USA), in collaboration with the Medistar company, has announced the development of a new air filter that is capable of "catching and killing" the coronavirus responsible for Covid-19 instantly. The work has been published in the Materials Today Physics magazine.
It has been proved that the virus can stay in the air for about three hours. Therefore, this technology can be extremely useful to prevent the transmission of the virus in closed spaces such as schools, offices, hospitals, airports, aeroplanes or cruise ships. They are also working on a desktop model capable of purifying the air in the immediate surroundings of an office worker.
Since the virus cannot survive temperatures above 70 degrees Celsius, the researchers decided to use a heated filter. By making the filter temperature much higher, around 200 degrees, viruses would die almost instantly.
The researchers report that during tests carried out at the Galveston National Laboratory, they managed to eliminate, with a single pass through the new filter, up to 99.8% of SARS-Co-2. The same filter also killed 99.9% of the anthrax spores used during testing.
This new indoor air protection technology could become the first line of biodefense against the transmission of SARS CoV-2 through the air in closed environments.
