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74,146
2020-06-01 to 2021-03-31
Feasibility Studies
Covid-19 has caused global devastation largely due to its capacity to remain highly infectious for long periods outside the human body. Early indications are that it can survive in air for up to 3 hours, on cardboard for 24 hours, and 2--3 days on plastic and steel surfaces. Whilst specific areas and objects may be manually de-contaminated by wiping with bleach or surgical spirit, this procedure is labour intensive, costly, and limited to easily accessible regions. The Covid-19 crisis has necessitated severe changes to the way humans interact, and a similar step change is needed in our approach to decontamination in order to maintain a safe environment. There is a pressing need for an aggressive, effective, decontamination solution that can easily and safely be applied to commercial, educational and medical areas, to enclosed spaces containing goods, equipment and food, to care homes, and to the transport industry. Ozone gas is a powerful oxidant with well documented anti-microbial and anti-viral properties. Due to its gaseous nature, it is able to access and treat all regions including underneath surfaces of furniture, crevices, and fabrics. Unlike conventional cleaning methods (e.g. bleach), it leaves no residue, decomposing naturally back to oxygen. Ozone has been used to disinfect water on an industrial scale for decades, and has found niche applications such as medical instrument sterilisation, for which it has FDA approval. However, widespread adoption of ozone sterilisation has been precluded by the technical inadequacy of existing solutions, originating from their use of ambient air as a source of oxygen for ozone generation. The alternative to ambient air is to feed the generator with pure oxygen from a gas bottle or external gas line, making the final device heavy, cumbersome, with the additional cost and inconvenience of obtaining and re-filling oxygen cylinders. Our proposal is to develop a precision ozone controller employing a generator fed by ultra-pure oxygen, obtained by pumping oxygen from the air across an oxygen-permeable zirconia ceramic membrane. This innovative approach overcomes the performance issues associated with generating ozone directly from air, because ultra-pure oxygen is generated in situ inside the analyser, and delivered immediately to the generator inlet. This solution has the potential to be highly technically effective, low cost, lightweight, silent and low power. Following prototype development, an extensive beta testing program will be conducted to ensure that the product is suitable for the UK market in terms of performance, certification, and user acceptance. This will be conducted in collaboration with a leading UK manufacturer and supplier of ozone machines, and will lead to design refinements resulting in a production-ready, CE compliant design suitable for batch production and supply to the UK market.