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Non-thermal (or cold) plasma has been around for years. A version of this technology is incorporated into power plants. It can also be used to decontaminate food.
Now, researchers have developed an exciting new way of life.
99.9 percent of airborne viruses, researchers at the University of Michigan found. Their research is published in the Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics.
Some viruses (say, measles) can survive in the air for several kilometers. It is part of what makes them so contagious. But it is also what makes them so hard to defend against.
"Here is the most difficult disease." "Herek Clack, University of Michigan, Research Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering," said in a statement.
His team hopes to change that. The new technology utilizes cold plasmas, the ionized particles that form around electrical discharges. The reactor they built, designed for buildings, contained borosilicate glass beads, which were packed into a cylindrical shape. The air passes through the reactor and the spaces between the beads, where the virus is inactivated.
"In these void spaces, you're initiating sparks," Clack said. "Passing through the packed bed, pathogens in the air stream are oxidized by unstable atoms called radicals.
"The results tell us that nonthermal plasma treatment is very effective at inactivating airborne viruses," Krista Wigginton, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, said in a statement. Indeed, it was able to inactivate or remove 99.9 percent of a test virus, resulting in a fraction of a second.
"There are limited technologies for air disinfection, so this is an important finding," Wigginton said.
It has the potential to work "better, faster, and more cheaply" than "standard", added Clack.
Right now, the researchers are taking their work to pig farms. Clack and his team plan to test the effectiveness of their devices on the air exhausted from its buildings. In the future, they hope for a better replacement for surgical masks.
The next stage, Clack says, will be "human applications". That will involve miniaturizing the technology currently being adapted for buildings so that it becomes a device you can wear.
The end result – one day, not too far away, we might be carrying our own bug-killing machines.
Michigan Engineering / YouTube
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