IIT Guwahati develops fabric to protect human body and cleaning device to protest areas
As most of the people are staying at their homes to ensure the coronavirus does not spread further, it is important to sanitise homes as well. Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati has created a device to disinfect homes, hospitals etc with efficiency. As per a press release, a research team lead by Dr. Senthilmurugan Subbiah, Department of Chemical Engineering has created two technologies – a UVC LED system to disinfect areas and a fabric to prevent the harmful virus from touching the body.
UVC system is a proven technology to sanitise the microorganism infected non-porous surface. It can kill up to 90 per cent killing rate, claims the institute. The team is also improving the design by integrating UVC with ozone system such that surface with porous nature also can be sanitised, according to the IIT-G press release.
Three of them are designed for household sanitisation and one of them for sanitising bigger spaces like hospital wards, buses, metros, and railway compartments, including those transformed for Covid-19 care, informed the institute.
IIT Guwahati is providing technical support to identify the best waterproof material from the Indian market and its performance concerning waterproof team will be exploring potential technology for antimicrobial coating on PPE to reduce the viral load on PPE during exposure to COVID-19. PPE kit includes a jumped suite, face shield, mouth mask, head covers, gowns and shoe covers.
Earlier, researchers from IIT Guwhati had worked on a potential vaccine to fight coronavirus pandemic. The institute had informed that researchers are exploring possibilities to “clone the immunogenic proteins of SARS-CoV-2 to be used as diagnostics and possible vaccine candidates”.