Mangaluru: NITK professor develops disinfection chamber for homes, offices

Deepthi Shridhar | TNN | Apr 13, 2020, 21:17 IST

The chamber built out of an old fridge was handed over to Prof Uma Maheshwar Rao, director, NITK and his wife Neeraja Rao, headmistress, Kendriya Vidyalaya No 2, Yekkur at their residence on Monday.

The chamber built out of an old fridge was handed over to Prof Uma Maheshwar Rao, director, NITK and his wife ...Read More

MANGALURU: Arun M Isloor, professor and head, department of Chemistry, National Institute of Technology Karnataka, (NITK) Surathkal along with research scholar Syed Ibrahim has developed a disinfection chamber named as ZERO-COV. The purpose of this chamber is to control surface contamination of bacteria and viruses including Covid-19.
The chamber built out of an old fridge was handed over to Prof Uma Maheshwar Rao, director, NITK and his wife Neeraja Rao, headmistress, Kendriya Vidyalaya No 2, Yekkur at their residence on Monday. Prof. MS Bhat, dean, faculty welfare, Prof Anantanarayanan deputy director and Prof Sripathi Acharya, dean research were present during the event.
With the rise in pandemic Covid 19 cases, people are advised to not only wash hands, but also clean bottles, vegetables and other items like biscuit packets, juice bottles, toys etc that are purchased from supermarkets to prevent the spread of virus. Dr Isloor said, “By placing items including vegetables, currency notes in the disinfection chamber for 15 minutes one can ensure destruction or inactivation of bacteria and viruses by 99.9%. The technology used here is UV-C radiation, which has a wavelength of 254 nanometers, which can destroy the nucleic acids if germs. This technology is well proven and accepted by the scientific community and WHO has recommended this technology for surface disinfection.This is commonly used as disinfection in hospitals, laboratories and water treatment plants,” he said.
According to Dr Isloor, soon after switching on,the doors must be closed completely, as the direct UV-C radiation on the human body can cause harmful effects.
He has used an old unused refrigerator as a box and used three Ultraviolet lamps, each one that consumes 11 watts of electricity. “A box prepared using a single UV lamp box will cost around Rs 500. The box can be made up of any unused sturdy material including a suitcase. This can be placed at the entrance of the house, “ Prof Isloor said, adding, there is no usage of toxic agents and chemicals and is easy to carry and environment friendly. The team plans to build more such boxes depending on the demand.
Prof Isloor and his team have been using this lockdown period in research that will help in controlling spread of the virus. On April 1, they demonstrated production of hand sanitizers as part of NITK’s community and social service activity. The sanitizers were distributed among staff of NITK, police, media representatives as well as officials from the district administration.