The country’s premier technology college, the Indian Institute of Technology’s (IIT) Guwahati campus on Tuesday announced it has developed a low-cost Ultra Violet Light (UVC) LED-based sanitisation system to address the critical need to disinfect all public places in India especially when COVID-19 cases are rapidly rising.
UV lights fall between the wavelengths of 200 – 280 nanometers (nm) and can be used for disinfecting water, sterilising surfaces, and destroying harmful micro-organisms in the air.
“We are focused on working closely with government agencies and industrial partners to develop smart and low cost technologies to fight against COVID- 19", said Dr Senthilmurugan Subbiah, Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Guwahati, Assam.
The system, which IIT claims can rub 90 percent of the virus off surfaces, also comes equipped with an “object movement identification” feature to prevent the exposure of UVC to human skin.
“In this project, the team has developed a UVC LED system capable of providing a 400-Joule (J) dose in 30 seconds, such that a virus-infected surface will be sanitised. The unique design of this UVC system will ensure uniform UVC exposure in virus-infected area", IIT Guwahati noted.
The UVC LED system which will be able to sanitise houses as well as hospitals, malls, stations, and other public places is currently under design and prototype development.
The undisclosed industrial partner working with IIT Guwahati, has provided the required raw material to produce the first 5,000 floor sanitisation UVC systems.
More industrial partners are in the process of getting special approval from government agencies to start production during the lockdown.
Earlier last week, alumni from IIT and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi developed a device called "Airlens Minus Corona" that could deactivate the life of the coronavirus using charged or ionised water droplets.
The device, which is being deployed in the state of West Bengal, could be used to sterilise hospitals, bus stops, railway stations, shopping malls, and other public places.
Since December 2019, the pandemic virus outbreak has spread across 199 countries.
Globally, it has infected over 1.34 million people and resulted in the deaths of over 74,000 patients, real-time statistics platform Worldometer notes. India has also noted 4,421 cases of COVID-19, according to the federal Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.