Catch and kill airborne SARS-CoV-2 to control spread of COVID-19 by a heated air disinfection system

  1. Luo Yu
  2. Garrett K. Peel
  3. Faisal H. Cheema
  4. William S. Lawrence
  5. Natalya Bukreyeva
  6. Christopher W. Jinks
  7. Jennifer E. Peel
  8. Johnny W. Peterson
  9. Slobodan Paessler
  10. Monzer Hourani
  11. Zhifeng Ren

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Abstract

Airborne transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) via air-conditioning systems poses a significant threat for the continued escalation of the current coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Considering that SARS-CoV-2 cannot tolerate temperatures above 70 °C, here we designed and fabricated efficient air disinfection systems based on heated nickel (Ni) foam to catch and kill SARS-CoV-2. Virus test results revealed that 99.8% of the aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 was caught and killed by a single pass through a Ni-foam-based filter when heated up to 200 °C. Additionally, the same filter was also used to catch and kill 99.9% of Bacillus anthracis , an airborne spore. This study paves the way for preventing transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and other highly infectious airborne agents in closed environments.

One Sentence Summary

Heated Ni-foam filters are capable of effectively catching and killing airborne SARS-CoV-2 and Bacillus anthracis spores.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.13.150243: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No funding statement was detected.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.06.13.150243 on bioRxiv