IIT Guwahati Develops A Low-Cost Machine To Sanitize Hospitals And Buses Floors

Dhir Acharya - Apr 09, 2020

The IIT Guwahati team has developed a LED-based machine that’s not only cheap but also useful for disinfecting floors at hospitals, buses, and trains.

The IIT Guwahati team has developed a LED-based machine that’s not only cheap but also useful for disinfecting floors at hospitals, buses, and trains to avoid SARS-CoV-2.

The team is also filing a patent for their disinfection machine that will be sold for Rs 1,000 when commercialized. For now, the machine prototype has to be manually operated, but they are working on a robotic machine that requires less human intervention.

IIT Guwahati sanitizing machine — The new machine is cheap and can sanitize floors at hospitals and buses

The machine has been developed as requested by the Karnataka government and will be used in buses and hospitals in the state. It will be pitched for commercial use in other states too.

According to Senthilmurugan Subbiah, IIT Guwahati’s Associate Professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering, in the coming months, India will in a crucial need for public sanitization to prevent the spread of the ongoing pandemic. So far, disinfection in the country has been conducted on surfaces, open areas, and walls only, without a sanitization system for floors except for mopping them with an alcohol-based cleaner.

bus disinfection — As of now, hospital, bus, and train floors are not properly sanitized

About the newly developed UVC system, Subbiah said that it can sanitize non-porous surfaces infected with microorganisms. For MS-2 Coliphase, a highly stable virus, the system can kill as much as 90 percent of the infection using 186 J dose while it requires 36 J dose to kill influenza virus that’s similar to SARS-CoV-2. He also said:

“The team has developed a UVC LED system capable of providing 400 J dose in 30 seconds, such that virus-infected surface will be sanitized. The unique design of this UVC system will ensure uniform exposure in virus-infected non-porous areas.”

sanitizing train — The machine will help us be safer in these places

The machine has undergone testing at the IIT Guwahati's lab, it can detect object movements to avoid affecting the human skin as it operates.

Subbiah additionally mentioned that the team is working with government agencies as well as industrial partners on developing other smart, low-cost techs to fight the pandemic.

As CO.VID-19 has infected over 5,000 thousand people in India and the number of confirmed cases as well as the death toll are going up quickly every day, we need machines like UVC and a lot more initiatives to protect people from the pandemic.