RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Catch and kill airborne SARS-CoV-2 to control spread of COVID-19 by a heated air disinfection system
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.06.13.150243
DO 10.1101/2020.06.13.150243
A1 Luo Yu
A1 Garrett K. Peel
A1 Faisal H. Cheema
A1 William S. Lawrence
A1 Natalya Bukreyeva
A1 Christopher W. Jinks
A1 Jennifer E. Peel
A1 Johnny W. Peterson
A1 Slobodan Paessler
A1 Monzer Hourani
A1 Zhifeng Ren
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/06/16/2020.06.13.150243.abstract
AB 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.Competing Interest StatementM.H. filed a provisional patent application on the work described here.