University of Houston: Air filter can kill coronavirus – Washington Times

Researchers have built a “catch and kill” air filter that can trap particles of the coronavirus and kill it instantly, according to the University of Houston.
The team designed an air filter made from nickel foam that was heated to almost 400 degrees fahrenheit and found it killed 99.8% of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, after a single pass through the filter. The filter also killed 99.9% of anthrax spores in testing at a different lab.
“This filter could be useful in airports and in airplanes, in office buildings, schools and cruise ships to stop the spread of COVID-19,” said Zhifeng Ren, director of the Texas Center for Superconductivity at University of Houston and co-corresponding author of the study. “Its ability to help control the spread of the virus could be very useful for society.”
Mr. Ren collaborated with Monzer Hourani, CEO of Medistar, a Houston-based medical real estate development firm, and other researchers to design the filter. The results of their work were published this week in the Materials Today Physics journal.
The researchers knew that the virus can remain in the air for about three hours, calling airborne transmission of the coronavirus through air conditioning systems a “significant threat for the continued escalation of the current coronavirus disease pandemic.”
The virus can’t survive temperatures above 158 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Medistar, so the researchers decided to make the air filter temperature much hotter, heating it to 392 degrees, to kill the virus quickly.
By electrically heating the filter rather than from an external source, the researchers said they could minimize the amount of heat that escaped and allow the air conditioning to work with minimal strain. Mr. Ren said the filter meets the requirements for conventional heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems.
“This novel biodefense indoor air protection technology offers the first-in-line prevention against environmentally mediated transmission of airborne SARS-CoV-2 and will be on the forefront of technologies available to combat the current pandemic and any future airborne biothreats in indoor environments,” said Dr. Faisal Cheema, UH College of Medicine professor and co-author of the paper.
The team has called for a phased rollout of the device, starting with high-priority venues with essential workers who are at higher risk of exposure such as at hospitals, schools and public transit. Medistar is also proposing a desk-top model, which can purify the air in an office worker’s immediate environment.
The World Health Organization on Thursday published an updated brief that acknowledges that airborne transmission of the novel coronavirus could occur, but says the virus is mostly spread through close contact with infected people. WHO updated the brief in response to an open letter from scientists urging the agency to reconsider its stance on aerosol transmission.
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