Dual Mode Air Plasma Decontamination System

The COVID-19 pandemic further extends the need for air and surface decontamination from biomedical facilities to applications such as offices and airplanes, etc. Current state-of-the-art approaches suffer from high deployment costs and long treatment times for decontamination. One of these methods, vapor hydrogen peroxide-based decontamination systems, suffer from long aeration time, extensive ductwork, material incompatibility, and can only safely operate without human occupancy- limiting its applicability to empty biomedical facilities. Lowtemperature plasma generated ozone from ambient air is an effective alternative, as ozone has a much shorter aeration time compared with vapor hydrogen peroxide and decontamination can be performed at human-safe ozone concentrations- making it possible to have an active decontamination system for occupied environments such as airplanes and office spaces, especially for SARS-COV-2 virus elimination. Current plasma-based methods rely on conventional surface discharge to generate ozone, which suffer from non-uniform plasma generation and lower reliability due to a huge bypass flow, as the disinfecting agent is only generated on the surface of a few cylindrical electrodes. There is a need for innovative plasma reactor designs that can be readily fitted to and utilize the entire duct space to allow for an active decontamination method, particularly for SARS-COV-2 virus elimination. Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc. (ACT) proposes to develop a novel low-temperature plasma system to perform both daily air purification and surface decontamination. The system features the innovative plasma reactor that has primarily improved decontamination performance and can be easily integrated into existing heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. Such a system can uniformly generate volumetric ozone in the entire duct space, largely increasing the decontamination performance by reducing the amount of bypass flow. Benefitting from these features, the proposed system will operate in two modes: In the daily purification mode, the system continuously decontaminates the circulated air, and a catalytic converter reduces the ozone concentration to a safe 0.05 ppm level before reintroducing the air to the human-occupied space. In the high-performance disinfection mode, the SWDBD generates high concentrations of ozone to disinfect the air and surface with 99.9999% decontamination. In addition, the in-depth study of the innovative reactor design can effectively promote the understanding of plasma decontamination and can lead to other potential biomedical applications.