\u201cMost of [the technology] tends to be fairly large scale, entire rooms that are devoted to sterilization with UV-C, but what we\u2019ve done is we\u2019ve tried to create something completely new, a portable UV mask sterilization process,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
The portable UV oven, which Camosun has called the \u201cUVen,\u201d uses shortwave UV-C light to break down microorganisms on a cellular level, interrupting their ability to function. It kills viral and bacterial pathogens, but doesn\u2019t remove materials such as body fluids or dirt and grime. Gale says UV-C was the better choice compared to hydrogen peroxide vapour because it\u2019s low-cost, requires no additional materials, and is safer for users and the environment. The UVen project is a not-for-profit endeavour; anyone may build the device without paying licensing fees.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole point of the research project was to design something that would be open source, so once we\u2019ve gone through prototyping and testing, we\u2019re going to make the design available for free,\u201d says Gale. \u201cWe\u2019ll have a local manufacturer who\u2019ll be able to respond to the needs of Island Health, and that\u2019ll just be a charge for manufacturing the unit, but for anyone else who wants to build it anywhere else in the world, they just have to take the specs and make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Gale says that one of CI\u2019s priorities is to focus on solutions that have wide applicability and can be used long-term.<\/p>\n \u201cCamosun Innovates really doesn\u2019t want to focus on one-offs\u2014we want to focus on something that\u2019s going to have a really wide usage, something that\u2019s really going to help not only people in BC and Canada, but people around the world,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s also available for doctor\u2019s offices if they have a lot of patient need, or the big push for us was if you\u2019re living in a residential community, on reserve, or in an isolated area where getting new masks is really hard, for places like that, it\u2019s a real godsend.\u201d<\/p>\n Gale says that keeping the cost of the UVen units low is important.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now we\u2019re dedicated to keeping the cost below $1,000 per unit; we\u2019re using only materials that are readily available and can be found quite easily and inexpensively, and we\u2019re trying to make the process as cheap as possible,\u201d he says. \u201cWe hope that we\u2019re going to get that price down closer to $750, and if it\u2019s picked up by large-scale manufacturing, they\u2019ll be able to drop the price considerably.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there\u2019s an increased need for respiratory masks and a decrease in resources available, particularly in more isolated areas. In response to this problem, researchers at Camosun Innovates (CI) have developed a small, portable ultraviolet-C (UV-C) sterilization device that will allow disposable N95 face masks to be reused. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19774"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19810,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19774\/revisions\/19810"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/portable-decontamination-device_1-225x300.jpg\")
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