Students are returning to school. Employees are back in the office. College students are filling dorm rooms across the nation. Facility managers have a firm, effective strategy to battle infectious diseases: inactivate the virus and eliminate particulate transportation.
Kurt Hansen, business unit leader for CEC Facilities Group’s HVAC and plumbing division, has worked to help companies, school districts, and higher-education facilities improve their indoor air quality for years. Since the COVID-19 breakout, he’s seen a renewed interest in many forms of technology.
“In the past two years, I’ve talked more about MERV filters, ultraviolet lighting, bipolar ionization, and other technologies than in the rest of my career,” he said. “It’s great to see people take this so seriously. It’s not too difficult to improve air quality, but you need someone who knows the best custom solution for your space.”
Hansen and CEC have partnered with industry leaders to provide customized infectious disease control plans for businesses across the Southwest. The best solution always involves virus inactivation and eliminating its transportation:
- Virus inactivation: Although they’re not alive, viruses can be “inactivated” in many of the same ways as their living organisms. UV-C light and bipolar ionization are the most popular solutions, while both have specific advantages and drawbacks.
- Transportation elimination: SARS-COV-2 is so small and lightweight that almost 95 percent will pass through standard air filters. The best way to remove these particles is by forcing them to combine with other particles, gain mass, and fall out of the airstream. This process, known as agglomeration, also increases the chance that the particles snag onto filters.
The best solution comes when the particulates are targeted in their current space. That reduces the chance of spreading the virus. If both steps are achieved with in-space technology, it leads to:
- A safer environment beyond infectious disease control: Pollen and other allergens, irritants, smoke (cigarette and wildfire), dust, mold, and chemical pollutants are all removed/deactivated from the breathing stream.
- Eliminate the continuous need for surface disinfection: Heavier particles cannot maintain buoyancy, and will fall from the air stream. After a single surface cleaning, follow-up cleanings only become necessary when outside material is introduced.
“Treating particles at the room level is the most effective strategy we’ve found,” Hansen said. “UV lights in the air handlers certainly work, but they require the particles to travel through the HVAC system at a lower speed than is optimal for commercial applications. We don’t want to spread the disease any more than necessary.
“Recent experiments show bipolar ionization works. As the total number of negative ions per cubic centimeter was increased from 10,000 to 23,600, the process removed 90 percent up to 99.98 percent of all particles in an hour. In real-world applications, we can provide before-and-after testing to verify the success of these products.”
CEC can test for:
- Room ion count: A higher ion count can help agglomerate particles
- Room particulate count: This rapid test can determine the cleanliness of your air
- Targeted virus load swap: Test a specific area before and after equipment installation to verify results
CEC provides a wide range of infectious disease control options for facilities at reasonable costs. Dynamic air cleaning with active filtration solutions – which also cleans dirty coils – can last up to seven years, while photocatalytic oxidation (PCO) equipment can last up to a decade with only yearly cleaning for maintenance.
Want to learn more about infectious disease mitigation in your facility? Contact Kurt Hansen below.