10004728Development of a novel Industrial Air Sanitiser (IAS), to significantly reduce incidence of workers from passing on illnesses (including but not limited to COVID-19) and improve indoor air qualityClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKBPP-Tech brings over 37 years' engineering experience, consistently delivering innovation to its customers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they developed an Air Mass Sanitiser (AMS) which has the capability to continuously sanitise small indoor air spaces with high-occupancy rates (such as GP surgeries) to destroy SARS-CoV-2 and other pathogens to reduce the risk of infection. Most experts now agree, primary transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (like most respiratory viruses) is through respiratory droplets/airborne viral particles in the air mass, particularly present in crowded/poorly-ventilated spaces. The AMS is now on the brink of commercialisation and will support public-health intervention efforts (vaccination/shielding/track-and-trace) to help the economy return to normal and safeguard against new virus strains and future pandemics. This project will build on this work to develop an 'Industrial-Air-Sanitiser' (IAS), which targets much higher volume spaces (such as factories, large-restaurants, cinemas, museums and indoor farms) to achieve very high-levels of viral kill, targeting both SARS-Cov-2 as well as other problematic viruses (such as avian flu which affects birds and threatens humans through zoonotic mutation) and other unknown virus-strains. The IAS will also be designed for non-pandemic applications aiming to significantly improve Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), which is a significant cause of damage to human health, disease, premature deaths and workplace sickness. Unfortunately, indoor air can be 2-5 times more polluted than outdoor air (due to lack of dilution) meaning if the pollen count or air pollution rate outside is high, it can be significantly worse indoors. Developing the IAS will require significant and radical redesign of the AMS system so it can achieve the requisite air-flow rates for larger indoor spaces. This will involve extensive laboratory testing, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling, prototype building and re-testing to ensure a good design. If successful, this will generate significant revenues for BPP-Tech and lead to significant manufacturing employment (in BPP-Tech and across the supply-chain) in the North East to scale up production to meet demand.