Covid-19: Sterilizing masks with UV rays, by Hackerfarm in Japan
From a remote hackerspace in rural Japan, east of Tokyo, Akiba and his Hackerfarm team have developed an open source system for sterilizing and decontaminating masks or other objects using ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI). More than a simple upscaling of their individual Nukebox, the Hyjeia project, named after the goddess of hygiene, is based on the decontamination protocol released by Nebraska Medicine’s biocontainment unit, for room-scale sterilization.
But while the Nebraskan protocol uses germicidal light sources that costs $25,000 each, Hackerfarm’s basic equivalent system would cost only around $100, using easily accessible parts and open source hardware and software. Thus, Hyjeia could make the decontamination of N95 masks or other objects for reuse both accessible and affordable to small medical organizations and businesses.
The Hyjeia system consists of a light source using UV germicidal bulbs, an Arduino-based wireless dosimeter and a laptop for remote monitoring. All hardware and software source files can be found on Github.
More info on the Hyjeia project