Saturday, September 19, 2020

Air dynamics management can help with the Covid-19 pandemic. We have hardly started looking at it.

 Johnson wants us to go to work.

This means that there will be increased Covid-19 transmission on public transport and in workplaces.

To compensate for this, Johnson is bearing down on our social lives with his Rule of 6.
So the debate continues to roll to and fro. We have to "balance" the needs of the economy against the need to keep the R number down. So is this it? Is this what we have to do?
There is an alternative.

It is to control transmission on public transport and in all shared spaces including work places by applying simple air dynamics management technologies.
Basically this means getting air moving in a vertical rather than a horizontal direction. It requires a variety of fans, ducts, manifolds, sterilising techniques and heat exchangers (Mechanical Ventilation Heat Recovery MVHR). These come in various different applications for different situations. There is an energy cost to this approach, and it is not a magic bullet - we have to improve in many other ways, including localising the test and trace operation to local authorities, and massively expanding the use of scent dogs, but air dynamics has a big role to play.
At present I am focusing on C19 cases in hospitals and nursing homes. The major problem I face is simply not getting a response from hospital officials. But they will have to respond in the end, and we will be able to reduce transmission significantly in coming months, while continuing to work at developing a new greener economy.

I will be posting my papers about Air Quality/Dynamics Management here soon.

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