Design of powered air purifying respirator used for healthcare workers in isolation room

Abstract

From December 2019, the COVID-19 outbreak has rapidly spread throughout the whole world and become a devastating infectious diseases, with the risk of cross infection quickly and no drug treatment is available. Some countries have been facing shortage of medical equipment, which leads to millions of deaths and may put healthcare workers at risk of infection when they caring for patients sicked with COVID-19 in isolation room, so need to ensure their occupational health and safety. In order to solve this problem, the paper presents a design of Powered Air Purifying Respirator (PAPR) to prevent cross-contamination COVID-19 infection in isolation room, protect for occupational health and safety of healthcare workers. That is specialized equipment for medical industry using ambient air as energy source to operate, the device removes contaminated air through the filters and UVC germicidal light bulbs, then provides clean air to the user's face through blower. It creates continuous positive pressure, and this positive pressure prevents outside contaminated air to a face, but it must be com ply with the safety standards of NIOSH. Especially, this design can be used in case of an emergency, lack of medical supplies and equipment because it can be connected to commercially available masks through a hose connector and a respiratory hose. In case the device does not work or out of battery, a mask accompanied by a hose connector can be connected to the breathing tubes placed in isolation room, all these breathing tubes use clean air from heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) of isolation room. Simulations and experiments are attached below to compare the difference between ideal parameters and actual results. From which to draw conclusions and development directions of the research.