Leading air quality management company looks for startups for COVID-19

Leading critical environment air quality management company looks for startups in two applications to address market needs resulting from COVID-19. 

1. Airborne particulate matter counting and identification

As the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the workplace, there has become an acute need in the market to identify airborne particles as being viable or non-viable on a real-time basis and ideally to identify the species of the viable particles to ensure a safe environment.  New technologies and products are being introduced to help eliminate biological airborne pathogens, but there are no solutions that can economically be put in place to verify or validate the effectiveness or efficiency of these solutions.  Traditionally, off-line process steps have been used for example in operating rooms to verify cleanliness or presence of mold and viruses that can infect patients and healthcare personnel.  These technologies can take between days or weeks to return viable data and species identification.  Traditional market needs are expanding beyond healthcare facilities (operating rooms, isolation rooms, pharmacies, etc) and research labs and into other critical spaces such as physician examination rooms, dental offices, ambulatory care centers and non-healthcare workspaces. 

The company is looking to develop a new product that will provide:

• A means to affordably count airborne particulate matter down to 0.1um accurately and differentiate in real time between viable and non-viable content
• A means to identify species of viable particle content on a real time basis and in particular those viables that are common to infection or health risk such as viruses, mold spores, etc. that represent infection risk upon exposure
   

2. New Air Disinfection and Monitoring Technology

As the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the workplace, several new opportunities have been identified where a new airborne infection isolation room creation and monitoring solution is needed.  These include any space that needs to be cleaned of airborne contaminants e.g. Dental offices.  In this case, air quality must be guaranteed, and room pressurization maintained to reduce / eliminate infection risk. 

The company is looking to develop a new product that will provide:

• A means to circulate and/or move air in the space to create a negative differential pressure in the room to ensure no air migration to adjacent spaces (hallway, common areas, other treatment rooms)
• A means to filter the air with a minimum of HEPA 99.997% filter efficiencies
• A means to eradicate virus via UV-C or other similarly effective and efficient means that eradicates the virus on a first-pass basis (recirculation is not acceptable).  This means must be before air is flowed over filter to eliminate live virus on the filter technology
• Industrial design that is acceptable in a professional healthcare office setting with minimal NVH (noise / vibration / harshness) and powered from traditional wall outlets.  Installation can be permanent with minimal construction in the office space
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Next steps: e-meetings starting in late May with selected startups

The sponsor company will verify performance in its lab and at multiple beta customer sites which have been identified throughout the United States, Europe and Asia.

The sponsor for this initiative will be a team of product manager and engineering leader located at the company’s headquarters in Massachusetts, USA.

The company was founded in 1967 by professors at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  The company is part of a diversified Fortune 500 industrial growth organization based with 24,000 employees worldwide.  The company has leveraged our founder’s innovation in low pressure measurement in commercial HVAC system into a platform of room environmental monitoring solutions.