Tag Archives: Ventilator

Students design a $300 ventilator for the pandemic’s medical equipment shortage

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As we all do our part in fighting the coronavirus pandemic, our health professionals are working round the clock without the required protective gear or medical equipment to safeguard themselves and continue saving lives. Without these essentials, they are at high risk of catching the virus and the lack of resources can impact the lives that can be saved. The global community is pitching in to help in every way they can – start-ups printed 3D valves and turned scuba diving masks into ventilators (if you have a printer to spare, the design file is available for download), designers at MIT making makeshift ICU pods and fashion brands producing PPE (personal protective gear) for healthcare professionals. Joining this force is Rice University’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (ODEK) who has managed to develop a low-cost ventilator with the help of Metric Technologies.

There is a worldwide shortage of medical equipment, especially ventilators as traditionally they are expensive and time-consuming to produce at the rate this virus is moving. ODEK’s alternative costs less than USD 300 and it works on an automated mechanism that squeezes the common bag valve mask ventilation devices that are available in hospitals. This device is usually called an Ambu bag and can save the hours that healthcare professionals spend on manually pumping bags when there are no ventilators available. An exhausted human cannot pump air for extended periods of time with the precision of a machine, so with this device, it will be a lot easier to assist patients that need help to breathe. The device will also include feedback sensors that help fine-tune the flow of air to the lungs, as well as motors similar to those that power 3D printers for hours on end.

“The prototype device uses an Arduino board to facilitate programming that allows the adjustment of the rate at which the bag is squeezed,” says the team who is working on creating a custom integration circuit to replace the Arduino board that will further reduce the cost of the device. This will help in keeping non-critical patients stable and free up resources for those more in need of them. The students had created a plan for this in 2019 and they called it ‘Take A Breather’ unaware of the fact that in a few months their prototype could help save lives. The team wants to make the production plan public so anyone in the world can have access to it and join the effort in coping with the crisis, one of them said it was for all of humanity and we couldn’t thank these young world-changers enough.

Designer: ODEK (Rice University), Dr. Matthew Wettergreen, Dr. Rohith Malya, and Metric Technologies

This conceptual Dyson ventilator reduces 95% fine dust in urban farms!

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Breathing is such an automated bodily function that it doesn’t even occur to us to think about what we are actually inhaling. Fine dust is not seen by the human eye but we very well know when that same speck of dust goes in our eye, it wreaks havoc. Similarly, for any living organism to be breathing in fine dust is harmful because at the moment we won’t see its effects and it will keep accumulating to cause big trouble later. Humans can still comprehend this and take precautions, but what about plants? With the growing trend of urban and city farming, fine dust can be a dampener on our sustainable efforts and overall health.

This conceptual Dyson air purifier, Ventila, is specifically designed to combat the fine dust problem in city farms. Ventila’s aim is to improve the ventilation system in these farms to create a healthier environment that results in a quality crop – pesticides are not the only toxins we consume and we must learn to be more aware of where we source our food from. Ventila has a simple but effective mechanism, it creates a barrier by merging vapor with fine dust. When both combine, the mere weight of the particle makes it drop to the ground with the water. Condensation but now it wears a cape!

The Ventila prototype was created to see how effective this method will be, to understand the results better, there has to be a number attached to the impact which the experiment provides. The water rises through a pipe in the ventilator and 12 pumps are used to convert it into water vapor. This water vapor is evenly dispersed using the basic working module of a humidifier. The prototype was tested and was found to keep 95% of fine dust particles at bay which instantly improves the quality of the plant’s health (and invariably ours) by A LOT. The build is made to be as transparent as possible so the farmers can see the health of the device too and maintain it well. We can wear masks but plants can’t, so let’s make design inclusive for all living organisms.

Designers: DeokYoun Kim, John Park, and Fountain Studio.