Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1278896
34 PCB007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2020 Virtually every modern building in the world is outfitted with an HVAC system, running at some level of inefficiency and unhealthiness, simply because there's never been a way to clean the heat transfer coils within that HVAC system. All the air must pass through the coils in order to be heated or cooled. Then, it's piped into a building. Coils can be very big in these HVAC systems. They could be 20 feet high, 30 feet across, and three feet deep, and they're very dense. They're designed so only air molecules get through, but they also load up with dirt and grime—specifically bacteria or fungus. You have a lot of condensation inside the coils, and wherever there's condensation, you get biolog- ical growth. If you ever walk in a building and it smells funky, you're smelling dirty coils in that building. Those coils are disgusting. Everything airborne in a building will end up in the coils. They bring in outside air, but these systems also recirculate the air. Probably 90% of the air in an office environment is re- circulated because once that air is cooled–or heated, depending on whether it's summer or winter–it's much more efficient to recirculate that cooled or heated air instead of constantly bringing in outside air and dropping down the temperature. Everything in the building ends up in those coils. During the current pandemic, we realized that we needed additional disinfection to target airborne pathogens, including the coronavirus. We developed a modified enzyme treatment that includes a second-stage disinfection pro- cess. During this treatment, we inject a thick foam of chlorine dioxide into the coils. Chlo- rine dioxide is a well-established and powerful disinfectant proven to kill bacteria, fungi, and viruses, and is on the EPA list of approved re- sponses to COVID-19. That treatment is now part of our standard protocol for cleaning all coils. The problem has always been that the coils are very dense and deep. To clean them, the current technique is to take a pressure washer and blast some water on it, but it only goes a couple of inches into the coil because of their density. It won't go further than that into the coil, and 95% of the internal surface area is completely untouched; it has always been that way. Key components of a typical air handling system.