Mumbai: Engineering student creates system to ventilate PPE kits

Cove-Tech Ventilation System is a belt to be worn along with the PPE kit

Driven by his doctor mother's struggles of working in a PPE kit, a 19-year-old engineering student from KJ Somaiya college, Nihaal Singh Adarsh and his team put their heads together and developed a ventilation system for the suit. The innovation has been named, Cove-Tech Ventilation System.

"It is a simple belt-like wearable addition to the PPE kit. It is very compact. It has a fan that takes outside air, filters it and pushes it into the kit while the existing flow finds natural places to move out from the kit. The device runs on a high-quality lithium battery which takes three to four hours to charge fully and runs for six to eight hours on one full charge," said Adarsh. A couple of hospitals in Pune are already using the device and have given positive responses.

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The second-year engineering student of the Vidyavihar college hails from Pune where his mother, Dr. Poonam Kaur Adarsh, has been working on the frontlines of Covid-19 since the outbreak last year.

How the idea came to be

The Cove-Tech Ventilation System is an apt example of the popular phrase - necessity is the mother of all innovation. Sharing the story of how he came up with the idea, Adarsh said, "I had participated in a design solutions event launched by my college along with the technology incubator, Riidl (Research Innovation Incubation Design Lab). At the time when my team and I were brainstorming for ideas, I happened to speak to my mom to identify different problem statements to design a solution. She spoke about the struggle of working while wearing a PPE kit. Not only does it lead to a tremendous amount of sweating but also leads to a feeling of suffocation as there is no ventilation."

Adarsh has received a grant of Rs 10 lakh from the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India for his innovation and manufacturing has begun in a company located near Pune. Adarsh said that they have started receiving queries about procurement. "The queries are coming from across the country. We are making the process as easy as possible by allowing online orders through our website: https://www.watttechnovations.com/ and other e-platforms," said Adarsh. The device is priced at Rs 5,499 - a subsidised rate made possible by the grant.