Purifying Air In School Buildings

The objective of this invention is to make being inside a school building just as safe as being outside in the open air.

Two things are required. First an air replacement system fast enough to replace all the air in the school building 10 times per hour, or about once every six minutes.

Second, a system to purify the air, moisten it, and warm it so it is healthy to breathe.

The purifier should use photons in the hard UV to soft X-ray range.

It should use a series of cascades or baffles so the air takes a circuituous (or snakey) path such that the high energy photons pass through it many times as it moves through the purifier machine.

Since X-rays are used the outer surface of the machine must be clad in tin, tungsten and bismuth, about 20 thin layers, with the tin being the innermost layer. The inside of the circuituous pathway should be clad in nickel or aluminum so that the photons are reflected back and forth across the path of the airstream.

If a school building contains 1,000,000 cubic meters of air, and you wish to refresh that air 10 times per hour, then you must throughput 10,000.000 cubic meters of air per hour. Some of this air can be drawn from outside, some from inside, since you are purifying it, and you don’t want to pay to warm and moisturize the full volume of air being pumped. The nebulizer method should be used to add sterile water to the air, so that a minimal health level of water is added and the combined air/water fluid mixture has low mass per cubic meter, making it easier to propel through the venting system.

This invention will be put into practice as a rooftop retro-fit for school buildings or in auxiliary buildings next to school buildings if the day when parents are able to generate public interest in the health issue which could happen anytime between 2020 and 2040.

For this system to be produced cost-effectively all retrofit units should be identical except in scale. If each individual school building must have its already installed HVAC system tailor modified, the costs would be prohibitive. So this invention should be stand alone retro-fit utterly separate from and independent of any already installed HVAC system which may exist in a school building.

Caring is the engine that drives the deployment of any innovation. There is caring in USA, but for it to drive installment of this invention, it needs to focus on the health of persons, and specifically persons inside of school buildings. Within 20 years, such caring will exist, if schools still exist during that period.

All my granted and pending patents can be found under books by Robert Fenton Gary at Amazon.com. I think downloads run about $4.00. You can keep track of work on my drafting table by visiting robertfentongary.com

I can be reached at robert.gary@gmail.com