Developing an Easy-to-Maintain UV Sanitizer Cabinet for Safe and Efficient Disinfection and Improved Hygiene Practices

Abstract

In day-to-day life, people constantly come in contact with pathogens such as bacteria and fungi that can negatively impact human health, causing skin infections and foot-related issues.  The aim of this research is to create an easy-to-maintain consumer level product utilizing UV-C to efficiently and effectively disinfect everyday household items to improve hygiene and general quality of life with a shortened time spent, less human labor required. Key design concepts are ‘minimal-design platform’ to keep things minimal and streamlined – highlighting uncomplicated forms plus having been made simpler, and ‘design for maintainability’ to achieve effective building’s performance - system functions in relation to designated criteria, easy-to-maintain, easy-to-access, convenient, and embracing a healthy lifestyle. Besides, the optional mobile application is added to the system for assisting users as a remote communication. The modules are adaptably made to future requirements while maintaining a stable usage cost throughout the building’s design life.  For protecting users from UVC radiation leakage or emitted out from the cabinet (0 UVC leakage in the unit of mW/cm² measuring by UVC light meter), the polycarbonate sheet is applied as a cover. The efficiency of UV sanitizer cabinet can be evaluated via structural performance (the  maximum load that can be supported by rotary table  is  1 kg.), bacterial culture test (the number of colonies decrease significantly to < 5%), and reliability of system (99.47%).