(OzoGen | Photos Courtesy of Guarantee Cleaning Services, Inc.)
Guarantee Cleaning Owner’s Ozone-Based Innovation Boosts COCC Medical Dept.
A Bend-based cleaning industry leader has come up with an innovative mask “disinfecting chamber” utilizing the virus-busting properties of ozone to sanitize up to 30 face coverings at a time in just 60 seconds.
David Hart
Long-time owner of prominent duct cleaning service Guarantee Cleaning, David Hart developed the prototype on a fast-track basis after his friend Melissia Brinker, RN — who was familiar with his expertise in the field — suggested fellow Central Oregon Community College (COCC) nursing program professor Jane Morrow reach out to see if he could help in prolonging the life of critical N-95 masks.
N-95’s are the recommended particulate-filtering facepiece respirators for health care professionals, but are in limited supply, and Morrow and her colleagues were even considering taping them to windows in the hope that UV light rays would help decontaminate the vital equipment to conserve for re-use by the medical, dental and paramedic assisting departments.
But after being contacted, Hart quickly rallied to the cause with a more effective plan and came up with an ingenious solution.
An inveterate inventor, he had already previously developed groundbreaking products including the proprietary “OzoGen 16g,” a powerful portable ozone generator capable of producing 16 grams of ozone an hour, to completely eliminate odors on a molecular level.
He said, “It’s no secret in the cleaning and disaster restoration industry that ozone is extremely effective at removing odors through molecular oxidation. Lesser known is its efficacy as a disinfectant, for which — at 50 times more powerful than, say, chlorine — it has been used effectively in the medical field for many years.
“As a powerful reactive gas capable of high levels of disinfection, ozone can be very effective at killing pathogenic bacteria and fungi, as well as for inactivating viruses.
“I had already been noodling on the idea of harnessing ozone for sanitizing personal protective equipment (PPE) since the advent of the pandemic and the request from Jane spurred me on to adapt the OzoGen technology and I took the disinfecting chamber idea from concept to realization inside just three weeks.
“If you think about it, without regular disinfecting of the masks after multiple personal interactions it is like students strapping a petri dish to their face all day long!
“The focus in this case on is the use of ozone as a virucide, with emphasis on the SARS-CoV-2, which, according to the International Committee on Taxonomy, is the accurate name for what is commonly referred to as the COVID-19 coronavirus.”
At 32 inches tall, by 18 inches wide and 19 inches deep, the first chamber Hart has donated for use by medical staff and students at COCC is the size of a wine cooler that can sit on a counter and its compact 3.4 cubic feet can pump out an impressive 50 parts per million (ppm) ozone concentration in air by weight.
He said future iterations have the potential to be scaled up to benefit wider COVID-19 pandemic-fighting efforts nationwide.
Ozone (O3) is composed of three oxygen atoms and, with the right handling of concentration and duration, within seconds solubilizes the lipid membrane of infectious agents such as the “enveloped” SARS-CoV-2 virus. Once the lipid envelope of the virus is fragmented, its DNA or RNA core cannot survive.
Hart’s chamber basically works by using a high-voltage current to slice oxygen (O2) molecules from ambient air into oxygen atoms which subsequently collide to form the unstable O3 gas which is expelled out.
To confirm the question of viability, he reached out to some of the most knowledgeable doctors on the topic of ozone and viruses in the country, including Dr. Gérard Sunnen, a medical doctor in New York City, specializing in the uses of ozone in the medical field, ranging from cutting-edge ozone therapy to the use of ozone as a disinfectant.
According to Dr. Sunnen, “Ozone has unique disinfectant properties. As a gas, it has a penetration capacity that liquids do not possess. In view of the fact that, SARS-CoV-2, MERS, and previous SARS strains persist on fomites (surfaces) for up to several days, it is suggested that ozone technology be applied to the decontamination of medical and other environments.”
Hart added, “There are several benefits to using ozone in disinfecting applications like this, including that whereas sprays only reach the surfaces touched, the airborne nature of ozone gets every crevasse and corner including undersides.
“An ozone generator also never needs to be refilled with solutions, and it doesn’t need to be manually operated — simply set the timer and press the button and after the prescribed period of time, the disinfection is complete.
“And it has the added advantage that because of its short half, it returns to its natural form of oxygen in ambient air in a relatively rapid space of time.”
Hart is now working towards FDA approval for his disinfecting chamber, with the federal agency potential issuing fast-track Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) for such applications that can help tackle the pandemic fallout.
He will also have a sample product at the cleaning industry ISSA trade association’s largest upcoming expo to gain wider exposure and has the potential to create larger disinfecting units for PPE gear such as suits and the production capacity to scale up manufacturing to meet demand.
Morrow added, “We are very grateful to David for donating this machine for our use. Our students are using masks sometimes five days at a time between the campus and lab setting clinical sites where there are physical interactions with patients.
“The N95 masks, which we will be using for the foreseeable future, are in limited supply and we need to conserve them as much as possible so the ability to rapidly sanitize and re-use them is a real boon for us.”
About David Hart
David Hart is a 30-year veteran in the professional cleaning and restoration industry. He is the inventor of the RamAir line of HVAC duct cleaning equipment and the OzoGen 16g high-output ozone generator — industry-leading products that are in use in every major city of the United States and 21 foreign countries. Hart also holds a position on the board of forensics remediation for the Restoration Industry Association (RIA).
