The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to enable sterilization of personal protective equipment (PPE). Global response measures to the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted severe shortages of N95 masks and PPE, which could be alleviated by sterilizing the equipment. This has been demonstrated effectively in large trailers and room-size facilities, but these large units are cost more than $1 M each, require substantive facility modifications, and have strict operational requirements. An alternative approach is to provide desktop sterilizers resembling the ubiquitous steam sterilizers typically used in hospitals and clinical settings. This project will develop a desktop plug-and-play vaporized hydrogen peroxide sterilizer unit to decontaminate PPE within 30 minutes at low cost. These could be deployed throughout a medical facility without requiring substantive room remodeling or restricted access rooms. This SBIR Phase I project proposes to develop and demonstrate a desktop plug-and-play vaporized hydrogen peroxide sterilizer. Vaporized hydrogen peroxide (VHP) is a proven sterilant that exhibits broad-spectrum efficacy against viruses, bacteria, yeasts and bacterial spores. Conventional VHP sterilizers are large units that use concentrated H2O2 cartridges to produce the requisite 750 ppm VHP concentration. Because these units use concentrated H2O2 canisters, the resulting systems have significant process controls and operations to maintain safe operation, design consequences that make it difficult to scale the technology to smaller economical desktop units. Toward producing safer desktop sterilization units, a new chemical reactor will be developed in this program that can produce hydrogen peroxide directly in the vapor state without using hazardous compounds or dangerous reaction conditions. Optimization of the catalysts, reaction area, and operating conditions will be conducted to produce vaporized hydrogen peroxide at concentrations upwards of 750 ppm. Additional components will be developed to safely operate the sterilizer including H2O2 concentration and relative humidity sensors, and a catalytic H2O2 decomposition reactor to breakdown residual H2O2 to water and oxygen. These components will be integrated into a desktop sterilizer unit, along with new control algorithms for safe operation. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
