FIGURE 2 Detailed schematic presentation of the heater.
In the control experiment, the heater was off, the compressor and the
nebulizer were on for five minutes. The control experiments were
repeated twice. In the test experiments, the heater’s outlet temperature
was set to 150±5oC and 220±5oC. This
was accomplished by varying the current through the electric heating
coil. The air flow rate was set to 0.6 m3/h in all the
experiments. In the test experiments, the compressor and the heater were
turned on, and then the outlet air temperature was set to one of the
above temperatures. Then, the nebulizer was turned on. After five
minutes, the nebulizer was turned off, then the heater and the
compressor were turned off. After the experiments, the gelatin filter
inside the inline polycarbonate filter holder was dissolved in distilled
water to harvest the virus.
3 | RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The viral presence of the stock virus was 7.5 log10TCID50. The control experiments were performed twice,
and the average viral load was 5.5
log10TCID50. In setting the heater
outlet air temperature to 150±5oC, the viral load was
reduced to 2.5 log10TCID50. The
reduction in the viability of the virus is 3 log10 or
99.9%. At the higher temperature of 220±5oC, the
virus load viability was 0.5
log10TCID50, reducing the infectivity of
the virus to 5 log10 or 99.999%.
Table 1 log10 TCID50 values of the stock virus,
control, and test groups.