#White Papers
Airgloss: Indoor Air Quality and COVID-19
Highlights: Coronavirus can be airborne, how it happens and how to prevent?
Recent studies have confirmed that Coronavirus can be airborne and persist in the air up to 6 hours and can move from one room to the other though HVAC ducts, thus serious concerns arise regarding Indoor Air Quality and HVAC management. It's well known that one of the main source of indoor pollution are humans, introducing through their breath a large amount of VOCs, CO2 and particles between 0.3 and 10um called aerosols that may potentially contain the virus. The concentration of these pollutants is directly proportional to human occupancy and inversely proportional to the effective dilution ventilation and supply of fresh air from the outside. Active indoor air quality monitoring with Airgloss ProSense 2nd Generation as well as increased ventilation and proper HVAC management can help to preventively reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection spreading as suggested by ASHRAE and REHVA.
Airgloss ProSense 2nd Generation at a glance
Aigloss Prosense 2nd generation is an all-in-one indoor air quality and environmental monitor providing real-time VOC, CO2, CO, NO2, Ozone as well as Temperature, Humidity, Noise and Pressure monitoring for building automation and smart HVAC management. Based on a unique gas sensing technology initially developed for the International Space Station and then adapted for Earth use, Airgloss ProSense is able to detect and identify a wide range of airborne contaminants through the use of advanced Artificial Intelligence and Pattern Recognition.
An advanced yet affordable Air Monitoring device, a cutting edge solution for healthier indoor environments, providing energy saving and comfort and also improving productivity and performance. It was specifically designed to meet the HVAC and smart buildings requirements, suited for indoor environments such as office buildings, hotels, real estate, malls, cinemas, theatres, schools, hospitals, and other indoor environments. Airgloss ProSense is compliant to LEED, WELL and Fitwell green building certifications and can actively contribute to improving a building’s energy efficiency, therefore reducing heating and cooling energy cost.
Airgloss Management Software Platform
Airgloss Management Platform is the single-point monitoring and control solution to increase your occupants comfort and health and optimize energy efficiency. Its enterprise-level features allow you to easily manage multiple buildings - all in one place as well as multiple accesses, with Airgloss handy Access Sharing option and powerful cloud API for easy integration with any BMS or third party software.
• Real-time environment overview at a glance, with accurate measurements and intuitive color-coded feedback. Control your HVAC systems and receive custom notifications according to your needs.
• Complete data history (real-time / daily / weekly / monthly / yearly) can easily be shared through an easy access sharing feature with colleagues or to the very same building occupants or through raw data export;
• Periodical reports available, providing data on overall systems operability, general comfort management, criticality management. Shareable automatically to multiple recipients through emails or archived and available at any time;
European Space Agency and NASA endorsement
Airgloss devices are qualified by the European Space Agency for reliability and innovation, and as an additional value, they are sold under the trademark ESA Space Solutions due to our experience with NASA for the safety of the astronauts on the ISS.
Aigloss Prosense 2nd generation technology relies on our previous experience with artificial olfactory systems (electronic noses) developed for the International Space Station to monitor air quality to identify potential real-time anomalies in the internal atmosphere, with the aim to ensure the health of the astronauts on the space station. Three sensor units were developed and successfully tested on the ISS during the STS-134 Shuttle Mission within the IENOS (Italian Electronic Nose for Space Exploration) experiment as a part of the DAMA project (NASA, 2011).
Scientific literature and guidelines for COVID-19
ASHRAE and REHVA have recently released guidelines for Ventilation and Indoor Air Quality for Building operations during the pandemic:
https://www.ashrae.org/news/ashraejournal/guidance-for-building-operations-during-the-covid-19-pandemic
https://www.rehva.eu/activities/covid-19-guidance
Important suggestions on how to manage air quality in buildings at time of COVID-19 pandemic comes from Harvard University:
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/04/how-buildings-masks-can-be-barriers-to-coronavirus/
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/04/looking-at-covid-19-through-healthy-building-eyes/
Droplets and Aerosols in the Transmission of SARS-CoV-2, Harvard University (USA):
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2009324
An interesting article with study that highlight the risk of airborne influenza virus exposure in an elementary school by Coleman, K.K., Sigler, W.V.:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-58588-1
Researchers modelling the spread of the coronavirus emphasise the importance of avoiding busy indoor spaces, a study by Aalto University (Finland):
https://www.aalto.fi/en/news/researchers-modelling-the-spread-of-the-coronavirus-emphasise-the-importance-of-avoiding-busy
Video produced by Aalto University showing how COVID-19 is spreading as airborne aerosol:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZSKoNGTR6Q
About Airgloss
Airgloss provides innovative solutions for real-time air quality monitoring and thermal comfort management for any kind of indoor space, from homes to offices, schools, hotels, healthcare and even transports. We have developed and patented an advanced technology based on Artificial Intelligence to identify numerous pollutants and improve indoor air quality and wellbeing.
Airgloss is currently located in the ESA Business Incubation Centre in Rome (Italy) and has a worldwide distribution network. Our products are proudly designed and manufactured in Italy.
More information and details are available our websites www.airgloss.com and www.airglossproject.com or alternatively trough our PDF presentations from the links below:
Company presentation (4.02 MB): https://airgloss.com/download-company.html
ProSense presentation (3.07 MB): https://airgloss.com/download-prosense.html
Use cases (6.08 MB): https://airgloss.com/download-usecases.html
