Necessity is the mother of invention. In a fight against the pandemic COVID19, the researchers at NITK Surathkal are proving to be the real heroes by helping in providing various techniques to deal with the coronavirus and infected persons. The researchers have now come up with a simple technique to disinfect  the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits, surgical masks, vegetables, packed food items, currency notes and other day to day items without getting any damage to them.

The masks, face shields and PPE kits are highly being demanded by the doctors and medical staff. In few of the places, including USA, the medical staff  even staged protest to get these PPE kits to deal with Covid19 patients. The researchers said that most affected nations with the pandemic also faced scarcity of these kits.

                     Dr. Arun M Isloor, professor and head, department of Chemistry, National Institute of Technology Karnataka, (NITK) Surathkal along with research scholar Syed Ibrahim has developed a disinfection chamber named as ZERO-COV. The purpose of this chamber is to control surface contamination of bacteria and viruses including Covid-19.
The chamber built out of an old refrigerator was handed over to Prof K. Uma Maheshwar Rao, Director, NITK and his wife Neeraja Rao, headmistress, Kendriya Vidyalaya No 2, Yekkur at their residence on Monday. Prof. MS Bhat, dean, faculty welfare, Prof Anantanarayanan deputy director and Prof Sripathi Acharya, dean research were present during the event.

Learning from the experiences from the reports from European countries and USA that had shown the health care providers were washing these disposable items themselves for reuse, the NITK researchers decided to come up with a simple solution to fight this crisis in India. Moreover this could be used in every household, as a preventive measure in spreading of Covid19.

With the wide spreading of Covid 19 cases, people are advised to not only wash their hands, but also to keep their surrounding clean while maintaining social distancing. However items purchased from market such as bottles, vegetables, books, ready food items, toys including currency notes etc might have been contaminated by germs including Covid19. Things like vegetables can be disinfected by dipping in disinfectant solution etc, which not possible for items like currency notes, books etc. Dr Isloor said, “By placing items including vegetables, currency notes in the disinfection chamber for 15 minutes one can ensure destruction or inactivation of bacteria and viruses by 99.9%. The technology used here is UV-C radiation, which has a wavelength of 254 nanometers, which can destroy the nucleic acids of any germs present on the surfaces. UV technology is well proven and accepted by the scientific community and WHO has recommended this technology for surface disinfection.This is commonly used as disinfection in hospitals, laboratories and water treatment plants,” he said.

According to Dr Isloor, soon after switching on the ZERO-COV,the it must be closed completely, as the direct UV-C radiation on the human body can cause harmful effects.He has used an old unused refrigerator as a chamber and used three Ultraviolet C lamps, each one that consumes 11 watts of electricity. “A small chamber prepared using a single UV lamp will cost around Rs 500. This chamber can be made up of any unused material made of metal, plastic or word. This can be placed at the entrance of the house or office,” Prof Isloor said, adding, this technology does not demand any of the toxic agents and chemicals and is easy to  carry other places. Dr Isloor is ready to technically assist any common residents who want to construct this on their own.


Prof Arun Isloor, who is an expert Membrane technologist and his research group have been making use of this lockdown period in research that will help in controlling spread of the virus, which is the need of the present hour. Very recently they have demonstrated production of hand sanitizers as part of NITK’s community and social service activity. The sanitizers were distributed among staff of NITK, police, media representatives as well as officials from the district administration.

         ZERO-COV released by Prof K. Uma Maheshwar Rao (Right) Director NITK Surathkal

(From Right to left)  Mr Syed Ibrahim, Prof K. Uma Maheshwar Rao Director NITK, Prof Arun M. Isloor, Prof Sripathi Acharya, Prof. M.S. Bhat & Prof Ananthanaraya