HIT News--- Recently, the News Room of CCTV, under the title of "Technology Empowered Large Scale Preventive Disinfection," reported that Suifenhe Port in Heilongjiang Province has adopted ozone advanced oxidation technology and equipment to disinfect cargoes from Europe for the first time. The technology and equipment, developed by the team led by Ma Jun, an academician from the School of Environment of our university, is able to oxidize and inactivate viruses and bacteria under high pressure and high concentration ozone conditions, reducing the chance of both frequent contact between humans and goods and the risk of virus transmission infection. This technology has been put into use in Suifenhe and Dalian.
The increasing number of the reported positive cases of COVID-19 caused by cold chain logistics and port staff infection indicates that cold chain logistics is probably one of the main ways of COVID-19 transmission, and the storage, transportation and removal process of cold chain logistics are the key risk of the "object to human" transmission. However, due to the huge volume of international logistics cargo and the difficulty of existing disinfection methods to cope with the massive volume of cargo for comprehensive preventive disinfection, there is an urgent need for economical, efficient, green and safe large-scale preventive disinfection technologies to control the spread of covid-19 at source.
The scientific research team led by Ma Jun takes advanced ozone oxidation as the core technology. For many years, Ma Jun’s team has been carrying out research on ozone oxidation-based enhanced killing and decomposition of pathogenic microorganisms and organic pollutants, using ceramic materials with high dielectric constant for dielectric barrier discharge. And Ma’s team has also developed advanced ozone oxidation equipments with high-efficiency inactivation of COVID-19.
Compared with the traditional technology, this technology has the characteristics of high dielectric constant, small discharge gap, high ozone concentration, high working pressure, and the ability to penetrate the space environment, object surface or object interface for disinfection. Under the high concentration and high pressure ozone conditions, it oxidizes and inactivates viruses and bacteria, with fast disinfection speed and excellent disinfection effect.
The disinfection capacity of each disinfectant is generally evaluated by the CT value required to obtain a certain virus inactivation efficiency (the product of the effective concentration of the disinfectant and the contact time); the smaller the CT value, the stronger the disinfection capacity of the disinfectant. The CT value of ozone is only 1/5 to 1/10 of that of chlorine, which is about one hundredth to one thousandth of that of chloramine, and there is no disinfectant residue and no side effects to the environment, while achieving the same virus inactivation effect.
The ozone advanced oxidation technology, when applied in undergoing the preventive disinfection of the cold storage and container cargo, has the advantages of low temperature resistance, strong permeability, flawlessness (without blind areas), high efficiency, low cost, no secondary contamination, broad spectrum, thorough disinfection, etc. Furthermore, it greatly reduces both the chance of frequent contact between people and cargo, and the risk of virus transmission and infection. Therefore, the products, derived from the technology, fully meet and conform to the requirements of the national disinfection specifications.
The ozone advanced oxidation disinfection technology has been initially applied in the fields of large low-temperature cold storage, warehousing, containers and other cold chain logistics systems for the preventive disinfection, and it has obtained remarkable results. For instance, the application results in Suifenhe and Dalian show that this novel technology is of high efficiency, low cost, convenience to operate and manage, no residue, no side effects, and its further promotion and application in cold chain logistics and ports will have a significant impact on the current epidemic prevention and control--- the guard against imported cases and a rebound in indigenous cases towards both humans and objects.
