Elven COVID-19 Respirator

Inspiration

Elven Technologies was founded with a sole goal - to protect human life and safety. We are the team of medical doctors, scientists and engineers, and our major tools towards accomplishing this goal are innovation, science and technology.

We've been building a building novel technologies for our first product - firefighter suit with a cooling system. - We've already built and tested a prototype that performs 200 time longer in flames than current uniforms on the market (30 min. protection is 2000oF VS 8 seconds of protection).

We've seen a major challenge in COVID-19 pandemic - lack of adequate personal protection equipment for first line personnel as well as for civilians. The reason behind this challenge is crash of supply chain of PPE products and raw materials for manufacturing these products, as well as insufficient manufacturing capabilities around the globe. Most people use face masks that provide either no or little protection against transmission of coronavirus.

On the other hand, healthcare and other first line personnel wear panoramic face shields and surgical face masks as their primary PPE. Both of these PPE's provide protection only from direct sneeze or cough, as there are clearly large open areas around a mask and a shield providing room for air to flow during breathing. The air where personnel operates has a high concentration of viruses that poses a huge risk of transmission of infection. Infected healthcare personnel become the major route of transmission.

What it does

Elven COVID-19 Respirator is a full-face reusable respirator (with a face seal) with replaceable filters and beautiful design. It is almost completely transparent, not covering of face of user, that has been a significant challenge lately with patients not being able to see doctors treating them. Replaceable filters can have different level of protection needed in a specific workplace environment.

How I built it

We've build a DIY prototype from home materials (we're under national lockdown) for a 2 day hackathon a week ago, and realized that is will be very easy to manufacture professional version of respirator with recyclable materials and very low price point. We redesigned it and are waiting for the cancelation of lockdown tomorrow, to go and actually build it.

Challenges I ran into

Creating a beautifully designed high-protection respirator with low price and easy manufacturability was a big challenge. We've been tirelessly working for the last month to improve on every aspect of this challenge. There are many companies and startups trying to build a solution for face masks and respirators, but either it doesn't provide adequate protection or is high-tech, complicated and costs a fortune.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We were looking for something simple yet brilliant. We challenged ourselves to build it from materials that we found at home, so anybody could build a high-level protection respirator at home. And we succeeded one week ago with a plastic bottle, food plastic wrap, cotton and some glue. Anybody can build it. So we realized it is possible to make it work and are presenting a redesigned respirator on this hackathon.

What I learned

Face protection and air filtration are one of the most important parts of full body personal protection uniforms that we intend to build for firefighters, astronauts and other high risk personnel. This is the perfect opportunity to learn and innovate in these ares, giving us the possibility to help keep potentially millions of people protected from COVID-19 as well as giving us the experience for our future suits and products.

What's next for Elven COVID-19 Respirator

We are looking for initial funding to build a prototype, test it together with Georgian Ministry of Health and manufacture 100-200 respirators. We intend to provide these respirators to medical doctors in Georgia for free, while gathering feedback and improving a product.

We are planning to manufacture respirators in Georgia, and find manufacturing partners in other countries. Manufacturing process is so easy, it can be manufactured in most of the prototyping labs around the globe, thus avoiding need of long distance shipping.