An Efficient Contamination-Reducing Closet for Reusing Protective Clothing

A professional closet with highly efficient disinfection for reusing protective clothing is required to reduce supply and demand and protect the environment. A self-developed ultraviolet-C (UVC) light-emitting diode (LED) package that can emit uniform radiance in a certain distance was developed; and a series of disinfection modules with UVC LED packages were installed in a closet for disinfection. A disinfection module can achieve an over 99.9% disinfection rate of H1N1; E. coli; S. aureus; Pseudomonas aeruginosa; and an over 99% disinfection rate of EV71 within a minute. A 1-min disinfection closet was developed to reuse protective clothing. The closet was well-designed; as well as a series of burn-in tests were performed after the assembly of the closet. The optical and thermal properties of the closet were stable within one minute of a working period during the burn-in test. After disinfection; bacterial filtration efficiency (BFE) and viral filtration efficiency (VFE) were examined on the disposable protective clothing. The disposable protective clothing did not show any degradation after being exposed to UVC for sixty minutes; which means the defensive capability of medical protective clothing can be reused sixty times in light of the self-developed disinfection closet. The disinfection closet provides an efficient method for reusing protective clothing.