In a world where liquid disinfectants have come to dominate our lives, B.C. tech company Acuva Technologies has developed the SOLARIX. It’s a powerful new portable consumer product certified to inactivate 99.5 per cent of SARS-CoV-2 — the virus behind COVID-19 — in five seconds using the power of UV-LED light.
“We’re currently seeing news about variant COVID strains,” says Acuva’s chief executive officer, Manoj Singh. “Validated UV devices like SOLARIX can be equally effective on new variants as well, since exposure to UV radiation inactivates all viruses in the same way.”
The clean-tech company has deep roots in research and development and has become a global leader in the specialized field of UV-LED disinfection system design for water, air and surface applications. Founded in 2014, the company now employs more than 35 people across the globe and a dozen of its UV-LED-based offerings, such as the ArrowMAX UV-LED water disinfection products, makes clean water accessible and more affordable.
The SOLARIX UV disinfection wand was developed by Acuva in response to news that Singh and his family had contracted COVID-19 in March 2020.
“Our best guess is that my wife fell ill after using a shared computer keyboard at work,” he says. “Suddenly, I was disinfecting everything in the house using chemicals. Members of the Acuva team decided to help by designing a handheld, chemical-free disinfection device using our own UV-LED technology.”
While SARS-CoV-2 has proved to be a formidable pandemic foe, it’s no match for UV technology, which quickly targets virus RNA to render the organism unable to infect and reproduce. After testing the SOLARIX prototype at home, Singh and his company further refined the design.
“We were aware that other companies had launched ineffective devices which claimed to inactivate COVID,” he says. “To inspire consumer confidence, we took the extra step of having SOLARIX tested at a Level 3 biosafety lab in New York to confirm its efficacy and effectiveness against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
Third-party validation lab reports indicate that Solarix achieved a 99.5 per cent inactivation rate against SARS-CoV-2 after five seconds of exposure.
Singh sees the device being used by consumers to disinfect any non-porous surface with which they come in contact, from keyboards, ATM control pads and door handles to self-serve gas pump nozzles. Businesses can also use SOLARIX to disinfect surfaces in workplaces and retail spaces. Used for 10 minutes a day, the wand’s UV-LEDs are rated to last more than 15 years.
For more information on the SOLARIX unit, visit Acuva Technologies .
This story was created by Content Works , Postmedia’s commercial content division, on behalf of Acuva Technologies.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2021
