A piece of equipment the size of a shoe box that would be attached to the ducts in your home, could clean the air of pathogens like the COVID-19 virus.
A team of researchers at the University of Saskatchewan is working on just such a thing.
Graduate Chair of Chemical Engineering, Jafar  Soltan says they have been working for about 15 years on a way to clean solvents from the air that can be harmful long term and then the pandemic hit.
The researchers wondered if they might be able to pivot, just like everyone else has done in the pandemic, and tweak the system to clean the air of pathogens.
Soltan says their reasoning is that a virus is like a complex chemical so it would be similar to what they are already working on.
It is being called an ‘air sanitizer’ at this point and wouldn’t just be for COVID-19 but all pathogens, like for instance the flu virus.
The sanitizer has been built in a lab and the research team is now verifying its performance first with chemicals and then the next step is to move on to pathogens.
The target is to have the research done before the end of June.

Part of the team’s work includes taking high resolution images of their device in action using the beam lines at the Canadian Light Source to understand the sanitation process.