Designing a solar powered automatic hand-dryer to combat the outbreak of ebola and monkey pox diseases in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

In recent times, the outbreak and the concomitant spread of Monkey pox and Ebola virus diseases across some countries of sub-Saharan Africa in electrifying waves was terrifying. The countries worst hit are Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Nigeria. The outbreaks which were earlier recorded in 1953 and contained suddenly resurfaced in 2013 and 2017 respectively but to this day, the medical profession has not been able to proffer a cure to these deadly diseases. A major mode of transmitting these diseases is through contact with an infected person especially by touching such persons; hence, washing/sanitizing of hands has become a standard preventive practice over the years. One effective means of hand sanitization is the use of a hand-dryer which not only dries a wet hand after washing but also has the ability to kill germs through the hot air of about 53⁰C it produces. Available hand-dryers are AC powered; as such, they cannot be used in areas where there is no electricity or where electricity supply is erratic like many sub-Saharan African countries. Consequently, the design and implementation of a solar powered hand-dryer becomes imperative since these deadly diseases have no known cure at the moment but can be prevented by applying appropriate preventive measures. The design contains primarily two sections-the solar power section which comprises circuits /components that function together to charge the batteries that power the hand-dryer system, and the hand-dryer section that comprises the transmitter/ receiver circuit, the heater, the fan and other components that work together to make the hand-dryer section function properly. Every stage of the design was tested for performance before the system was assembled. The design was implemented and it functioned according to design objective.

Keywords: Ebola, Monkey pox, Solar, hand-dryer, disease