COVID-19: DRDO Develops Machine To Sanitize Electronic Gadgets, Currency Notes

Hyderabad: For those who had been scratching their heads on how to sanitize currency notes, paper stuff and electronic gadgets, here’s good news.

The Research Centre Imarat (RCI) laboratory, of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), has developed an automated contactless UVC sanitisation cabinet which has been designed to sanitize mobile phones, iPads, laptops, currency notes, cheque leaves, challans, passbooks, paper and envelopes.

It’s been named as Defence Research Ultraviolet Sanitiser (DRUVS).

The most important and appealing feature of DRUVS, vis-à-vis the battle against COVID-19, is that its operation is contactless. The proximity sensor switches, clubbed with drawer opening and closing mechanism, ensures that its operation is automatic and contactless.

According to DRDO, it provides 360-degree exposure of UVC to the objects placed inside the cabinet. Once sanitization is completed, the system goes into sleep mode.

As for currency sanitization, the RCI has also developed an automated UVC device called Notesclean. Bundles of currency notes can be sanitized but disinfection of each currency note using it will be a time-consuming process. So a sanitizing technique has been developed whereby the currency notes are to be placed at the input slot. The notes will be picked up one after another and made to pass through a series of UVC lamps for complete disinfection.