UMONS
" In emergency departments, 40 to 50 medical masks are currently used per day and per patient. When considering the current shortage faced by healthcare staff, it is essential to study the possibility of decontaminating this equipment in order to reuse it. In recent years, plasma technologies, developed in symbiosis in Mons by UMONS and MATERIA NOVA, one of the UMONS Innovation Centers, have often been highlighted for their ability to modify and improve the properties of surfaces of materials of all types. In the context of the current health crisis and the glaring problem of a shortage of medical equipment, a working group has been set up the Walloon Region to study ways of producing masks and reusing used ones. Regarding the reuse of masks, the expertise of Mons helps on the evaluation of the capacity of plasmas to efficiently decontaminate the masks in plasma systems that would be installed in hospitals. If this strategy has been studied for several years around the world, it was most often aimed at certain medical objects with high added value (catheter, scalpel, etc.). In the laboratories of UMONS and MATERIA NOVA, in collaboration with Centexbel, ULiège and CHU de Liège, the evaluation of this approach is developed since several weeks to make the plasma technology applicable to objects of more common consumption, such as surgical masks. Our aim is to develop a plasma system that could be installed in hospitals or care centers for local decontamination of masks in a few minutes. "
Contact: Dr. Thomas Godfroid, Scientific Manager Materia Nova Research Center Prof. Rony Snyders University of Mons