CNL team creates ventilation skid for healthcare use during COVID-19 pandemic

As the need for help during the COVID-19 pandemic increases across the country, CNL has leant some of our expertise in ventilation, HVAC and construction of skid-based experimental rigs towards a project which could be used at healthcare facilities.

The purpose of the Ventilation Skid Project is to enable hospitals to rapidly expand their COVID-19 isolation capability should they be faced with a patient surge. A ventilation skid provides negative air pressure to a given temporary isolation room. The negative pressure is important because the size of a coronavirus is 1/1000th the width of a human hair, and a single cough from a COVID-19 positive patient can expel up to 200 million individual virus particles. The negative pressure in a room helps ensure that the flow of air through all the cracks and crevasses of an isolated area is always directed from a clean environment into the contaminated space, thereby ensuring that the virus particles are contained around the infected patient. The Ventilation Skid provides a means to move the contaminated air through a suitable HEPA filter so it can be exhausted safely into the environment.

“The project kicked off on March 29 with a team of 20 – 25 CNL staff from various backgrounds and disciplines including mechanical, electrical, HVAC, civil engineering and technician resources, administrative and procurement for planning support, and maintenance and trades,” said Herbert Mueller, Electrical Engineer and Project Lead. “CNL recognized the severity of the COVID-19 crisis and responded by identifying the top five or 10 challenges that the hospitals around the world – primarily in Italy and Spain – were facing as the confirmed COVID-19 cases surged and overwhelmed the countries’ healthcare system.”

“The top concerns revolved around pathogen contamination control and the objective by CNL was to use our engineering and design resources to develop projects that would enhance a hospital’s ability to protect health care workers from contracting the virus given dwindling supplies of personal protective equipment, protect existing non-COVID-19 patients from cross contamination and protect the existing health care system from breaching its capacity, or rather to provide contingency equipment options to hospitals in response to a capacity breach as a result of a patient surge.”

During the first week, the team reviewed the latest hospital field guides from various sources for recommended solutions, designed conceptual prototypes, procured all materials for construction, and performed testing. With the working prototypes in place, the second week was dedicated to circling back on the original designs to optimize and fine tune the solutions and to ensure the appropriate design best practices were being followed as much as is possible under the circumstances, and that the prototypes performed at a level that ensures the safety of patients and caregivers.

The ventilation skid prototypes were constructed from parts found at a local hardware store. The successful design concepts consisted of bathroom ceiling fans and duct fans, as well as HEPA filters found in specialized vacuum products and various household air filtration units.

“If the ventilation skids need to be put to use, they can be distributed or constructed locally in any community across Canada using parts that are likely available within the community. This project is about being prepared and ready if called into action, and we have been in touch with local hospitals so they know the support is there if needed.”

Thank you to the CNL staff working tirelessly on this project.