Endless Sanitizer - Ethanol from CO2

During the Covid-19 pandemic, medical supplies, including hand sanitizers, grew scarce. Our Endless Sanitizer solution enables end-users to generate their own ethanol in convenient, point-of-use dispensers. Thus, users will have direct, onsite control over an important sanitation tool - independent of supply chain disruption. Moreover, our solution reduces costs and risks to consumers associated with stockpiling large amounts of flammable sanitizers and paying facilities staff to constantly restock dispensers.

We specifically propose a hand sanitizer dispenser equipped with an electrochemical converter, which can convert CO2 and water into ethanol using electricity. This converter will utilize Carbon Nanospike (CNS) technology, a novel catalyst developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

If our solution were scaled globally, businesses, transportation hubs, hospitals, and even individual consumers could have a highly dependable and cheap supply of hand sanitizer. Thus, our product would help reduce the spread of future pandemics while adding everyday value to businesses.

The Health Security and Pandemics Challenge calls for solutions that "equip last-mile primary healthcare providers with the necessary tools and knowledge to detect disease outbreaks quickly and respond to them effectively." 

In the US and other countries, current sanitizer dispensers are used commonly in high traffic businesses, public areas, and medical facilities. These dispensers require two recurring expenses: purchase of sanitizer refills and wages for facility staff to reload the dispensers. 

In everyday situations, these expenses increase overhead and reduce the likelihood that businesses will deploy these devices for customer use. 

To prepare for emergencies situations of high need or market disruption, hospitals can currently stockpile sanitizer, which is flammable, requires storage space, and can expire. Most importantly, such stockpiles can only meet dispenser usage for a finite time. Also, what about pandemic preparedness for non-medical businesses? Does the owner stockpile sanitizer that may never be used and thus waste money and space? Or do they risk running the store in a pandemic without enough sanitizer?

Our Endless Sanitizer dispenser will have the same user experience as the common sanitizer dispensers mentioned above. However, instead of needing refill cartridges of sanitizer our dispenser will generate its own sanitizer from just H2O, CO2, and electricity. 

The dispenser will plug into a standard 120V power source (or the international equivalent). An air concentration subsystem will collect CO2 and H2O from ambient air. (In dryer climates, a direct connection to a building's fresh water may be required.) 

As mentioned above, the dispenser's electrochemical converter will convert CO2 and H2O into ethanol. A novel catalyst called Carbon Nanospike (CNS) makes this converter possible. The CNS catalyst to the naked eye looks like a thin, flat sheet of carbon. However, on a nano-scale, the catalyst resembles a mountainous forest of carbon spikes. ORNL researchers theorize that CNS is so effective at producing ethanol because these spikes act like lighting rods during the electrochemical reaction, thus, concentrating the applied voltage. With this voltage concentration, CNS not only efficiently generates ethanol, but also does so in a single reaction step, thus dramatically simplifying ethanol production.

Our solution directly serves any business or institution with a high-volume need for hand sanitizer – in particular, we aim to serve the medical field - ie. hospitals, clinics, etc. 

Simply put, medical facilities have many disposable consumables they must source and reorder. In an everyday situation, our solution reduces business overhead, reduces supply chain complexity, and enables greater hygiene for patients and medical staff. In emergency situations, our Endless Sanitizer dispenser may become the only available source of topical antiseptic.

When first developing this product concept, our Team Lead Brandon Iglesias talked with multiple potential customers to confirm market fit. Of the positive responses that we received, three organizations agreed to send letters of support (LOS) for an NSF grant application we submitted. Excerpts from these letters are supplied below (with names changed to protect confidentiality):

LOS #1 comes from Dr. M, an Assistant Medical Professor and President of an independent testing and research lab in the US:

* "[My company] would like to state our support of Brandon Iglesias' work on building a continuous topical antiseptic sanitizer system that never runs out...."

* "Due to COVID-19 ... purchasing topical antiseptic... has placed an additional burden on our laboratory and hospitals that I work at."

* "Since founding Reactwell, Brandon Iglesias created a project called safetyspot.com, an IoT platform for labs and shops, which we utilize at [redacted].... We would welcome the new addition of a continuous topical antiseptic dispenser that never runs out at [redacted] for our community."

LOS #2 comes from a large public utility in the US: 

* "We are now interacting with Reactwell to review use-cases of this sanitizer within our [redacted] customer base."

* "We look forward to following Reactwell's progress and potentially supporting a future pilot demonstration project and beyond."

LOS #3 comes from Dr. E, the founder of a >10-year-old neurosurgical clinic in the US and Neurotrama Department Head. The medical corporation that employs Dr. E as a Neurotrama Department Head runs at least several hospitals in the US:

* "Dr. E fully supports the continuous topical antiseptic sanitizer system [redacted] NSF proposal and hopes to be able to test and utilize the future product based upon this work at [his/her] clinical offices...."

* "[My neurosurgical practice] has been working with the company, safetyspot.com, that was originally created in 2014 as a project at Reactwell [LLC], which Brandon founded in 2011. Dr. E would welcome the new addition of a continuous topical antiseptic dispenser that never runs out at [his/her] private practice ... initially, with the intention of instigating the use of this product in the wider medical community."

"Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the increased cost of restocking, refilling, and purchasing topical antiseptic, hand sanitizer, and sanitizer has placed an additional burden on our co-working clinical offices. There has also been difficulty even acquiring antiseptic and sanitizer, despite the fact that my offices are filled with essential workers on the frontline of healthcare."

Our Endless Sanitizer dispenser quite simply "equip[s] last-mile primary healthcare providers" with an effective disease-fighting tool. In a pandemic situation where local and global supply chains may be disrupted, our electrochemical dispenser will still operate dependably. Both medical staff and patients will be more dependably protected by having simple hand sanitation available. Additionally, in everyday situations, our dispenser will reduce sanitation operating expenses, not just for medical providers, but for any interested business or consumer. 

Our Endless Sanitizer is in the prototyping stage because the technology on which it depends, the CNS catalyst, has been proven to work in a laboratory setting (TRL 4). We are currently able to generate ethanol at a 65-70% Faradaic efficiency. The CNS catalyst has been validated to at least a 300 hour operating lifetime in laboratory conditions. (The CNS never failed - the test just had to be stopped at 300 hours due to equipment constraints.)

Please see the following research article for more details on the testing and characterization of the CNS catalyst: https://chemistry-europe.onlin... 

Designing and building the various supporting subsystems of the dispenser is a more straightforward engineering and manufacturing task. Thus, the primary path forward for developing this technology is to scale-up manufacturing of the CNS catalyst and test prototypes of the dispenser.

Distributed sustainable generation of a consumable that by design is a last mile solution available upon demand. Distributed chemical synthesis is the next iteration of just-in-time-inventory and shipping. We are a distributed chemical synthesis based product.

Our solution is still in prototype phase.

Liters EtOH 70% vol in water produced.

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Electrochemist, Electrochemical Engineer, Mechatronic Engineer, Programmer, MD, Manufacturing Expertise, Medical Device Expertise.

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