This past week has comprised of work, which I am so glad about. I’m glad to be taking on this journey with my team “Team O2 Protection” with Alfred and Gloria. My team is focused on creating optimized filters for Oxygen Concentrators and we have made progress on the design. We are still using HEPA filter paper but this week we will be going out to different markets and hardware stores to find filter paper which can work just as well and is easy to find in Malawi, focusing on local sourcing of materials. Our preliminary testing indicates that less than 0.5% of dust can enter through the filter which is a huge improvement to the current external filter which practically lets any fine particulates in, up to the size of sand grains even. Soon we will finalize a design for the external filter and perform more testing with different materials found here in Malawi, currently the manufacturing process of this filter is mostly simple with one complex area which we are still trying to facilitate. Next up is the internal air filter, we hope to use a similar design as the external air filter, with more focus on universality than filtering if the latter problem has been solved. A common problem here is that medical devices are donated and they are always different brands and models that arrive with no spare parts. By making this filter universal then it can be used on multiple models and brands regardless of the availability of model specific proprietary filters. The filters are also so important because less particulates will enter the concentrator and increase its longevity too.

            We finished creating both testing models, one for testing airflow of filter material and one for testing dust retention, the airflow testing model has not been used yet but will be used in the coming week when testing the other materials used for the filter.

Part of the upcoming work that will come after the testing will be the 3D modeling of the filter enclosure and figuring out how to make it universal, or as close to this as possible.