Battelle Memorial Institute's CCDS Critical Care Decontamination System uses a hydrogen peroxide vapor to decontaminate N95 respirators. The organization says that the process takes about 2½ and that masks can be cleaned and reused up to 20 times.Battelle Memorial Institute
nbcnews.com - by Didi Martinez, Brenda Breslauer and Stephanie Gosk - April 14, 2020
Late Monday, the Pentagon announced a $415 million contract to commission 60 decontamination systems that will allow millions of highly protective N95 face masks to be reused.
The system, which can process up to 80,000 masks per day, has been called a potential "game changer" for the front-line health care workers and first responders who rely on the masks, according to hospital officials concerned about a shortage of protective equipment to shield their staff from COVID-19.
But the story of how this system came to be is a testament to what can happen when a doctor and an engineer — who happen to be husband and wife — ask, "What if?"
