Authors:
Dave Steiner, Tim Crockett, Brad Johnson, Kim Wood
Abstract:
When regional/global pandemics are occurring the transmission vector (airborne, contact, etc.) is not initially fully understood. Retail systems often use forced air cooling of critical components. Cleaning /disinfecting the inside of a retail system is a difficult an costly process. This disclosure proposes a method to potentially reduce/limit retail system ingestion of pathogens in certain situations.
Background:
Retail stores have a lot of people in/moving through them. Even in pandemic times, many retail stores are critical and must remain open. Screening processes help reduce the potential for people who may be carrying the pathogen from entering the retail store. People do show up and may make it into the store for a short time. These events may trigger the store to close and do a full cleaning/disinfection. If it is known or even thought that the pathogen is airborne, cleaning/disinfecting any system moving air may be a best practice and cleaning/disinfecting the inside of retail systems can be costly, time consuming, and introduces additional risk due to potential damage caused by the operations required to open/close the system.
Description:
What is proposed is a hardware and software solution to stop the fans in all retail systems on command. Most systems can continue to operate at idle for several hours even without airflow. There may be some minor negative consequences(component life reduction) due to short duration elevated system heat.
What is needed:
- Hardware designed with full programmatic control of any fans including the ability to command the fans to stop spinning
- Software support in the retail system, for example via systems management to receive a command to stop the fans
- Store/Enterprise level software solution to send the fan stop/start commands to the retail systems in the store
Usages:
If the retail store personnel detect that a potentially infected person has entered the store, they can use the software tools to command the retail systems to stop fans while the store/affected area is cleaned/disinfected. Theoretically this should prevent needing to open and clean/disinfect the inside of the retail systems.
TGCS Reference 2457
