This week’s Covid-19 Taskforce micro webinar is hosted by Covid Taskforce memeber, Jesse Halfon, Attorney at Dykema Mobility, who speaks with Rafael M. Acevedo, Managing Director at Magment – a company that focuses on the development, design and contract manufacture of magnetizable concretes used for innovative, competitive and customer-oriented electromagnetic solution. The focus of their conversation this week is UV disinfection. They discuss the background and science behind UV disinfection, it’s practical use for cleaning shared mobility vehicles during Covid-19 and the benefits of this method of disinfecting compared to more traditional methods, currently used by shared mobility operators across the world.

You can directly ask the taskforce anything related to Covid-19 and seek advice on managing your own operation by sending an email to taskforce@movmi.net. If you’d like to contact Rafael or a member of the Magment team directly, reach out via their website.

Covid-19 Taskforce: UV Disinfection in shared mobility with Jesse Halfon and Rafael M. Acevedo

In this MICRO WEBINAR:

• Magment is a German startup that focuses on wireless charging. Micro mobility is one of their areas of interest. They have created a concrete material that’s magnetizable. You insert a coil and current and it generates a magnetic field, which feeds current into the vehicles without needing to plug it in.
• Since the Covid-19 situation arose, they have shifted gears and come up with a technology system, Mac Cleanse UV. This is a structure, where you can place different types of small vehicles, and it’s designed to provide enough radiation to clean to disinfect the surfaces of the vehicles from all sides using UV LED lights.

• UV light is light of a certain wavelength. It goes from 100 to 400 nanometers and it’s divided into UVA, UVB and UVC. The Earth’s atmosphere filters most of UVB and UVC but UVC has specific characteristics that inactivates the biological activity of microorganisms.
• UVC LED lights have longer lifespans, usually 15,000 hours but there’s a Korean company that has recently created lights that can last up to 50,000 hours. So they rarely require replacement. There is an option to have flexible solar panels installed on Magments UV system where there is no access to the grid.
• UVC light is used in hospitals across the world for sterilization and sanitation. The risk only comes with direct exposure. In Magment’s unit, the light only directly interacts with the vehicle. The station has an infrared system that detects people or animals which shuts the lights off when someone approaches. 
• When using UV light for disinfection, you limit your exposure to toxic chemicals that other methods of disinfection in shared mobility use. You don’t need to handle the equipment physically, so you don’t need somebody to be in charge of cleaning the equipment and disposing of hazardous materials – it’s automatic. However, this system needs to be fully tested before completely replacing other cleaning methods completely.
• There will be a certain level of degradation on vehicle materials over time, such as plastic. But this can be limited by protecting the plastic with additives that you can add to the plastics to avoid UV deterioration .
• Effectiveness of the disinfection depends on seven environmental and time factors, some of which include; distance to UV light source, time of exposure, airflow and relative humidity. These factors greatly influence effectiveness but it is estimated that the system can clean a vehicle with ten to fifteen minutes of exposure. 

If you have a direct question for the taskforce related to Covid-19 or wish to seek advice on managing your own operation, send an email with your question to taskforce@movmi.net. For more Covid-19 information and resources click here.