Healthy, Dust-Free Air with Robucor
BANDUNG, LKIt's common for high-rise buildings in Indonesia to use air conditioning (AC) to support daily comfort. However, not everyone is aware of the existence of Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) ducts, which function to maintain the surrounding air quality.
Because their existence is not widely known, not everyone cares about the cleanliness of HVAC ducts. However, because of their function related to air, these ducts collect a significant amount of dust. Currently, HVAC duct maintenance and cleaning are only performed at the ends and bases, resulting in dust accumulating in the middle of the duct.
Seeing this phenomenon, three ITB students created a robot that cleans dust and detects leaks in HVAC ducts, called Robucor. They are Agung Pratama (Electrical Engineering 2015), Fadhil Wijaya (Electrical Engineering 2015), and Yusuf Adiprawira (Electrical Engineering 2013) who brought this robot won a bronze equivalent poster medal in the Student Creativity Program for Creative Ideas (PKM-KC) category of the 32nd National Student Scientific Week (PIMNAS) 2019 on August 27-30, 2019 at Udayana University, Bali.
Robucor was designed to autonomously navigate HVAC ducts and push dust from the base to the end, pushing out any debris trapped in the middle. The system uses an app that can be used by a wide range of users. "We've tested it with cleaning staff at ITB, and five out of five were able to operate Robucor," Agung said.
Furthermore, this robot can also automatically detect leaks in HVAC ducts. This innovation is considered crucial because it can simplify the maintenance process. If leaks are left untreated and dust builds up in the ducts, the dust can spread indoors and pollute the air. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, this is what makes indoor air more hazardous than outdoor air. This is because humans spend 90% of their time indoors rather than outdoors.
"Previously, to find leaks in HVAC ducts, technicians had to dismantle the entire duct," Agung said. Robucor can detect leaks and map them in the app, eliminating the need to dismantle the entire duct when a leak occurs. "Technicians simply need to repair the leak points visible in the app," he added.
Currently, not many countries produce HVAC duct cleaning robots. Robucor is the first Indonesian-made HVAC duct cleaning and leak detection robot.
With its sole function of pushing dust, the selling price of HVAC duct cleaning tools on the market is still relatively high, around Rp 50 million for one cleaning tool. Cleaning with the Robucor takes 30 minutes per 100 m2 of HVAC duct and consumes 5 watts of power. This is a significant difference from other cleaning tools, which take 2 hours per 100 m2 and consume 80-200 watts of power.
Tests of Robucor's dust-cleaning feature are claimed to have met the standards of the Finnish Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate, Espoo, Finland, which states that the standard for HVAC duct cleanliness is a maximum of 2.5 grams of residual dust per square meter. "Robucor's maximum cleaning of HVAC ducts is expected to improve indoor air quality," Agung concluded.
