Development of Air Purifier with Mosquito Catcher That Captures Mosquitoes Without the Use of Chemicals
Sharp Corporation
| Publication date | September 07, 2017 (Posted on May 17, 2022) |
|---|---|
| Sector | Human Health |
Company Overview
Sharp Corporation is an electronics manufacturer with a wide range of business operations, including AV equipment, home appliances, mobile phones/telecommunications/information equipment, LCDs/electronic devices, energy systems, and office equipment. Since the company’s establishment in 1912, we follow the words by the founder Tokuji Hayakawa, "Make products that others want to imitate," and we have been striving to contribute to the society and to be a trusted company by manufacturing products that proactively respond to the needs of the next generation.
Adaptation Initiatives
[Products and Technologies]
The most common way to eliminate mosquitoes is to spray chemicals (insecticides) in the room, but the main feature of Air Purifier with Mosquito Catcher is that it does not use any chemical, and uses the habit of mosquitoes and the suction power of the air purifier to capture them.
The first step is installing a UV light that emits ultraviolet rays, which mosquitoes are easily attracted to, making the color of the main unit black since they have a habit of preferring black as a hiding place, and creating multiple small windows on the back of the device to draw mosquitoes in.
The second step is to draw in the approaching mosquitoes with the suction power of the air purifier, and the final step is to capture the sucked mosquitoes with an adhesive mosquito trap sheet.
[Project Details]
In Southeast Asia, there is a certain demand for air purifiers to prevent smoke pollution (HAZE) caused by slash-and-burn agriculture and forest fires. However, the threat of mosquitoes that carry infectious diseases had been increasing due to climate change, and it had become a serious issue. So the local residents had high expectations for an air purifier that could remove mosquitoes and we spent six years to develop an air purifier that can remove both air pollution and mosquitoes. With the cooperation of the Malaysian Ministry of Health's Medical Research Institute, we conducted trapping tests verifying various factors with more than 10,000 mosquitoes, and finally arrived at the three-step trapping method, which has been commercialized mainly in ASEAN since 2015.
In Japan, the product has been on market since April 2016, under the name "Katorikusei”. Japan Environmental Sanitation Center (JESC) has conducted tests to capture three typical types of mosquitoes, and has confirmed the high capture rate in the test space.
