Developing of an open-source low-cost ventilator based on turbine technology

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed numerous global health system deficits, even in developed countries. The high cost and shortage of treatment, health care, and medical devices are the reasons. Aside from new mutations, the availability of respirators is an urgent concern, especially in developing countries. Even after the pandemic, respiratory diseases are among the most prevalent diseases. Researchers can help reduce treatment costs by offering scalable, open-source solutions that are manufacturable. Since March 2020, serious efforts have been made to reduce the problems caused by the lack of respirators at the lowest possible cost. In this research paper, a unique and integrated solution for a fully automatic ventilator is presented and described. The design considers the cost, speed of assembly, safety, ease of use, robustness, portability issues, and scalability to fit all requirements for emergency ventilation. Furthermore, the device was developed using turbine technology to generate air pressure. The work describes a low-cost alternative ventilator that uses a novel proportional-valve approach to control oxygen mixing process, control circuit, and control algorithm. The current software supports pressure mode controllers, and it can be upgraded to volume-mode or dual mode without any modifications in the hardware. In addition, the hardware, particularly the electronic circuit, has idle input/output ports for further development. Based on the evaluations of the developed ventilator using an artificial lung, the system exhibited acceptable accuracy regarding to the pressure, leak compensation, and oxygen concentration levels. The designated safety conditions have been met, and the safety alarms tripped according to any violations. Moreover, all design files are provided with clear instructions to rebuild the device, despite the complexity of electronics assembly. The system can be described as a development kit, which can shorten the time for researchers/manufacturers to develop a device equivalent to the expensive devices available in the market.

Keywords:

• Pressure mode
• volume mode
• electronic control circuit
• blower
• proportional valve
• scalable

Acknowledgements

I would like to show our gratitude to the Dr. Hamza Abu Owiada and Dr. Nidal Qasem for their encourage to complete the work and I would like to thank, Mohammad Al Takrouri, Tareq Khirsat, and Asmaa Al-Witry for their assistant during the lab work. This work was supported by Al-Ahliyya Amman University (AAU).

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article [and/or] its supplementary materials.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.