How germs travel on planes -- and how we can stop them

So can I get a show of hands
how many of you in this room

have been on a plane
in this past year?

That's pretty good.

Well, it turns out that
you share that experience

with more than 3 billion people
every year.

And when we put so many
people in these metal tubes

that fly all over the world,

sometimes, things like this
can happen

and you get a disease epidemic.

I first actually got into this topic

when I heard about
the Ebola outbreak last year.

And it turns out that although Ebola
spreads through

these more range-limited,
more tropical routes,

There's all these other sorts
of diseases

that can be spread through
the airplane cabin.

The worst part is

when we take a look at some
of the numbers,

it's pretty scary.

So with H1N1,

there was this guy who decided
to go on the plane

and in the matter of a single flight,

actually spread the disease
to 17 other people.

And then there was
this other guy with SARS

who managed to go
on a 3-hour flight

and spread the disease
to 22 other people.

That's not exactly my idea
of a great super power.

When we take a look at this,
what we also find is that

it's very difficult to
pre-screen for these diseases.

So, when someone actually
goes on a plane,

they could be sick

and they could be in this latency period

in which they could actually
have the disease.

And they could, in turn,
spread the disease

to so many other people
in the cabin.

And how that actually works is that
right now

we have air coming in from
the top of the cabin

and from the side of the cabin
as you can see in the blue.

And then also, that air goes out
throught hese very efficient filters

that eliminate 99.97 percent
of pathogens near the outlets.

And what happens right now,
though,

is that we have this
mixing air-flow pattern.

So if someone were to actually sneeze,

that air would get swirled
around multiple times

before it even has a chance
to go out through the filter.

So I thought, clearly,
this is a pretty serious problem.

I didn't have the money
to go out and buy a plane,

so I decided to build
a computer instead.

It actually turns out that with
Computational Fluid Dynamics,

what we're able to do is create
these simulations

that give us higher resulutions

than actually physically going in
and taking readings in the plane.

And how, essentially, this works
is

you would start out with
these 2D drawings --

these are floating around
in technical papers around the Internet.

I take that and I put it into
these 3D-modeling software,

really building that 3D model.

And then I divide that model
that I just built into these tiny pieces.

And then I tell the computer where
the air goes in and out of the cabin,

throw in a bunch of physics,

and basically sit there and wait until
the computer calculates the simulation.

So what we get with the conventional cabin
is this:

you'll notice the middle person sneezing,

and we go "Splat!",
right into people's faces.

It's pretty disgusting.

And from the front, you'll notice
those two passengers

sitting next to the central passenger,

not exactly having a great time.

And when we take a look
at that from the side,

you'll also notice those pathogens

spreading across the lenth of the cabin.

The first thing that I thought was,
"This is no good."

So I actually conducted
more than 32 different simulations

and ultimately, I came up
with this solution right here.

This is what I call a
patent-pending Global Inlet Director.

With this, we're able to reduce
pathogen transmission

by about 55 times

and increase fresh air- inhalation
by about 190 percent.

So how this actually works is

we would install this piece
of composite material

into these existing spots
that are already in the plane.

So it's very cost-effective
to install

and we can do this directly overnight.

All we have to do is put
a couple of screws in there

and you're good to go.

And the results that we get
are absolutely amazing.

Instead of having those problematic
swirling air patterns,

what we have is we can create
these walls of air

that come down in between
the passengers

to create these
personalized breathing zones.

So you'll notice that if the
middle passenger here

is sneezing again,

but this time, we're able to
effectively push that down

to the filters for elimination.

And the same thing form the side,

we're able to directly
push those pathogens down.

So if you take a look again now
at the same scenario

but with this innovation installed,

you'll notice the middle passenger
sneezes,

and this time, we're pushing
that straight down into the outlet

before it gets a chance
to infect any other people.

So you notice the two passengers
sitting next to the middle guy

are breathing virtually
no pathogens at all.

Take a look at that
from the side as well,

it's a very efficient system.

And in short, with this system,
we win.

When we take a look
at what this means,

what we also see is that
this not only works

if the middle passenger sneezes,

but also if the window seat
passenger sneezes

or if the aisle seat
passenger sneezes.

And so with this solution, what does
this mean for the world?

When we take a look
at this from the computer simulation

into real life,

we can see from with this
3D model that I built over here

essentially using 3D printing,

we can see those same air flow patterns
coming down right to the passengers.

In the past, the SARS epidemic
actually cost the world

about 40 billion dollars,

and in the future, a big disease
outbreak could actually

cost the world an excess
of 3 trillion dollars.

So before, it used to be that
you had to take an airplane

out of service for one-to-two months,

spend tens fo thousands
of man hours,

and several million dollars
to try to change something.