STA, 3 May 2020 - A three-member team from Grosuplje has developed a device for disinfecting cash using ultraviolet light. The device called Cash Cleaner is said to be the only in the world to disinfect up to 100 banknotes a minute.
"Our lives are slowly returning to normal, but we'll have to be more careful after the pandemic," says Žan Brezec, a member of the team, adding that some countries, including China, South Korea, Hungary and the US, were already disinfecting money or keeping it in quarantine.
Cash Cleaner was developed during the lockdown. "Developing it during the lockdown was quite a challenge. We had to change the construction and design of functional parts several times to adjust it to the locally accessible materials and production processes," said Brezec.
After a lot of team work, testing, trouble shooting and improvisation, the device, using the same UV technology that is used for disinfecting hospitals, labs and clinics, was developed using own funds in just over a month.
Brezec said that several Slovenian banks were interested in the device and that one of them would start testing it in the coming days. But he would not disclose the name of the bank.
"At the moment we can make one device a day but if orders increased we could optimise our production and make up to 100 devices a month," Brezec told the STA.
The team says only three similar devices were currently on the market. One was designed in South Korea during the 2012 MERS epidemic but it uses a different technology, whose efficiency is not backed by sufficient scientific research, according to the team.
In China, they have UV devices, but each banknote is not treated individually and the process is time-consuming, and the third solution was developed in Turkey but its realisation is expected only in 2023, Brezec said.
"Our solution is ... the only device that exposes each side of a banknote to UVC rays for a specific period of time, meaning that each banknote is disinfected in less than a second and ready to be used."
You can learn more about the Cash Cleaner here
