Sunitize: effectiveness of the portable mask sterilizer / [author]: Annika Waine L. Gamali June June P. Cenu Kateleen Claire T. Wong Malrey Ydes F. Castro Natalie Claire A. Nunez

Includes Appendix

ABSTRACT:
During the past few years, the facemask has become essential to every human being. It was not surprising that there was a rise in the use of face masks since the government was implementing strict protocols. Based on the study by Parker (2021), globally, there were around one hundred twenty-nine (129) billion face masks that were discarded every month. It means that the disposal of the used facemask started to harm the environment. This true experimental study aims to lessen waste and disposal problems of used KN95 masks by creating a solar oven prototype sterilizer. The whole data-gathering procedure was divided into four (4) parts: the making of the portable solar oven,the preparation of the used KN95 mask,the mask sterilization process, and the testing for the bacterial count using ImageJ software. To compute the result, researchers used the following statistical treatments: one-way ANOVA, dependent sample t-test, and the sample mean. For the findings,the p-value of the three-time duration was less than 0.05, which was the chosen significance level of the researcher. Therefore, this stated that the null hypothesis was rejected and that a significant difference exists between the sterilized and unsterilized facemasks. The researchers also found that the optimal time duration was 90 minutes, which lessened the bacteria count by 32.06 CFU. The results state that the solar oven could sterilize the used face mask.

Thesis - Senior High School