Insights on drying and precipitation dynamics of respiratory droplets from
          the perspective of COVID-19

Shouvik Basu; Prasenjit Kabi; Swetaprovo Chaudhuri; Abhishek Saha

doi:10.1063/5.0037360

journal article Dec 01, 2020

Insights on drying and precipitation dynamics of respiratory droplets from the perspective of COVID-19

Shouvik Basu Prasenjit Kabi

Swetaprovo Chaudhuri

Abhishek Saha

Physics of Fluids Vol. 32 No. 12 · AIP Publishing

View at Publisher Save 10.1063/5.0037360

Abstract

We isolate a nano-colloidal droplet of surrogate mucosalivary fluid to gain fundamental insights into airborne nuclei’s infectivity and viral load distribution during the COVID-19 pandemic. The salt-water solution containing particles at reported viral loads is acoustically trapped in a contactless environment to emulate the drying, flow, and precipitation dynamics of real airborne droplets. Similar experiments validate observations with the surrogate fluid with samples of human saliva samples from a healthy subject. A unique feature emerges regarding the final crystallite dimension; it is always 20%–30% of the initial droplet diameter for different sizes and ambient conditions. Airborne-precipitates nearly enclose the viral load within its bulk while the substrate precipitates exhibit a high percentage (∼80–90%) of exposed virions (depending on the surface). This work demonstrates the leveraging of an inert nano-colloidal system to gain insights into an equivalent biological system.

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Details

Published: Dec 01, 2020
Vol/Issue: 32(12)

Authors

S

Shouvik Basu

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science 1 , Bengaluru 560012,

P

Prasenjit Kabi

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science 1 , Bengaluru 560012,

S

Swetaprovo Chaudhuri

Institute for Aerospace Studies, University of Toronto 2 , Toronto, Ontario M3H 5T6,

A

Abhishek Saha

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California San Diego 3 , La Jolla, California 92093,

Cite This Article

Shouvik Basu, Prasenjit Kabi, Swetaprovo Chaudhuri, et al. (2020). Insights on drying and precipitation dynamics of respiratory droplets from the perspective of COVID-19. Physics of Fluids, 32(12). https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0037360

Insights on drying and precipitation dynamics of respiratory droplets from the perspective of COVID-19

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