LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A senior at duPont Manual High School is using his passion for engineering to help people where oxygen is thin.
Air pollution and high altitudes make it hard to breathe in some countries. Ventilators can help, but they cost thousands of dollars.
That's why Anirudh Srinivasan and some of his peers invented a low cost, portable alternative to the ventilator. It's inside a suitcase, and could someday help people in harsh climates and rural areas.
Srinivasan said his unit would have a 94% success rate.
"Different things that they use, such as ventilators and oxygen tanks, tend to malfunction at these very high elevations," Srinivasan said.
Srinivasan has spent years of his free time in a University of Louisville lab creating this prototype.
"The fans rotate at high speeds to capture air," he explained. "We basically dissected a bunch of ventilators to figure out how they work."
He's focused on people in India. That's where his family is from, so he said he feels passionate about helping those who still live there.
Srinivasan said he's focused on helping people in India since that's where his family is from.
"These people just didn't have access to appropriate health care," Srinivasan said. "When they were given ventilators, they don't work like 50% of the time."
Srinivasan said his unit would have a 94% success rate. He believes his biggest contribution to the project is the part that regulates the air-quality.
"I added these things called pressure transducers," he said. "The efficiency would deteriorate without them, and the machine's pressure would get too high."
This alternative ventilator is still in it's prototype phase.
While Srinivasan plans to go to college in the Fall, he's not leaving this high school passion project in the dust.
"We actually just got a grant for doing more work on this project," he said in June.
He hopes that research could someday bring this device to those in need.
"It could be more beneficial than the ventilator, potentially," Srinivasan said.
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