Buscador de Personas - SIGEVA - Universidad Nacional de Córdoba

The field of medical sterilization has increased their complexity because of the need to prevent patient exposure to infections caused by organisms on instruments and devices used during their care. Failuresin adequate sterilization of medical devices (MDs) result in significant institutional costs (1). Ethylene oxide (EO) is an exceptional sterilizing agent because ofits effective bactericidal, sporicidal, and virucidal activity. It is also a sterilization gas widely used for heat-sensitive devices. However, difficultieshad to be overcome, mostly related with potential hazards of EO to patients, staff, and environmental, as well as risks associated with handling a flammable gas (2-4). After performing the sterilization procedure insidethe chamber, the remaining gas is discharged from an air stream towards catalysts, which decompose ethylene oxide to carbon dioxide and water with efficiency near 99%. The motivation of this study rests in an attempt to develop EO scavengers connectto a sterilization device, which prevent air pollution, and then its derivative to be again introduced inthe chemical industry. Therefore, the ability to react of ethylene oxide with basic or acidic aqueous solutions was analyzed at different reagent concentration such as aqueous solution of sulfuric acid, ammonia solution or potassium hydroxide. The reaction progress was monitored by the mass change of reactors, and the products characterized by UV spectrophotometry, NMR and FTIR.

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