Sentinel Clear™ Advanced Hood and EZ BioHood™ PAPRs
ILC Dover’s visionary solutions are known for improving efficiency while safeguarding people, product, and infrastructure in hazardous conditions. Most notably, the Company has been producing the Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) suits for NASA for several decades, demonstrating the quality of ILC Dover’s products and solutions, especially when protection is priority like in space travel. In a recent webinar, we discussed our Sentinel Clear™ Advanced Hood and EZ BioHood™ PAPRs, which incorporate leading-edge flexible materials and advanced film technologies, embodying the core principles that made the original spacesuits so successful.
Sentinel Clear™ Advanced Hood
One of the hallmarks of the EVA suit is the wide field-of-view in the visor. An important feature brought over to the Sentinel Clear™ Advanced Hood is that wide field of view, which provides a 320-degree field of view for the wearer. Additionally, there is no headband or suspension integrated into the hood which allows the wearer to turn their head at any angle. Thus, the head is actually independent from the hood, resting on the shoulders and gaining stability from tucking the inner bib into the user’s outer garment.
In addition to the superior field of view, the Sentinel Clear™ Advanced Hood has a great deal of air brought into the hood. PAPR’s bring in ambient air from the work area and its then filtered through either a HEPA filter or combination cartridge, which is then delivered up through a breathing tube into the hood. The Sentinel Clear™ Advanced Hood has an air delivery plenum in the rear portion of the hood that cascades the filtered air over the top of the worker’s head and down into the breathing zone, thus making for a very comfortable and wonderful design for personnel who need to wear hoods daily for many hours a day.
Sentinel XT Blower and Battery
In addition to the optimal air delivery of the Sentinel Clear™ Advanced Hood, it also delivers an Assigned Protection Factor (APF) of 1,000 while offering superior comfort, visibility, and mobility. The referenced air flow into the Sentinel Clear™ PAPR is actually 8 cfm, which is quite a bit higher than the NIOSH minimum of 6 cfm, making it 33% greater than standard air flow.
This battery is the only standard pack on the market to offer a 12-hour run time with a Lithium Polymer battery, making it ultralight weight at just 2.2 lbs. The Sentinel XT Blower is NIOSH-approved to use with multiple filter options, such as HEPA, OV/AG/HE, and multi-hazard combination cartridges.
The two means of wearing the Sentinel XT blower are the back harness or the Quick-Loc ™ belt, which are both easy to clean, provide maximum comfort, and have minimal weight when wearing them with the integrated system. For companies who work in classified areas and hazardous locations, the Sentinel XT non-incentive system has been approved by Factory Mutual for use in Class I, II, II, Division 2, Groups C, D, E, F, and G, Temperature code T5 for Hazardous (classified) locations.
The FM approved version delivers the same performance as the baseline XT system and includes:
- Color Coded – Blue color to readily identify the NI version
- Secure Lock – Secure lock which precludes battery removal without the use of a simple tool
- FM Labeling – Labeling on the blower and battery bearing the FM approval mark
Additionally, all components of the Sentinel XT easily thread together with no-fault 40mm connectors, and the spun-bound breathing tube/blower covers speed up decontamination time.
Sentinel EZ BioHood™ PAPR
Now let’s take a look at ILC Dover’s newest product, the Sentinel EZ BioHood™ PAPR. The Company recently introduced this exceptional protective PAPR hood to help frontline healthcare workers respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Sentinel EZ BioHood™ works seamlessly with the Sentinel XL® Blower System. Due to the time-sensitive situation that developed with providing proper protection to healthcare workers, ILC Dover expedited the process, and was able to design the concept and gain NIOSH approval all within 6 weeks!
The EZ BioHood™ is heat-sealed and packaged in ILC Dover’s Frederica, Delaware facility. Building off the innovative technology of the Sentinel Clear™ Advanced Hood, the EZ BioHood™ offer 100x protection over N-95s, with an APF of over 1,000. The air is pumped in at 240 LPM from the rear of the hood, cascades over the face, and exhausts through a breathable neck cuff, creating an extremely comfortable hood that can be worn every day for hours and hours.
It is made with an all-clear wrap-around visor construction for excellent visibility and the barrier-film that is used in the hoods makes wipe-downs and decontamination easy. As a special feature, the EZ BioHood™ also accommodates the use of a stethoscope without breaking the protective barrier of the hood. Unlike the Sentinel Clear™ Advanced PAPR, the EZ BioHood™ uses a headband and accommodates up to five different sizing positions within a single hood, making for a superior PPE for everyone during COVID-19 and beyond.
To learn more about ILC Dover’s Sentinel EZ BioHood™, a new PPE hood for healthcare workers on the frontlines of infectious diseases, please view our newest webinar.
