Texas partnership plans to use drones for disinfecting large public venues

HOUSTON - While the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, large gatherings of people are still, generally, out of the question. Now, a partnership between two Texas companies hopes to make some of those events cleaner and safer.
    
"We want to become experts in disinfecting large public venues," says Paul Woessner of Arvika Aerial Tech. He started the company after exploring safe ways to disinfect his Houston and New Braunfels flight schools to keep planes, facilities, and students safe.

After seeing a new generation of non-toxic, yet efficient, disinfectant, Woessner got the idea of using drones to spray large spaces to kill-off any lingering virus, before people could get infected.

"We can disinfect a 15.000 seat stadium in, probably, under an hour," says Woessner, "Contactless, with nobody up in the stands and not needing to hire an army, to do it."

He's partnering with Dallas-based 'R-Water' founder, Rayne Guest. "COVID-19 is a virus and it's not especially hard to kill," says Guest.

She founded the company to find an alternative to toxic and inefficient disinfectants that are, widely, in use.

The company's device produces 'hypochlorous acid', which is non-toxic and found in white blood cells to kill pathogens. Used as a disinfectant, Guest says it works ten times faster than traditional products and she was intrigued by Woessner's plan.

"Just the fact that they can go these areas, like large stadiums, and really effectively spray all the surfaces with their drones is really a very appealing way to apply a disinfectant," says Guest.

Paul Woessner hopes it'll replace some of the uncertainty we've come to live with. "If we're healthy and sitting in a disinfected facility, I have confidence to go back," he says.

The partnership has already started its sales pitch in Texas and is ready to branch out to neighboring states to offer the service.