Is bleed air for fuselage pressurization at altitude purified or sterile/ If so how is this done

Question

I just saw in the news, The epidemic deadly airborne disease Ebola has started killing people once again in Africa. Aircraft to and from the EU, the US and the rest of world fly over this deadly zone on a daily basis. People driving in ANY Tesla Vehicle or the US presidents car enjoy breathing purified sterile air free of any bacteria, viruses, fungi or any disease causing micro organisms, because all the air entering the car if windows are closed is purified by a UV light purifier.

Is aircraft bleed air for pressurizing the fuselage purified and if so, what technology is used e.g UV light. If not are there any plans for one such process and would it drain more fuel if implemented.

Finally do such viruses pose a danger to aircraft fly over an affected country's airspace?

If the air over there is that contaminated, then human race will have a bigger problem to worry about. — user3528438, May 09 '18 at 14:46

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 09 '18 at 15:29

Bleed air is hot compressed air and no germ can live through that. Also there is no way any germ will get up to any altitude that a plane flies at. As someone else pointed out Ebola is not airborne and is only spread through direct contact with a sick individual.

As a side note it is not really the aircraft air conditioning system that gets people sick on airplanes. People get sick by sitting in a seat that a sick person sat it. If someone who is sick sat in the same seat for several hours then the surfaces of the arm rest and tray table would be highly contaminated. Although here again Ebola is only spread by direct contact since the virus doesn't live long outside the body.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered May 09 '18 at 15:32

You don't need to sterilize incoming bleed air in flight, because the bleed being tapped from the compressor to feed the cabin is really hot, way above boiling, so whatever living thing was in it would be cooked anyway.

The problems with interior air quality is in the fact that most of the air in the cabin in flight is recirculated, the fuselage being a slightly leaky balloon. The amount of fresh air inflow depends on the leakiness of the pressure hull and the amount of air let out by the pressurization system outflow valves based on the controller's programming. Cert requirements set minimum amounts of fresh air inflow.

The biggest headache is controlling humidity.

Is bleed air for fuselage pressurization at altitude purified or sterile/ If so how is this done

2 Answers2