Thanks to ESCiClean, escalator handrails can be cleaned automatically

This is one in a series of features on competitors in the 2016 Cozad New Venture competition, a program sponsored by the University of Illinois' Technology Entrepreneur Center that is designed to encourage students to create new businesses. The competition process offers teams assistance in the form of: mentors to help guide them through the phases of venture creation, workshops to help with idea validation, pitching skills, and customer development, and courses to enhance their skills and knowledge. Teams who make it to the final round of competition will have the opportunity to meet with venture capitalists, early stage investors and successful entrepreneurs who serve as judges. The judges will determine teams that will present their ventures at the finals event. Last year, these teams competed for nearly $160,000 in funding and in-kind prizes.

At public places like airports or malls, thousands of people use escalators every day, but have you ever thought about how often the handrails are cleaned? Malek Ibrahim, a graduate student in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois, has. With the number of people that touch them, it becomes a conduit for rapidly spreading germs.

A native of Cairo, Egypt, Ibrahim, has literally traveled the globe, going in and out of airports, most of which have escalators between levels. Ibrahim is often disgusted by their condition and is leading a team developing a product that can self-clean those sticky handrails automatically through a startup called ESCiClean.

“You want something that is reliable, but it also needs to be cheap,” Ibrahim said. “If you are introducing something to the market that will cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, it likely won’t be adopted. It also must not jeopardize the safety of the escalator.”

His solution doesn’t require any external power and can be installed under one of the ends of the escalator newels. Using a few simple paint rollers, it literally runs on the escalator handrail movement. The mechanical device keeps in contact with the handrail, constantly wiping detergent or sanitizer on it at a constant rate. The device sprays the agent on the roller all the time with enough liquid to last one to three weeks depending how often the escalator runs. The machine adapts with the speed of the escalators and, not needing a power supply, shuts down when the escalator shuts down. Installation and maintenance of the device is very simple and does not require any modifications on the escalator itself.

Ibrahim pitched his idea at a Social Fuse event and has teamed with fellow students in Mechanical Science & Engineering and Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering to build the prototype. Social Fuse, sponsored by Illinois’ Technology Entrepreneur Center (TEC), brings together business students, engineers, graphic designers and venture capitalists across campus, creating an environment for teams to form.

“Social Fuse was very useful for me,” Ibrahim said. “Now I don’t feel I’m the only person working on this.”

The team has filed a provisional patent and is finalizing drawings and getting feedback from potential customers. The goal is to have a prototype built by the end of the summer.

If businesses, airports, and the like adopt ESCiClean, you might not have to worry about the cleanliness of those handrails any longer.