The 2021 Biomedical Engineering International Conference (BMEiCON-2021)

Low-Cost Blower-Based Ventilator

Anyarin Thitirattanapong Salila Ongtrakul Chuchart Pintavirooj
Biomedical Engineering – BME Biomedical Engineering – BME Biomedical Engineering – BME
2021 13th Biomedical Engineering International Conference (BMEiCON) | 978-1-6654-2627-5/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/BMEiCON53485.2021.9745235

King’s Mongkut Institute of King’s Mongkut Institute of King’s Mongkut Institute of

Technology Ladkrabang - KMITL Technology Ladkrabang - KMITL Technology Ladkrabang - KMITL
Bangkok, Thailand Bangkok, Thailand Bangkok, Thailand
62011092@kmitl.ac.th – A.T. 62012362kmitl.ac.th – S.O. Chuchart.pi@kmitl.ac.th – C.P.

Abstract—Ventilator has become an intensively important part
of medical healthcare, especially in this widespread pandemic of
COVID-19. The most popular one is an Ambu Bag with a bag
valve mask (BVM). This ventilator, however, requires a manual
resuscitator to operate its function with a limited air volume in-
side the bag. During the operation, moreover, it causes the noisy
sound due to its mechanism as well. The alternative is using Non-
Ambu Bag ventilator. This optional ventilator can regulate using
user’s smartphone to command the operation of ventilator with
configurable quantity and rate of volume and flow.
Index Terms—Ambu Bag, bag valve mask, COVID-19, non-
Ambu Bag, oxygen concentrator, ventilator.
I. INTRODUCTION
In the medical society, it is well known that ventilated de-
vices are a necessary equipment which have been a huge de-
mand globally; particularly, during this pestilent situation,
Covid-19 pandemics which overspread in wide range areas.
This contagious disease can cause severe effects on the respira-
tory systems of humans leading to many infected patients to
experience Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS),
inhibiting their ability to respire by themselves, the ventilator,
therefore, is crucial for medical treatment.
To respond to the dramatically medical ventilator demands,
the emergency ventilators are designed to be able to control
patient’s peak inspiratory pressure (PIP) and breathing rate
together with collecting the positive end expiratory pressure
(PEEP) at the same time [1]. Emergency ventilator (E-vent)
can be classified into two types; (i) Ambu Bag based ventilator
and (ii) Non-Ambu Bag based ventilator [2]. Ambu Bag based
ventilator mainly uses motor and gear to control the system
rhythmically, by squeezing the Ambu Bag to pump pure oxy-
gen through the patient wearing face mask. Non-Ambu Bag
based ventilator, conversely, uses electronics and microcontrol-
lers to control the blower and solenoid valve. In order to trans-
fer pure oxygen through the face mask, and then the patient’s
lung.
Due to the worldwide use of this medical device, the venti-
lator has been developed to suffice those varities of usages in
order to enhance its efficiency and convenience. The expensive
cost of high maintenance, however, is a result of high technol-
ogy. To meliorate such defect, there are three classes of eco-
nomical ventilators that have been currently improved [2]. The
first category is adjusting sleep apnea machines to extract oxy-
gen as a ventilator, then such oxygenated air is filtered and
directly delivered to the patient. Endowed et al. studied the
possibility to treat Covid-19 patients using this modified venti-
lator; however, sleep apnea machines are costly and are unable
to support serious cases of Covid-19 due to the insufficient
airflow [3]. Secondly, using available industrial components
from non-medical supply chains. The researchers of NASA
have designed a conventional ventilator called VITAL (Venti-
lator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally) with the
intention of applying it to the Covid-19 patients [4]. In the final
category, the use of bag valve mask (BVM)-based (Ambu Bag)
ventilators. This type has obvious benefits when compared with
previous prototypes. Because of the minority of components,
uncomplicated mechanism, economical assets, and capability
for expeditious deployment, Ambu Bag ventilators are highly
utilized, MIT’s E-Vent projects for instance [5].
This research aims to focus on the function of non-Ambu
Bag based ventilator and also develop a software control used
to enhance its efficiency to be more comfortable in order to
support any function with affordable prices. We expect all pa-
tients are able to be treated at home leading to alleviate the
number of patients admitted in hospitals and increase the quan-
tity of ventilators that have been recently descending.
II. MATERIALS AND METHODS
The purpose of ventilator is to supply pure oxygen to the
patient which is mainly based on the operation of the solenoid
valve controlling the air-flow from a blower into the patient’s
lungs. This controlled system uses electrical circuits and mi-
crocontrollers to manipulate the ventilator system through the
application on patient’s smartphone.
I) Ventilator Hardware with CAD design
Figure 1. CAD design of ventilator.

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 This medical ventilator consists of seven necessary compo-
nents which are synchronously operated. The first component
is a PVC pipe connected to oxygen concentrator which is used
to extract pure oxygen from the atmosphere to the ventilator
machine. Then, the enriched oxygen is transferred to a canister
using the blow function of the blower as the second compo-
nent. The amount of oxygen will be stored inside the third ele-
ment, translucent canister. After that, the solenoid valve will
operate the air flow rhythmically passing through the pipe to
the patient wearing face mask as a last element.
II) Electronic and Microcontroller
In this process, there are three main microcontrollers related
to the operation of ventilator system: an esp32 connected to
IOT board which is used to control the function of solenoid
valve, an another esp32 is responsible for application’s usages.
Lastly, a blower driver is a board handled to regulate the blow-
er activity.
Figure 3. Electrical and microcontroller diagram.
III) Software of Ventilator
In this part, MIT App Inventor is used as a major controller
to adjust and start the electronic and microcontroller systems.
With Arduino that is applied for coding, the electronics and
microcontrollers work simultaneously with high efficiency. In
the application, it has a total of three screens displayed on the
user’s device, which firstly starts with the login and signup
page as a primary screen followed by the patient information
page as the second screen. Both screens work relevant to a fire-
base in order to store a data and also synchronize to any devic-
es in real-time. The application page as a third screen, operates
with blocks that is related in coding. This page is used to con-
trol the function of the ventilator including to adjust and ex-
press values. All screens are shown in a Fig. 3.
(a) (b) (c)
Figure 3. (a) Login-Signup page. (b) Patient page. (c) Application page.
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IV) Pneumatic Diagram
Ventilators process in series of air passageways which can
be adjusted towards different modes. As shown in Fig. 4, high-
ly concentrated oxygen is transported to the blower and stored
in the canister. As the modes are changed on the application,
the solenoid valve would act accordingly, releasing the en-
riched oxygen air upon the patient.
Figure 4. Air-flow diagram.
III. EXPERIMENT AND RESULT
I ) Experiment
From the experiment, the full model of ventilator is tested
by Fluke Biomedical VT Plus HF, which is a gas flow analyzer
and ventilator tester using to determine mechanical and high
frequency of ventilator. The result will be displayed on the
screen in form of graphs and numerical values.
II ) Result
Figure 5. Output from VT Plus HF Gas Flow Analyzer (d) setting pres-
sure of 20 cmH2O
We have tested our blower-based ventilator lung simulator by
setting pressure at 20 cmH2O. Graph of volume, flow and pres-
sure is shown in figure 5. Tidal volume is approximately 500
ml. The maximum and minimum flow are 60 and -60 lpm re-
spectively.
IV. CONCLUSION
This medical ventilator without BVM is a new alternative
equipment using available components, which can support in a
real situation. This optional device, in addition, is easily usable
with remotely control by user’s smartphone and simple to ad-
just any variants based on adequacy of patients’ conditions.
Nevertheless, there is a few restrictions. Due to the need of
power supply, this ventilator always requires electricity to op-
erate and run the functions; therefore, it is essential for every [2] Pearce, J. M. A, “Review of open source ventilators for COVID-
usage to put the plug in before starting machine and program. 19 and future pandemics,” F1000Research 2020, 9, 218., in press.
However, it can serve the patients well as a result of the ex- [3] “Turning sleep apnea machines into ventilators,” Berkeley Engi-
periment, this alternative machine can work with high effec- neering, unpublished.
[4] “NASA develops COVID-19 prototype ventilator in 37 days,”
tiveness and better than other normal ventilators using Ambu
unpublished.
Bag in terms of convenience, quiescency, and portable size [5] MIT. (2020). MIT emergency ventilator (E-Vent) project. Avail-
without unwieldy BVM. able online: https://e-vent.mit.edu/ (accessed: January 2021).
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