Honeywell.Darius Adamczyk, chief executive of the international company, said on Wednesday that the company was developing an air filter coating that would kill up to 98 per cent of novel coronavirus and was expected to be ready by the end of September at the earliest.

Adamczyk said in an interview that the chemical coating needs to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Honeywell is seeking Texas and North Carolina as partners to help speed up the process.

He said the coating could replace the heating and air-conditioning filters currently used in schools and commercial buildings, avoiding expensive upgrades to these systems to handle more intensive filtering.

Since the outbreak, Honeywell has increased production of personal protective equipment such as N95 masks and developed new products, including systems that automatically take body temperature when people enter buildings and robots that disinfect aircraft with ultraviolet rays.

Honeywell is seeking to have the filter coating ready by the end of the quarter and has conducted independent laboratory tests showing that the product is between 97% and 98% effective in eliminating the virus. Adamczyk said the product, developed by materials scientists in Honeywell's UOP division, could easily reach a market size of hundreds of millions of dollars.