9 Inventions to absorb air pollution

The Canadian Startup Carbon Engineering has had Bill Gates’ economic support to create a surprising invention. It is a plant that they have raised in Vancouver with a double task: Extract CO2 from the air and create green energy.

Its operation is to capture the carbon dioxide of the air using giant fans and chemical processes that allow filtering it. Finally, it makes them small granules that, in turn, bind with hydrogen to produce fuel.

His achievement, according to the company, is to be the first technology that can Capture the CO2 of the air on a relevant scale at the environmental level. The absorbed quantity and its green energy production make it an alternative to solar energy, their creators affirm.

Its objective is to produce between 200 and 400 liters per day of gasoline or diesel. However, we do not know how much energy needs to function or, for example, the reason why it has been designed to generate gasoline or diesel, in the last fossil fuels. The answer to these questions would help understand the true dimension of this invention. A priori, and despite his buts, he looks great.

Large advertising canvases are also firm candidates to act as CO2 sponges. The first was placed on the Gran Vía Madrid. It is a worldwide first for its ability to “disintegrate” pollution. One of these canvases achieves absorb up to 85% of greenhouse gasessuch as methane and nitrogen oxide (NOX), the equivalent of the absorption we would achieve with a thousand trees for a year.

The Shiseido cosmetic company, the oldest in the world and in an innovative time, has decided to install it in the center of Madrid. A very interesting point, given the rebound of the pollution it is experiencing and, therefore, of the paired media attention.

Your trick is none other than being impregnated with titanium dioxide (TiO2), a material that is receiving great attention in recent years in the area of ​​purification of the environment. Explained briefly, its properties are due to photocatalysisa reaction of decomposition formed when the uncle2 acts as a catalyst using the light energy. Specifically, when ultraviolet rays, produced by sunlight, find organic matter of the surface of TiO2 sterilizes diverse bacteria and purify the air.

Let’s remember here that photocatalysis is a process similar to plants photosynthesisthat breaks down carbon dioxide in the presence of light. Thanks to this, the canvas eliminates greenhouse gases for about five years. It is also relatively durable.

To learn more about this environmental problem and its possible solutions, such as these canvases, we encourage you to read these other posts on what gases they produce the greenhouse effect and where they come from and also how to reduce greenhouse gases.

These bricks, meanwhile, They have a triple virtue: They are easily manufactured, tremendously resistant (with greater traction than concrete) and capture CO2 inside. But why these characteristics?

Above all, to resist seismic episodes. In fact, it was presented after the Japanese earthquakes of 2011. Therefore, a rapid manufacturing material was sought, which served to rehabilitate disaster areas quickly. They are made with sand rich in silicon and, to the need CO2 for manufacturesince this is injected with silicon, they constitute a sink of this pollutant gas.

An initiative similar to that of the Brent Constanz researcher, which seeks to imitate the coral to manufacture cements from CO2 and water. Again, another initiative with a biomimetic approach. With it, Constanz copy nature inspired by the formation of corals from the dissolution of CO2 in seawater. It occurs when carbonates occur that mix with water calcium until they solidify.

Another of the Inventions to reduce air pollution or atmospheric is the negative carbon cement. The cement industry is responsible for 6 percent of CO2 industrial emissions (2 gigatons or GT), and by the middle of the century it will reach 5 GT. But this can change with inventions like this, the creation of a concrete not only does not produce CO2, but also absorb it.

Novacem, a small company from Imperial College London, has invented this innovative material as an alternative to the traditional Portland cement. Its objective is to end this material, created almost two hundred years ago, and whose manufacture is a brutal carbon footprint.

Unlike Portland cement, it is created from Magnesium silicates (replacing calcium carbonate) whose carbon balance is negative. He does it without losing properties, since he finally achieves the same structural quality. In addition, it has the advantage of requiring less high temperatures than those of the traditional cement and as it age acts as a sink.

For their part, at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia they have created a biological concrete that grows microorganisms Pigmented accelerated. It is these that cover the concrete and absorb the CO2 of the atmosphere. It is an insulating material and Thermal regulator Thanks to the collection of solar radiation. Specifically, regulate thermal conductivity into the building as the temperature achieved.

Its manufacture avoids a good part of the negative impacts of the construction industry, so in addition to purify the air Improve biodiversity. It is also decorative, since it serves to decorate the facade of buildings in different colors or use in landscaped areas as an element of landscape and sustainable integration.

Finally, we leave you a list of others Inventions to achieve air decontamination:

• Wheels that absorb the C02 of the contaminated air and release oxygen. These first appeared in 2018.
• Scarves and scarves that filter air pollution.
• Ink made with the soot of the exhaust pipes.
• Sidewalks in the streets with materials that retain CO2 and nitrogen oxides.

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