As all the city dwellers are well aware of the bad air quality, so it comes as no surprise that we should take imperative measures to keep it in check. Big cities like Delhi, Bangalore & Mumbai are all facing the problem of bad air quality and also making it difficult for people to breathe. Extensive research is being conducted by all the top research institutes across India to find ways to contain air pollution levels. Although all the attempts made have been futile.
However, an innovation by a group of three engineering students can bring a ray of hope. Manipal University students — Dhruv Suri, Rahil Nayak (both doing Aeronautical Engineering) and Priyanshi Somani (Computer Science Engineering) — have developed a billboard that can purify air. This is not just another air purifier, but it has something more to it.
“We have seen the large advertising billboards almost everywhere around us. We fit an air purifier that is called a carbon dioxide scrubber inside a billboard. It looks like a normal billboard with an advertisement in the front, but inside is the purification system,” Suri recently told Bangalore Mirror. “On one side of the board, air is drawn in through a large fan and we use sodium hydroxide, a chemical that has the ability to absorb carbon dioxide, and clean air is then let out the other side.”
Along with the air purification ability it should also be noted that the carbon dioxide absorbed is pressurised and made into pellets. These pellets then find their way into greenhouses, which use carbon dioxide. “There is a lot of mechanical engineering and thermodynamics involved in the reaction as we have to make sure that sodium hydroxide does not get out into the air,” Suri explained.