Aspiring 19 Year Old Hopes To Come Up With Smog Filters For Developing Countries

At 13 years of age, Daryani created an open-source 3D printer called “SharkBot” and launched a manufacturing company. He wanted to create low-cost 3D printers for people in India. In Mumbai, he also launched a Maker’s Asylum that held workshops for people to work on skills such as using 3D printers, laser cutters, and power tools.

Daryani has also been responsible for the development of a haptic feedback e-reader for blind people, a pupil tracker with an Android tablet, and an electroencephalography-based wheelchair for people with neurological disorders. Back in 2016, he decided to pursue his next step, which was the development of an industrial filtering system for areas with heavy air pollution.

While many countries have significantly less carbon emissions than the United States and China, who were responsible for 44.8 percent of the world’s CO2 back in 2016, India comes in at third overall with a 6.2 percent share. They host the world’s top coal producer, Coal India, but they’ve shuttered 37 coal mines and the country won’t allow any more mines built after 2022.

These are great steps for developing countries to take, but that doesn’t currently solve the problem of dense smog in their cities. It could even get worse as more households are electrified but that power still comes from coal. Daryani, now studying at Georgia Tech University, is also developing a five-step process with a 20-foot tower that filters the air.

“I want things like this (tower) to be implemented on a scale until the time developing countries like India, China and (countries in) Africa actually reach an all-electric method of transportation,” Daryani told CNN. “My eventual dream is to build companies that solve problems like this. That’s what I tried to do before, and that’s what I hope to do after school.”

Like other projects that hope to rid the air of pollution, Daryani is looking to remove microscopic particles in the air. Known as PM2.5, this is particulate matter that has a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers and has been linked to lung cancer. A study from Greenpeace India determined that PM2.5 levels rose by 13 percent from 2009 to 2015 with a direct link to coal-fired thermal power plants.

Instead of changing filters on a daily basis, which would be costly and time-consuming, Daryani is developing a way of containing the dust and carbon in two large tanks that would be emptied twice a month. There’s also a chance that captured carbon could be used in other ways, such as creating ink.

This 19-Year-Old Is Working On Smog Filters For Developing Countries [Green Matters] 

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1 thought on “Aspiring 19 Year Old Hopes To Come Up With Smog Filters For Developing Countries

  1. TOPIC: How to reduce Industrial Air Pollution.

    There are several equipments used to filter and retain PM – Particulate Material and/or Gases generated by industries that use iron ore, coal, oil, gas, waste and others feedstock in their industrial processes.

    With the combined use of 3 of the equipments mentioned below, now there is solution to eliminate much of this pollution.

    A) ESP: Electrostatic Precipitator.

    B) ESP-SS: Electrostatic Precipitator with Selective Switching.

    C) ACI: Activated Carbon Injection or DSI: Dry Sorbent Injection.

    D) ESP-SS/ACI/DSI: which is the combination of equipments A, B and C.

    E) Various post-treatment equipment.

    The new technology SS, mentioned in item B) was developed inside the Federal University of ES – UFES in Vitória/Brasil, and is capable of retaining 60% of the Pollution released into atmosphere through the chimneys by thousands of industries worldwide, such as Vale, ArcelorMittal, Fibria and SAMARCO, installed in the State of Espírito Santo/Brasil.

    It is known that iron ore and/or fossil fuels and waste used as feedstock in base industry and/or thermoelectric power plants have many organic and metallic components in their structure, therefore:

    • They generate millions of tons of Particulate Material and Gases, not retained by industrial filters, and release them into the atmosphere.

    Even gas and oil, used by Thermoelectric, which release small amounts of ash, release large quantities of gases with many toxins, as well as mercury, arsenic, lead, radio isotopes, and others.

    • The big challenge is to capture these gaseous components.

    • Now, with ESP-SS/ACI/DSI this capture will be done, because the activated carbon ou sorbents to be injected into the ESP-SS/ACI/DSI will aggregate these gases in their surface area, allowing the capture and retention.

    • Injection of activated carbon and/or sorbents is already done in some Thermoelectric in the USA that use ESP without SS technology, and thus only manage to aggregate and retain small amounts of Gases.

    • Studies show that when granulation of the activated carbon ir sorbent currently used in the present ESP, of 19 ?m in diameter, could be substituted for others with super fine diameter, a very large increase in the retention of these gases will occur.
    Currently activated carbon or sorbent of 19 ?m is used because current ESP does not have technical capacity to retain PMs with smaller diameter.

    • The ESP-SS, already is the solution to capture 60% of all the particulate material currently emitted into the atmosphere, and when become a ESP-SS/ACI/DSI using activated carbon and / or sorbent of PM size 0.1 up to 1.0 ?m, will capture a very large percentage of the gases.
    This is possible because ESP-SS has the technical capacity to retain all the PMs greater than PM 0.1 ?m.

    • Finally, the ESP-SS/ACI/DSI, in the 2º step, that will be available in 3 years, will be able to retain over 95% of PMs and Gases today released into the atmosphere, and then the use of any post -treatment equipment, mentioned in item E), will no longer be necessary.

    •The TCS Company is preparing, together with two others large Companies, one in the metal-mechanical area and the other in the electrical area, the start of manufacturing of the ESP-SS/ACI/DSI equipment.
    Still during 2018 the first one must be installed and operating.

    * PS: This new technology, the Selective Switching – SS –  is already being installed in a Brazilian company, in Vitoria / ES / Brazil. 

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