Smog Free Tower

In my last post, I discussed the Dearman Engine, which posed a viable solution to the NOx emission problem. However, NOx gases are only a small part of a bigger issue: smog. Smog is produced through the burning of fossil fuels and their derivatives, and it contains a large assortment of particulates and greenhouse gasses.

Because smog is such an issue, I would like to discuss a proposed solution: the Smog Free Tower.

The tower is the work product of Dutch visionary Daan Roosegaarde and his team at Studio Roosegaarde as well as the company ENS Clean Air. Studio Roosegaarde, started in 2007, aims to find innovative ways to solve today’s environmental issues. The tower is but one of their many projects.

The Smog Free Tower

At 7 meters tall, the Smog Free Tower is designed to clean air saturated with smog. The tower does this through a process called positive ionization, which I will discuss later. Using this technique, the tower filters around 30,000 cubic meters of air every hour.

More important than capacity, however, is effectiveness. In a 2017 study completed by the Eindhoven University of Technology, the tower was said to eliminate 70% of PM10 and 50% of PM2.5 from the processed air. PM10 and PM2.5 refer to the diameter of particulate matter in microns.

Before this study, the tower went on a tour of China in 2016 to test its operation in high-smog environments. Throughout the tour, the tower functioned extremely well in a variety of locations. The success of this tour, combined with the promising results of the Eindhoven study, go far in arguing for the validity of this technology.

Still, we must ask ourselves: how does it work?

Positive Ionization

The tower processes smog in the air through principles of positive ionization. Air ionization, a well-documented practice, can be used in many applications, including the reduction of static electricity and separation of particulates from the air. Although the company’s positive ionization process is not specifically discussed, I decided to apply the principles of air ionization to attempt an explanation.

When an AC current is applied to the air, positive and negative ions are created. With a DC current, however, it is possible to create only positive or only negative ions. The process of positive ionization likely refers to the former of these two options.

The positively ionized air (primarily oxygen, nitrogen, and argon) attracts the polar compounds in smog – CO, NOx, and others. These compounds gather around the ion, clumping together and weighing it down. This not only creates larger particulates, it also helps to separate them from the air.

While the description of this process is speculative, derived from the descriptions of air ionization technology, its results are supported by ENS’s description of the system. They claim the “positive ionization technology [is used] to capture fine dust and transform it into coarse dust.” As explained in my theorized description of the process, the particles will gather and grow in size — growing from fine dust to coarse dust.

Although my description is not based on any actual information released from the company, it may portray at least a semi-accurate account of the technology.

Other Smog-Related Projects

In addition to their Smog Free Tower, Roosegaarde has two more initiatives for their Smog Free campaign. Both are designed to increase awareness of their brand and encourage the reduction of smog.

The first, a Smog Free Ring, is derived from the Smog Free Tower. The ring’s ‘stone’ takes the form of a small cube of smog encased within a larger, clear cube. The smog represents 1,000 cubic meters of filtered air, and is currently a permanent exhibit in 3 museums. Purchased by many couples, the ring costs $294.

The second venture, the Smog Free Bicycle, uses a mountable filter to clean air for the rider. The filter takes in air from the front end, filters it, and exhausts the clean air around the rider. The studio hopes to have bike share companies use this technology as a standard within cities.

Just as for the environment, there is also much benefit for the rider. He or she will now have fresh air blown into his or her face, making a smog-filled day more than rideable!

Cleaner Air, Better Future

The smog free tower, along with its counterparts, is a fantastic step in the right direction. The different designs are portable, easy to incorporate, and perform their function admirably. With more Smog Free campaigns and technologies to match, our atmosphere may just survive the future.

In the minds of most, the plastic problem is most readily associated with pollution. Images of beaches covered in plastic bottles, sea turtles and fish swimming with plastic bags, and the sides of roads littered with colorful pieces of trash are the first things that come to mind. Plastic pollution is generally referred to as a separate issue from climate change, but, in fact, the production and disposal of plastics contribute significantly to climate change-inducing emissions. A 2019 report by the Center for International Environmental Law determined that the impact of plastic production on the world’s climate in one year will equate to the output of 189 coal-fired power stations, and according to a report by Yale’s Climate Connections, “today, about 4-8% of annual global oil consumption is associated with plastics… If this reliance on plastics persists, plastics will account for 20% of oil consumption by 2050.” 

Plastic is made out of crude oil, which means it is one of the many cogs of the fossil fuel industry. From cradle to grave, plastics emit greenhouse gases in nearly every phase of their long lifecycle. The same processes used to extract oil for fuel are used to extract oil for plastic–fracking, drilling wells, and land disturbance. The emissions from driving a car is more likely to be linked with intensifying climate change than using plastic utensils or taking your carry-out in a plastic container, but both have their origins in extracted fossil fuels. 

The disposal of plastic waste is equally destructive to the planet, and though recycling is a better alternative than using virgin plastic, large-scale recycling facilities are energy and resource-consuming. Even so, the greenhouse gas emissions saved from not having to extract new oil offset the small amount of greenhouse gasses produced from recycling. Making new products from recycled plastic is more than 3x more efficient in terms of greenhouse gas emissions than manufacturing those same products with virgin raw materials. Unfortunately, our plastic waste problem does not end here. The high costs of recycling paired with the low costs of obtaining virgin plastic mean that “plastic recycling is rarely profitable and requires considerable government subsidies.”

As recycling policies have changed worldwide, recycling has become an even more expensive form of waste management. Rather than investing in more or better recycling facilities, countries have increasingly turned to incineration. In only one year, in the United States alone, “The climate impact of plastic waste incineration… [was] equivalent to 1.26 million passenger vehicles driven for one year, or more than half a billion gallons of gasoline consumed.” Incineration isn’t only an injustice to the planet, it is also an extreme detriment to human health. For workers who spend their day in incineration facilities and for the communities living near these operations, the pollutants from burning plastic can seriously threaten one’s health. While landfilling plastic waste has fewer immediate greenhouse-gas associated costs, the placement of landfills presents similar injustices as incinerators do. 

Let’s recall the image of oceans filled with plastic again. Plastic floating around in the water has become as normal to the scenery as seaweed or other aquatic life, but plastic pollution in the ocean has a much more deadly effect on the planet than can be immediately perceived. When rainforests are characterized as being the greatest carbon-eating entity, it is easy to forget that our oceans are the largest natural carbon sink for greenhouse gases. Plastic chokes this process in several ways. Not only does plastic in the ocean heated up by the sun release harmful greenhouse gasses such as methane and ethylene, but microplastics also hurt one of our ocean’s biggest unsung heroes–plankton. Plankton play a crucial role in “taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and water and sequestering it in deep ocean sinks.” This is already an issue when at least 8 million tons of plastic waste enters our oceans each year, but with this number set to double by 2030, the seemingly imperceivable disruption of ocean plankton will have severe costs to the climate. 

No matter how plastics are disposed of, environmental degradation is inevitable. Curtailing our reliance on plastic is critical in fighting the impacts that plastic has on all scales of life–from tiny plankton in our seas, to our earth’s climate.  

The Dearman Engine

The Problem

It is no great secret that our well-being is tied to, among other things, the contents of our air. Currently, cars, coal-burning plants, diesel-powered machines, and more are releasing dangerous amounts of Nitrogen Oxides, or variants of NOx, into our atmosphere. These chemical compounds are known green house gasses and also serve as long-term health risks.

This is clearly an issue, but what are we doing to solve it? One tech company, Dearman, has designed a new engine for peripheral systems . The so-called Dearman engine will be able to replace many diesel counterparts in cooling, heating, and power applications.

The Engine

The Dearman engine draws information from the Industrial Revolution’s steam engines – but with a twist. Instead of heating water, causing it to expand and push a piston, the engine heats up liquid nitrogen with air and hot water. During this process, the liquid nitrogen expands to 710 times its initial volume, making it much more effective than steam engines. Click on the image below to see the process as a GIF.

The engine works much like current combustion engines. As portrayed in the images below, there are 4 main stages to the stroking process. The first step of this process begins when the piston is in its ‘Return Stroke’. During this time, the piston pulls warm water into the chamber.

During the upstroke, the water is compressed and, in a position described as ‘Top Dead Centre’, the liquid nitrogen is pumped into the chamber. The nitrogen becomes gaseous, expanding rapidly with a relatively stable temperature (the reaction is largely isothermic).

The expansion of the gas pushes the piston down in the ‘Power Stroke’, turning the drive shaft. Finally, the momentum of the drive shaft pushes the piston upwards, expelling the gas and water out of the chamber. The piston then travels downwards, and the process begins again.

The Environment

Most engines emit CO2 and NOx gasses, which are harmful to the environment — and your health! The Dearman engine, however, solves this issue. The now-cooled water is recycled within the system and the nitrogen gas is exhausted. Atmospheric nitrogen, which has decreased as a result of human civilization (replaced by nitrogen compounds), is extremely beneficial to the ecosystem.

This engine not only ceases to emit nitrogen compounds, it also emits much-needed nitrogen back into the atmosphere.

The Applications

Dearman has already begun using their engine to power a variety of systems. Under the projects section of the website, the company discusses their current ventures.

The Transport Refrigeration Unit (TRU): The Dearman Engine, with its liquid nitrogen system, is ideal for cooling applications. The engine is quieter, quicker, and more efficient than its diesel counterparts — plus its clean!

The Dearman Generator (Genset): While the Dearman Genset is still in its design phases, the company hopes it will surpass diesel generators in both efficiency and emissions. The generator, because its functioning is liquid-nitrogen-based, will also provide a unique service to environments that need special cooling.

The Dearman Heat Hybrid (DHH): The Dearman Heat Hybrid is the company’s vision of a diesel-Dearman hybrid. The waste heat generated by the diesel engine can be used by the Dearman engine to increase its efficiency. Already, there has been rigorous testing of a large hybrid bus, with promising results.

The Future

The Dearman engine promises much, but it still has a long way to go. A big leap will occur when the engine gains enough power to fully operate a car — and it is only a matter of time. As mentioned above, the company has already successfully tested a hybrid engine for a bus. Technologies like the Dearman engine are entering the market at an encouraging rate, and it seems many of them are promising increased efficiency over their polluting counterparts.

 

Plastic has become an inevitable, near unavoidable part of our lives in the 21st century. Its pervasiveness makes it difficult to view each piece of plastic as something so detrimental to our environment. But it hasn’t been this way for very long–the rapid increase in the use of plastic is a relatively new phenomenon of the past couple of decades.

Around the world, we now produce over 300 million tons of plastic waste every year. However, in 1990, we produced 120 million tons. How has this issue gotten so out of hand so quickly? And where is all of this waste going? The story of plastic reveals a convoluted tale of corporations valuing profits over all else and the dangerous trope of “out of sight, out of mind.”

The creation of plastic has undeniably served the world in positive ways–medicine, science, and technology likely would not be where it is today without the use of plastics. This, however, is not why plastic waste has doubled since 1990.

Today, single-use plastics make up 50% of yearly plastic waste. In other words, the accumulation of seemingly benign items like plastic bags – which are used for an average of 12 minutes – are choking our environment with plastic waste.

It is easy to immediately blame those who don’t bring their own reusable grocery bags to the store or who don’t carry around a Nalgene everywhere they go. It’s important to recognize, however, that the plastic industry and large beverage corporations directly shaped this consumer-focused narrative and continue to benefit from it today.

In the years before the first Earth Day in 1970, environmental demonstrations across America decried the issue of throw-away containers, holding manufacturers responsible for the waste crisis the country was beginning to see unfold.

The Keep America Beautiful campaign–backed by corporation giants like Coca-Cola–responded to this call for change by rapidly shifting the narrative of blame back on the consumer through a series of targeted, emotional advertisements that convinced the American public that pollution was, in fact, the individual’s fault.

Recycling, since then, has been seen as a way in which consumers can do their duty of keeping the environment plastic-and-trash-free. But the recycling system as we know it is broken. Worldwide, under 20% of plastics are recycled, while 25% is incinerated and the remaining 55% is discarded, with much finding its way to the ocean. In the United States, recycling rates are even worse at around 8%.

Since the 1980s, the majority of our recyclables had been shipped to China to be processed and recycled. In 2018, China changed their waste-management policies and banned nearly all imports of foreign trash.

The United States simply does not have the recycling infrastructure in place to deal with the astounding 34 million tons of plastic waste produced every year, and as such, more plastics have been added to the landfill or burned. Rather than improve our recycling systems, the U.S. has continued to export our problems to countries that are economically vulnerable.

Countries in Southeast Asia have been flooded with Western garbage in overwhelming quantities since 2018 and are then blamed as being the top polluters in the world. Recycling and the education around it has not been a priority in this country, and the consequences of our wasteful decisions are ones that we are not forced to face on a daily basis.

The plastic industry has been selling us convenience for decades, and we’ve been buying it. Many of us have grown up in an age where we’ve known nothing but a throw-away economy that craves ease above all else. The recycling system in America contributes to this mindset, as it is often assumed that as long as we throw everything in the recycling bin, we are doing enough for the planet.

But to actually combat this waste crisis and plastic pollution, the recycling system in this country must be overhauled. Small-scale solutions like Precious Plastics have shown innovative possibilities that transform how waste is viewed. Furthermore, the issue of plastic use itself must be reckoned with.

Large corporations have created a world where sustainable options are more costly, time consuming, and seemingly inconvenient. However, those of us who have the privilege to make environmental changes in our lives have a responsibility to do so.

The idea around waste needs to change. We should be mindful about where our trash goes and the consequences our decisions could have not only on the environment but on people around the world.

At the same time, no one should forget that the top three plastic polluters in the world are Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestlé – three colossal corporations with an abundance of resources and money to either stop proliferating single-use plastics or to find innovative alternatives.

While plastic pollution has been a corporation-pushed problem, we as consumers must fight for the solution or change will simply never come and profits will continue to determine the fate of our planet. In the face of the climate crisis, our futures depend on immediate action and a complete upheaval of many facets of our society, including how we accumulate and dispose of waste.

The drastic change that this planet needs to fight climate change and pollution will not come unless those who have the means to do so show corporations and the plastic industry that single-use plastics are no longer acceptable–not only through their day-to-day choices, but in the demands they make of their elected officials, as well.