Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was a giant vacuum cleaner designed to filter out the fine and ultra-fine pollution particles linked to early death? There is, courtesy of a small Dutch tech company called Envinity.
courtesy Envinity Group
According to a report in the World Economic Forum, the giant vacuum cleaner can suck air pollution right out of the sky:
The Dutch inventors say that their machine can filter 95% of ultra-fine particles and 100% of fine particles out of the air. It cleans 80,000 m³ of air per hour within a 300-meter radius and up to a height of 7km.
“It’s a large industrial filter about 8 metres long, made of steel … placed basically on top of buildings and it works like a big vacuum cleaner,” said Henk Boersen, a spokesman for the Envinity Group, which unveiled the system at an energy conference in Amsterdam.
“A large column of air will pass through the filter and come out clear,” Boersen told AFP at the conference.
In a world of pollution, you might call this news a potential breath of fresh air.
Solution or Möbius strip?
Parametric plot of a Möbius strip – Wikipedia
Like many things, it sounds good on paper.
But is it a real solution or a Möbius strip of technology that takes you on an infinite loop of possibilities and never actually delivers the finished product?
Conceptually, it’s a no-brainer. The polluted air goes in. The filter does its magic. And, presto – clean air
Just for fun though, let me try this out this scenario.
We build and then plug in the giant filter to run with power that creates pollution. The filter cleans the air polluted partly by the production of electricity that the filter needs in order to operate the filter and clean the air which is partly polluted by the production of electricity…
I think you get the joke.
Let’s hope Envinity’s giant vacuum cleaner has a giant net benefit in greenhouse gas terms.
Of course, I’m just trying to illustrate the point that we can’t deny the impact of pollution and global warming. Even small steps can make a difference to the environment before we have no room to maneuver at all
Who wins? Gasbags or global warming?
US Capitol Building
The acute problem of the day after the US election is who will deny the global warming deniers?
The gasbags and greenhouse gas deniers will be out in full force in Congress and the Senate.
And the White House?
The White House won’t need one of these super Dooper environmental vacuums now. Because the President-Elect says global warming is a “hoax” and “created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.”
POTUS will rip it up in DC
He’s pledged to rip up the Paris Accord on global warming initiatives.
Come to think of it, there’s a whole lot of “ripping up” planned in the first month or two of the new administration.
The irony is a climate change infrastructure initiative could create millions of high paying jobs in the US.
When the new POTUS visits China to rip up the trade deal, he’d better bring along a surgical mask to wear like millions of Beijing residents. The air there is brown, nasty and harmful to your health.
Trump may not get greenhouse gases and global warming but he does claim to understand economics. Let’s hope so.
If you think about it, some of these filters could be really useful in eliminating some of the gasbags and hot air in DC while the swamp is being drained.
I wonder if Envinity needs a PR and marketing team in the US?
Author: Jeff Domansky
