Device Cuts Car Emissions, Helps Make Diamonds
Scientists have developed a device that can remove about 70% of pollutants from car exhaust fumes and produces carbon that can be made into diamonds, New Scientist magazine said yesterday. Read More
Scientists have developed a device that can remove about 70% of pollutants from car exhaust fumes and produces carbon that can be made into diamonds, New Scientist magazine said yesterday.
The device heats exhaust gases to three times the melting point of steel in order to break pollutants down into ions, positively or negatively charged atoms. When the mixture cools the ions bond to form less harmful substances.
“Under ideal lab conditions, we get up to a 90% reduction in carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons. On the road it will probably fall to around 70%,” said Elias Siores, one of the developers of the wine bottle-sized device.
Although the device cut down on harmful emissions it increased the number of carbon particles in the exhaust.
So Siores, from Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, and fellow inventor Carlos Destefani found a way of collecting the carbon and converting it into industrial-grade diamonds.
The carbon is collected by an electrostatic liner in the exhaust. The particles can then be mixed with an inert gas that has been heated with microwaves to form a volatile liquid. The liquid is sprayed onto a glass surface to produce industrial grade diamond, New Scientist said.
“Every time you get your car serviced, you’d have the filter taken out and it would be sent to the factory and used to make industrial diamond,” Siores said in New Scientist.
The emissions device could also be used to cut down pollutants from other sources such as factories, power stations, refineries, and chemical plants.
