Environment & Energy

eridani

(51,907 posts) Tue Oct 13, 2015, 03:19 AM Oct 2015

Thanks to This MIT Scientist, You Can Press Print Using Air Pollution

http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/10/12/press-print-air-pollution
'
That’s the concept behind Kaala, a device created by Anirudh Sharma, an award-winning inventor in India. Kaala sucks pollution from the air and turns it into black printer ink. “This started as a side project, but the impact seemed huge on showing it to people,” Sharma wrote in an email to TakePart.

Sharma, who has co-led the MIT Media Lab India Initiative for the past two years, came up with the idea while reflecting on his personal experience with air pollution.

“Just a minor itch that led me to build something cool from observations arising from nostalgia of the days back in India,” Sharma explained on the project’s website. “There’s so much soot/pollution around us, [especially] in crowded cities. What if the same could be repurposed to generate ink for printers?”

Most ink used in printers is “produced in factories with complex chemical procedures,” added Sharma. “Companies like HP/Canon make 70 percent of their profits by selling these cartridges at 400 percent margin.”

As seen in the video above, Sharma re-created the production of air pollution with a burning candle that emits black carbon-based soot. Kaala uses a simple pump to suck the soot into the device, where it is then mixed with vodka and a bit of olive oil to give it the liquidity of printer ink. Inject the ink into a cartridge, and presto, it’s ready to use.