Meet the IIT graduate whose device can help curb vehicular pollution
Developed by Debayan Saha, the '-2.5' device can be fitted near the silencer pipe of the vehicles, which would act as a magnet and attract particulate pollutants from the atmosphere.
We are not unfamiliar with the fact that vehicular emission is a major contributor to air pollution. Many governments are trying innovative ways to address the problem. The Delhi government, for instance, introduced an ‘Odd-Even rule’ for January 2016, where vehicles could be on the road only on certain days, depending on their licence plate number.
According to a survey, there are more than 21 crore vehicles in India. And, while keeping half the vehicles off the road will help curb pollution slightly as there will be fewer carbon emission, it is still not a concrete plan.
The PM 2.5 device and Debayan Saha (Image: Millenium Post, Stanford)
To help curb vehicular pollution, an IIT-Kharagpur graduate has built a device known as ‘-2.5', to tackle the namesake pollutant. Mechanical engineer Debayan Saha has created the device such that it can be fit near the silencer pipe on vehicles, in order to cut down vehicular pollution.
“The technology developed by us uses a combination of electric energy and wave energy to influence pollutants like PM 2.5, such that they act like a magnet attracting other particulate pollutants from the ambient atmosphere to get attached to it. As they grow bigger, they become heavy and fall off safely on the ground, like soil,” Debayan told Business Standard.
PM 2.5 are tiny particles in the air that reduce visibility and cause the air to appear hazy when levels are elevated. It is a major air pollutant that can travel deep into the lungs causing short-term health effects such as eye, nose, throat and lung irritation, coughing, shortness of breath, among others. It can also cause severe medical conditions such as asthma and heart disease.
The device built by Debayan can be integrated onto any vehicle, from cars to buses. Once integrated, the device can absorb the pollutants not only from the silencer of the car, but also from other cars as well in the surrounding.
"One car on the street can now alleviate the pollution in its immediate environment, and potentially neutralise the pollution emitted from 10 cars in its vicinity. Diving really deep into the problem, they found the main culprit is not PM- 2.5 but its tiny size, because of which it can easily enter into our lungs and bloodstream," he said.
Debayan, currently a global biodesign student at Stanford University, is also in talks with various organisations to deploy his device on vehicles to curb pollution, ScoopWhoop reported.
(Edited by Suman Singh)
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