Diesel generators are pretty dirty machines that blow soot into the air. A Startup out of Delhi, it is managed to make it out of the exhaust something meaningful: ink. It’s now been awarded.
Sometimes the air in Delhi is so dirty that you can hardly see the Hand in front of your eyes. It is not a coincidence, because the air quality in the Indian Megacity is one of the worst in the world.
Everyday for Arpit Dhupar. The 25-year-old grew up in Delhi. For him, diseases of the respiratory system were also a part of since childhood. Now the mechanical engineer is fighting against the Filth in the air. His idea of the cause for the Dirt: the ever-present diesel generators in the city.
Whenever in the 17-million metropolis the power goes out, you will be fired up. And the is often.
“The Problem is that diesel generators emit a lot of smoke from unburnt Diesel or soot. And this is very harmful for the health of the people,” says Dhupar of the DW. “The smoke consists of very fine particles, which can not be from the nose or lungs, filter it. You enter directly into the bloodstream.”
Dhupar grew up in Delhi and suffered as a child from the consequences of air pollution
As from soot ink
Filter systems are not New. However, they capture only the soot. Dhupar and his co-founder at Chakr Innovation in order to process it.
“The idea came to me by the many traders who sell in India, sugar cane juice. The use of small diesel engines to operate their presses,” explains Dhupar.
One day, he noticed that the wall colored behind one of the exhaust pipes black. “I wondered if you could make something, so the Mud capture, and thus, walls to paint.”
With his idea he began to seek supporters. He went first to his University professors. The saw, however, no future. If it would, they say, then it would have made someone already.
“But there is a saying,” says Dhupar. “The fool didn’t know it was impossible so he did it anyway.” And he and his former fellow students would have nothing to lose. So they had tried it.
More on the topic: “Smogathon”: Startups against Smog
They founded the Startup Chakr innovation, and after several failures they managed to eventually develop a device, the exhaust catches the soot from diesel in a liquid. “These engines are very sensitive to resistance in the flow of the exhaust gases. This is called counter-pressure. We have managed, with a low counter-pressure is very much the soot field. The had managed before us.”
When converting soot particles in ink will not be discharged to the air
That is bound to the carbon black in a fluid, has great advantages. On the one hand, the microscopic particles can no longer be stirred up and distributed, on the other hand, it is only a small step to ink or color of the wall. Once the pollutants have been removed from the sooty solution, customers need to be told what kind of color you need.
“All that’s missing is the right amount and the right kind of binder,” says Dhupar. Then you could print everything from T-Shirts and coffee mugs to greeting cards, or product packaging.
“Our largest customer for ink-Dell,” says the Startup founder. “You will use to print the cartons for their Laptops.”
Find out more: Sought-after commodity: air
But just as the printing of boxes is the core business of Dell, it was the goal of Chakr Innovation to become the market leader for ink.
“The Problem in the world is not that we have too little ink, the Problem is that we have too much air pollution,” said Dhupar. Therefore, his company was working on the development of filter systems which prevent contaminants in the atmosphere.
Even if Chakr Innovation has only sold 50 of its devices, the Startup has already cooperated with some big companies, including IndianOil and Bosch. Also, prices won Chakr, including, recently, the UNEP Young Champions of the Earth Award.
Chakr Innovation has found a new way to filter dirt particles from diesel generators and in ink convert
Next level: Chimneys on ships
While the customer base increased, so have the Startup founder, a new destination in mind: the emissions of large vessels.
Because cruise ships and large container ships are one of the largest air verpestern in the world. You burn often much dirtier fuel than cars and generators, and encounter sulphur oxides (SOx).
“We have developed our technology further, so that you can also work on marine engines. Thus, we could reduce SOx emissions by 90 percent,” says Dhupar. Now we search for partners in the shipping industry, to test the technology under real-world conditions.
“Existing filter systems work by using water is sprayed into a chamber in the exhaust system to remove the sulphur oxides from the air. It’s called wet wash,” he explains. “What we build, it would require much less energy and would be much cheaper.”