An MIT spinoff company in India is proposing a novel solution to air pollution problems in Asia — turning vehicle exhaust into ink.
It involves attaching a device, called a Kaalink, to the business end of a standard automobile exhaust pipe. The Kaalink filters and captures unburned carbon emitted by incomplete engine combustion. The technical details of the process are secret, but officials at Gravinky Labs, a spinoff company from MIT Media Lab, said the process is largely mechanical and relatively straightforward.
"Our device is designed as a clever fusion of electronic sensors, mechanical actuators and a collection system," company co-founder Anirudh Sharma told Seeker in an email exchange from India. "It is retrofitted to the exhaust pipe of vehicles and mounts through a triangulated screw/clamp-set."
According to tests at Graviky Labs, the Kaalink device can capture up to 93 percent of the emitted pollution from standard internal combustion engines. It takes about 45 minutes of exhaust filtering to produce an ounce of ink.
But how does the captured carbon get turned into ink? Well, that's under wraps too, but Sharma said the captured carbon comes out the other end of the process as a high-quality printing ink that can be sold in both the consumer and industrial markets. The company has a new crowdfunding campaign to refine its development.
Right now, Kaalink devices have to be individually and manually installed by drivers. When the collection apparatus is full, the device can be traded in at Graviky Labs facility in India. Sharma said each unit typically collects carbon for about two weeks of city driving before it needs to be swapped out.
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