Technical Innovations to Pollution
- Rapidly developing LDEs and EMEs have some of the highest rates of air pollution and reducing urban air pollution globally, is a challenge
- Strategies include:
- Technical innovations
- Vehicle restrictions
- Government legislation
- Filters
- Fitted to industrial gas and particulate exhausts, filters carbon out of the gases released during industrial processes
- Any emitted gases are chemical and pollutant free when released back into the environment
- Catalytic converters fitted to vehicle exhausts remove harmful pollutants before being released
- Photo-catalytic materials (smog eating material)
- Façades are retrofitted to the front of old buildings or new buildings are constructed with photocatalytic concrete
- Special tiles are coated with titanium dioxide, which is a pigment that acts as a catalyst and is also used in sunscreen
- When UV rays hit the tiles, a reaction occurs, converting mono-nitrogen oxides (smog producing substances) into less harmful calcium nitrate and water
- Titanium dioxide within the tiles isn't altered and continues to work indefinitely
- Self-cleaning concrete - Tiocem
- This is photocatalytic concrete that has titanium dioxide mixed in
- Buildings will be able to break down nitric and nitrogen oxides when hit by sunlight
- Can also be used for constructing paving, roofing tiles, roads, and in sound buffering walls on the sides of roads
- Smog Eating Poem, - the University of Sheffield, UK, has dedicated one of its walls to a smog-eating poem called In Praise of Air
- The poem is printed on material infused with titanium dioxide that reduces air pollution
- The banner removes the pollution of at least 20 cars every day
- Following this, smog-eating advertising posters have begun appearing in other parts of the world, including a mural made of photocatalytic paint pigments in Warsaw, Poland
- Greening the urban area
- Improve air quality through planting trees and vegetation
- Vertical gardens - around concrete columns and on the sides of buildings
- Roof gardens
- Urban agriculture using open and derelict spaces
- Air purification towers
- Dutch designed “Smog Free Tower” which is an air purifying tower that sucks in pollution and expels clean air
- The first tower was installed in Rotterdam, and cleans 3.5 million cubic metres of air per day
- Self-driving cars
- Studies have estimated that self-driving vehicles could improve fuel efficiency by 15-40%, which would reduce local emissions of pollutants as well as global greenhouse gases
- Hydrogen fuel additives
- Additives improve fuel combustion and reduces emissions in existing vehicles
- UK developed 'ezero1' technology feeds small amounts of hydrogen into the vehicle air intake, creating a more efficient burn
- By increasing fuel efficiency, there is an overall reduction in nitrogen oxide (NOx), particulate matter (PM), hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions
- The technology can be retrofitted to existing vehicles and is available commercially in small numbers
- Alternative fuels
- Electric
- Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs)
- Plug-in hybrids (PHEVs)
- Fully electric (EVs)
- LPG
- Dual fuel or bi-fuel vehicles that can switch between LPG and petrol
- LPG is a by-product of the crude oil refining process
- Contains a mix of hydrocarbon gases and considered having a relatively low environmental impact
- LPG has many uses from cooking to heating, refrigeration to vehicle fuel
- Synthetic “gas to liquid” (GTL)
- Shell has developed a new GTL fuel as a replacement for diesel and the engine needs no modification
- Testing of GTL in heavy vehicles (trucks, buses and ships etc.) and depending on the vehicle age, showed reduced nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions of 5-37%, and particulate matter (PM) emissions of 10-38%,
- Natural gas can also be converted into dimethyl ether (DME) as another alternative to diesel
- Although the engine needs modifying, using DME reduces NOx emissions by around 25% and PM emissions virtually eliminated
- Car makers Ford and Volvo, are considering marketing vehicles already able to use DME as a fuel
- Electric