科学家将污染物变成打印机墨水
MIT scientist turns pollution into printer ink
Anirudh Sharma doesn't just want to pull harmful carbon from the air. He wants to offer a cheaper alternative to the exorbitant costs of ordinary printer ink.
阿尼鲁德·夏尔马不仅想除掉空气中的有害炭物质,还希望创造一种更便宜的普通打印机油墨,解决墨水价格高昂的问题.
Sharma recently invented "Kaala," a device that can gobble up harmful pollutants and instantly repurpose them, with a little help from alcohol and oil, into black printer ink.
夏尔马最近发明了一种名叫"Kaala"的装置,它能吞掉有害污染物并迅速将其变成有用物质,只需加点酒精和油,就能生成黑色打印机墨水.
One day, Sharma hopes to commercialize the device so it can live in every home around the world.
将来,夏尔马希望能将这个设置商业化,希望世界上的每家每户都能使用它.
The idea came to him after one-too-many smog-filled trips to his home country of India.
他经常去烟雾严重的祖国印度,如此往返,就有了灵感.
"On a hot summer day, if you take a handkerchief and rub it on your skin, the handkerchief actually turns a little brownish-blackish in color," says Sharma, a scientist at MIT's Media Lab. "So we thought, 'How do we repurpose something we complain about on an everyday basis into something that is a utility?'"
"在酷热的夏日,如果你拿手帕擦皮肤,手帕就会变得乌黑,"麻省理工学院（MIT）媒体实验室的科学家夏尔马说,"所以我们就想'能不能把这种我们天天抱怨的东西变成日常用品呢？'"
For the device to work, it first needs to be exposed to exhaust. In his demo, Sharma uses the flame of a candle.
要让这个设置运行,得先把它放在废气中.做实验时,夏尔马用的是蜡烛燃烧产生的废气.
While the candle burns, a suction pump pulls in the surrounding air to a simple mechanism that separates the carbon black — a byproduct of combustion — from the rest of the air. It then traps the soot in a small chamber to be mixed with alcohol — in this case, vodka — and a drop of olive oil.
