What's the best thing you can do with the gases your car belches out? Right now they just pollute the air.
An Indian startup named Graviky Labs has developed a new product called Air-ink that could help combat this problem. Designed by founder Anirudh Sharma while he was a researcher at MIT Labs, a cylindrical device attached to the exhaust pipes of cars removes the soot from the emissions. Later, this collected smog can be converted to black pigment for artists can use.
Three years in development, the device is currently under certification process and was piloted in Hong Kong, but works on a very small scale. A 30 ml Air-ink pen needs around 30-50 minutes of vehicular exhaust, which means that for now, there is little use for the product beyond its use as an art project.
Artists have been using smog to create works of art for quite some time now. Last year, Chinese artist Wang Renzheng or Nut Brother walked around the streets of Beijing for 100 days collecting air pollutants with an industrial strength vacuum cleaner. He later went to a factory to convert the smog he collected — which would otherwise be in the lungs of hundreds of people — into a brick.
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