Conclusion

Climate change is a serious problem in our country. Specifically, global warming is happening now. To help combat this problem, our group has designed an open system, carbon dioxide to oxygen transduction device for air pollution remediation. This filtering device was built to convert harmful gases (mainly carbon dioxide) released from car mufflers (Jeep Wrangler) to cleaner gas, oxygen. The transduction device had two compartments where the first compartment allows the gas to enter, and the second hosts the English Ivy plants that converts CO₂ to O₂ via photosynthesis. This design was conducted over a 10-weeks span where the overall goal was to make the device 10% efficient by reducing at least 10% of the amount carbon dioxide that was emitted by the car into the air.  Some examples of the technical activities that were done to ensure a successful completion of the transduction device and also achievement of the overall goal included:

v  Testing the Efficiency of the CO₂ to O₂ Conversion

 Ø  Calibration of the CO₂ sensors needed to measure the amount of CO₂ so as to determine the rate of photosynthesis from automotive fuels. This calibration was done three times to improve the accuracy of the CO₂ meters.

 Ø  Testing the release of CO₂ with and without plants- experimentation was done to measure air exchange rate for determining the efficiency of English Ivy to eliminate CO₂ from the atmosphere.

 Ø  Calculations done to illustrate the amount of CO₂ reduce with the transduction device. This resulted in 2.65* 10^12 ppm/year or 5.61*10^21 metric tons/year was the amount of CO₂ reduced in a year for all cars in America given travel 5hrs a week, 52 weeks a year.

 Ø  For more detailed information about the design, please see the weekly updates and technical activities sections of the blog.

Lastly, a final concept idea for a future advanced Transduction Device was put forth. The final concept design will still be an open system. The idea is to split the muffler into two mufflers. At the end of each muffler, a valve system would be placed as a form of a fail-safe. The valves will make sure that the temperature and pressure stay ideal because if they do not, some of the gases can become flammable or even turn into dry ice causing the device to become hazardous. After the valves' system is opened to allow the fumes to go into the system, the two mufflers will run through the sides of the car separately. The fumes will go through the valves' system and into the area where the genetically modified plants are located, so they can convert the carbon dioxide to oxygen. The reason that the genetically modified plants are being used is that these plants will be able to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen at a faster rate and they will be able to work during intense heat.