Students create a tool that turns cigarette smoke into oxygen
Ainur Rohmah, The Jakarta Post,
Bright ideas might come anytime, anywhere. After taking a closer look at some smoking rooms provided in public areas in Central Java’s Semarang, Hermawan Maulana, 16, and Zihrama Afdi, 17, high school students of SMA 3 Semarang, had an idea to create an application that can turn the poisonous cigarette smoke into oxygen………………………
And voila, they created an application called T-Box, or Thunder Box, to reduce the dangerous effects of carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO2) in the smoking room by turning the two carbons into oxygen (O2).
Their efforts have earned them gold medals at the 2012 International Exhibition for Young Inventors (IEYI) held recently in Bangkok, Thailand.
In the competition, they beat 205 participants from eight countries — Hong Kong, Malaysia, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore and Taiwan.
There are similar air purifier in the market which does the same thing. What is of interest is the cost of this version. For under $21, if it can be mass produced, it would be a bargain compared to the current products in the market.
However, this system uses quite a bit of high voltage to burn atoms which in effect would require a high amount of electricity. As we all know, that means more greenhouse gas emission. Essentially, it would have a high operating cost.