Emissions Device Makes Diamonds

LONDON--The New Scientist magazine is reporting the invention of a device that can remove about 70 percent of the pollutants from car exhaust fumes while at the same time producing carbon that can be made into diamonds.

According to the magazine, this gem of a device heats exhaust gases to three times the melting point of steel in order to break pollutants down into ions, which are positively or negatively charged atoms. When the mixture cools the ions bond to form less harmful substances. “Under ideal lab conditions, we get up to a 90 percent reduction in carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons. On the road it will probably fall to around 70 percent,” one of the developers of the wine bottle-sized device, Elias Siores, told the Reuters news service.

Although the device reduces harmful emissions, it increases the number of carbon particles in the exhaust. To solve this, Siores, of Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, and Carlos Destefani, his fellow inventor, have found a method of collecting the carbon and converting it into industrial-grade diamonds. The carbon is gathered by an electrostatic liner in the exhaust. The particles can then be mixed with an inert gas that has been heated with microwaves to form a volatile liquid. The liquid is sprayed onto a glass surface to produce industrial an grade diamond, according to the New Scientist. “Every time you get your car serviced, you’d have the filter taken out and it would be sent to the factory and used to make industrial diamond,” Siores said in the piece.

The emissions device could also be used to cut down pollutants from other sources such as factories, power stations, refineries and chemical plants, according to the article.