Our project helps to overcome household air pollution, especially in poor countries where its consequences have a greater impact. Based on the International Space Station’s Life Support System, we designed an air purifier of modular nature, in which each module fulfills one specific function, such as pressure regulation, temperature control, and air revitalization. Data collected from satellite imagery is used to understand how air quality varies from one country to another. With this understanding, it becomes possible to adapt the modules of ARAUCARIA to better match purifying requirements with fewer components, reducing the final product’s cost and, therefore, making it more accessible to the poorest portion of the population
The modules connect to each other through threads built-in their cases. When attached, their electrical contacts connect to each other, allowing for power to be supplied for the module or passed through to the next one. Some of the modules developed for the ARAUCARIA air filter are:
Tower Base: The base is the module where the power delivery systems and fans are stored. It’s responsible for the suction of the contaminated air and pushing it through the adjacent filters. It also delivers power to other modules. It is the only mandatory module of the system.
Module 1 - Air Quality Monitor: A circuit board module with an embedded microcontroller, sensors, and wireless communication chips, protected by an aerodynamic package that collects untreated ambient air and analyses its composition. The data can be used for local air quality monitoring or sent to authorities and researches through the internet. If shared, the data helps to build a map of air pollution in the city. This information can then be used to develop actions aiming to increase air quality.
Module 2 - Fine particle filter: a module that contains HEPA filters, able to retain fine particulate matter of less than 2.5 µm in width, known as PM2.5, for the main physical purifying process. Based on the ISS’s Air Contamination Control (ACC) module.
Module 3 - Contaminant and impurities filter: an activated coal filter, capable of removing (among many contaminants) ozone molecules.
Module 4 - Carbon dioxide filter: composed of zeolite filters, materials that can separate and capture gases due to their size. Based on the ISS’s molecular sieves.
Module 5 - Catalytic oxidation filter: a sterilizer that forces the air through high-temperature paths, made with ceramics.
Tower Top: module responsible for channeling the clean air into the environment. It also complements the tower’s aesthetics.
According to the performed research, these modules are able to mitigate most of the harmful elements present in the air. With time, new modules with solutions for different problems can be developed and further enhance the ARAUCARIA’S capabilities. More information about Project Araucaria can be found on the official Instagram page on the link below:
Our greatest motivation was to reduce the number of deaths related to pollution-induced respiratory conditions. According to the European Society of Cardiology, there is an average loss of life expectancy on Earth of about 2.9 years due to ambient air pollution. This is especially true for south Asian and mid-north African countries that rely heavily on the usage of fossil or biofuels for daily activities, which consequently increases household air pollution. In itself, household pollution is responsible for 0.7 years of lost life expectancy in the world. This is where ISS technology could come into play: the idea of using its technology as inspiration to improve millions of people’s lives and lessen public health issues.
The first thing we had to do in order to create a feasible solution was to understand what kind of systems are used at the ISS and how they work. NASA has 3 life support systems currently in operation: Environmental Monitoring, Atmosphere Management, and Water Management. The Atmosphere Management system has, among others, the function of using passive and active filtering methods to keep the number of certain particles, trace contaminants and microbes inside a predefined allowable range. In order to be able to act upon need, this system also receives information from several sensors present throughout the station.
After we had a basic understanding of NASA’s Life Support Systems (LSS), we started to look at satellite data provided by NASA’s Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS). Analyzing the varying concentrations of fine particle matter (<2.5 µm) around the globe during 2019, it became evident that there was a particularly high concentration of these on the same parts of the globe as suggested by the European Society of Cardiology’s findings. High levels of these particles are commonly associated with the widespread use of combustible fuels and can contain great amounts of toxic substances.
Especially in poorer countries, residential fossil and biofuel usage is relatively common. Today, these activities are mostly supplied with electric power in developed countries. This contributes greatly to increase the level of pollutants diluted on the interior of households. Having learned about these facts, we decided to develop a device for indoor air purification at these places. Using some of the filter technologies developed for the ISS and with the same modularity and data acquisition concept, we could help increase the overall health of people that use this device and, also, help governments devise public policies regarding pollution.
The device was designed with the help of CAD software and the presentation material was prepared with the use of video and image editing software. The types of available filters were chosen based on the most common contaminants found in the atmosphere and the overall design was based on the shape of the Araucária, a type of pine tree commonly found in the southern region of Brazil.
Most of the problems encountered during this development were due to difficulties in associating NASA’s raw data about the distribution of particulates with an increasing number of deaths caused by pollution. Since there are no data scientists on our team, we circumvented this issue by relying on official data visualization tools connected directly to these databases, namely, NASA’s WorldView. This allowed us to view how different types of observable substances concentrated over specific areas as described on previous paragraphs.
https://youtu.be/E_SHkKBxdLw