< Background >
Under the global COV-19 pandemic, many were/have been forced to stay at home or work from home; we spend a lot of time in a given closed-space. Most of all, our concern about good ventilation at our residents is high in demand.
And, understanding the not many are accessible to some expensive yet functional electrical air purifiers, we have discussed about our products to be "easy to manipulate" and "something unique".
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< Challenges >
Plant Sleep Pod challenges the following issues;
- removal of air pollutants in a given space.
- general air purifiers consumes electrical-power.
- not many people financially struggle buying functional electrical air purification that are often high in price.
- people are frustrated under this stay-at-home circumstance, which has been causing our lives unbalance and sleep-quality bad.
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< Our Team's Challenge >
Understanding what ventilation is from scratch
We have spent a lot of time brushing up our knowledge about high quality air, the mechanism of ventilation and air purification, by researching. In order for us to start off this project, we had to correctly comprehend the definition of a good air, including the kinds of air pollutants in an air such as benzen and ammonia that need to get removed.
Coming up with something "easy to manipulate" yet "unique"
having a lot of time discussed with the team about what would be an unique yet reasonable air purifier, we focused on the mechanism of the air purification of a plant that was conducted by NASA in 1989 as "Interior landscape plants for indoor air pollution abatement" (https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19930073077.pdf).
< Inspiration >
(1)Ventilation in a space craft from SF movies
One of our all-time favorite concern regarding the life in space is, needless to say, its ventilation system. And, all the members in this team are a huge fun of some SF movies, dreamed of making the cold-sleep pods that were often appeared on the movies. Along the way, we have proceeded this project, based on the two key concepts; "ventilation" and "cold-sleep pods" as discussed earlier.
(2) "Plants in the outer space grow its branches radically"
Our team member remembered the fact that "plants in the outer space grow its branches radically". With this idea, we have developed the thought of making a space-efficient air purifying plants in the outer space.
(3) Applicable on the earth
With our discussions , we have came to think of developing "something" unique, easy to manipulate and financially reasonable. All of which are applicable for both outer space and the earth use.
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< Approach >
(Early Phase: Research and exchange ideas throughout discussions)
After exchanging our ideas, finding our common interests and thoughts as a team and solidifying what our final product would look like and so, we have researched any related information regarding the plant air purification, air pollutant, ventilation and so forth from many sources including the current state of aerosol in Japan on the JAXA's GPortal. This process also made us some time to re-model the design of our product so it meets our proposed challenges.
(Middle Phase: Keeping re-modeling )
Issue: Carrying on the project, we have came to realize how much low in efficiency a plant can purify pollutants in air in an open space.
Solution: By limiting the capacity of a space; making a head-sized helmet, the product maintains highly-purified air level high.
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We have discussed what we can actually made out of the idea we discussed before.
Since making the plant-made air purifier in space seems to be a long way to establish,
we have discussed about what would be realistically "develop-able", "easy to manipulate" and "something unique". Then, we have re-designed the model, remaining the idea of "a plant-generated air purification.
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< Data we used >
For the mechanism of a plant air-purification system,
we have read and used the idea presented in the "Interior landscape plants for indoor air pollution abatement" (1989, NASA).
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< Achievement >
We were able to self-learned about the relatively low efficiency of the establishment of a plant-made air purification eco-system in a large space. This finding has led us to re-design our model by limiting the capacity of a given-space with our product.
Also, we have been able to gather accurate information regarding "fresh air quality", including air pollutants name and its negative effects such as benzen and sulphur dioxide, along all the steps of this project.
With our research and found on the characteristics of good air-quality that meets basic living-standard criteria, we were able to apply them on our product concept as sleep
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Please check on the attached slide for the our outcomes.
Slides