Nick Hooton, Lewis Hornby: Industrial Design Studentship 2016
Case Studies
Posted: 12/01/2021
Pluvo: A pollution solution that pays
Industrial Design Student 2016
Nick Hooton and Lewis Hornby Royal College of Art / Imperial College London Innovation Design Engineering
Urban air pollution
Pluvo was invented to tackle the deadly and illegal levels of pollution
in cities, now the biggest killer in the world, thought to kill 5.5
million people every year. In London the air quality is twice the legal
limit set by the World Health Organisation, and contributes to 10,000
premature deaths every year. Nationwide, pollution related health
effects cost the NHS £20 billion annually. Despite efforts to reduce the
amount of pollution emitted into the atmosphere, levels are set to
double by 2050. A distributed network of Pluvo purifiers will clean the
air in the most polluted and populated areas.
Purification Rainfall is very effective in
naturally cleansing the air. Water droplets attract, collide and combine
with pollutants to remove them from the atmosphere. Pluvo enhances this
natural process by creating a mist of water droplets of varying sizes
to capture effectively the wide range of pollution types in cities.
Attaching pollutants to larger bodies before filtering means that the
system is to able clean air considerably more efficiently than
traditional methods. Pluvo responds to local changes in pollution levels
by optimising the mist in realtime to increase efficacy. The water is
recycled around the system meaning that it can be situated anywhere
within reach of a power supply, such as lampposts, unused telephone
boxes and new electric vehicle charging points.
Advertising Current approaches to purifying city
air are not scalable as they lack commercial incentives. Pluvo’s
purifying mist provides an engaging medium for high value advertising.
They can be used as a standalone advertising unit or grouped together to
create a truly immersive experience. For maximum impact Pluvos will be
placed in pollution hot-spots, where traffic also drives high
advertising revenue.