This Indian invention turns smoke into ink
As the pre-monsoon summer heat takes hold in New Delhi, two things are as inevitable as 40-degree-Celsius days: power cuts and air pollution from the diesel generators that then kick in.
But a team of Indian engineers has figured out away to bring some good from choking generator exhaust: They are capturing it and turning it into ink.
"The alarming thing about diesel generators is they are located in the heart of densely populated areas. It's spitting smoke right there," said Kushagra Srivastava, one of the three engineers who developed the technology, now installed in Gurgaon, a satellite city of New Delhi, and in the southern city of Chennai.
The idea, Srivastava said, came about when he and his co-founders stopped at a sugarcane juice stall on a hot day. They noticed a wall that had turned black behind the stand's diesel generator, where exhaust emerged from a pipe.
They wondered if diesel exhaust might be used to produce paint – and set out to try.
photo credit: mattbuck4950