IISER, LPU students design algae-based air purifier

Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER) and Lovely Professional University (LPU), Mohali have in cooperation designed an algae-based room air purifier. Developed by the student researchers of both the institutes, the purifier will neutralize 98 per cent of the dangerous gases and particulate components in the air. Moreover, it will also increase the amount of oxygen which will help make indoors more breathable. Algae has been put to use as microbes in algae to conduct photosynthesis. Making use of sunshine, water and carbon dioxide can generate oxygen in space by means of algae. The source of inspiration to build an algae-based air purifier has been the continuing space research to generate oxygen in space through algae.

The device makes use of a preinstalled container filled with marine algae then decontaminates the indoor air and effectively eliminates toxic industrial gases such as nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and Sulphur oxides. This is done with a remarkable success rate of more than 98 per cent and further fills oxygen in the filtered air. The air purifier creates biomass as the byproduct of the photosynthesis process. The biomass can be sold to industries such as FMCG, pharmaceuticals and bio Development products at Rs. 800/kg for producing energy.

The research was accompanied by a Ph.D. scholar from Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER) - Ravneet Yadav; Anant Kumar Rajput and Deepak Deb, both are third-year students of B.Tech at Lovely Professional University (LPU). They were mentored by Division of Startup, LPU and Dr Sunila A Patil, Assistant Professor, IISER Mohali.

They have filed for the patent and are now working on its commercialisation. The product, OX- C and its advanced version OX- C 2.0 are likely to be commercialised by September 2020 and will cost about Rs. 18,000 and Rs. 25,000 respectively. The team is now conceptualising algae-based face mask which is slated to be developed by mid of 2020.

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