科學(xué)家將污染物變成打印機(jī)墨水

Anirudh Sharma doesn't just want to pull harmful carbon from the air. He wants to offer a cheaper alternative to the exorbitant costs of ordinary printer ink.
阿尼魯?shù)隆は臓栺R不僅想除掉空氣中的有害炭物質(zhì)，還希望創(chuàng)造一種更便宜的普通打印機(jī)油墨，解決墨水價(jià)格高昂的問題。

Sharma recently invented "Kaala," a device that can gobble up harmful pollutants and instantly repurpose them, with a little help from alcohol and oil, into black printer ink.
夏爾馬最近發(fā)明了一種名叫“Kaala”的裝置，它能吞掉有害污染物并迅速將其變成有用物質(zhì)，只需加點(diǎn)酒精和油，就能生成黑色打印機(jī)墨水。

One day, Sharma hopes to commercialize the device so it can live in every home around the world.
將來，夏爾馬希望能將這個(gè)設(shè)置商業(yè)化，希望世界上的每家每戶都能使用它。

The idea came to him after one-too-many smog-filled trips to his home country of India.
他經(jīng)常去煙霧嚴(yán)重的祖國印度，如此往返，就有了靈感。

"On a hot summer day, if you take a handkerchief and rub it on your skin, the handkerchief actually turns a little brownish-blackish in color," says Sharma, a scientist at MIT's Media Lab. "So we thought, 'How do we repurpose something we complain about on an everyday basis into something that is a utility?'"
“在酷熱的夏日，如果你拿手帕擦皮膚，手帕就會(huì)變得烏黑，”麻省理工學(xué)院（MIT）媒體實(shí)驗(yàn)室的科學(xué)家夏爾馬說，“所以我們就想‘能不能把這種我們天天抱怨的東西變成日常用品呢？’”

For the device to work, it first needs to be exposed to exhaust. In his demo, Sharma uses the flame of a candle.
要讓這個(gè)設(shè)置運(yùn)行，得先把它放在廢氣中。做實(shí)驗(yàn)時(shí)，夏爾馬用的是蠟燭燃燒產(chǎn)生的廢氣。

While the candle burns, a suction pump pulls in the surrounding air to a simple mechanism that separates the carbon black — a byproduct of combustion — from the rest of the air. It then traps the soot in a small chamber to be mixed with alcohol — in this case, vodka — and a drop of olive oil.
蠟燭燃燒時(shí)，用真空泵吸走周圍的空氣，令黑色的炭物質(zhì)——即燃燒產(chǎn)物——與其余空氣分開。接下來，黑灰聚焦到一個(gè)小隔間，加入酒精——此例中用伏特加——和一滴橄欖油。

Lastly, the newly formed liquid can be injected into an ordinary ink cartridge for everyday use.
最后，混合而成的液體就能放到普通墨盒中每日使用了。

Sharma admits the black could still be blacker. Since it was designed as a research project, Kaala would also need to hold up against formal toxicity standards before it can hit the market.
夏爾馬承認(rèn)墨水還可以更黑。但這只是個(gè)研究項(xiàng)目，投入市場前，Kaala也得滿足正式的無毒標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。

"With a little bit of research," he says, "it can become as good as the printing ink HP sells to you."
他說：“只需再研究研究，它就能跟惠普（HP）賣的打印墨一樣好了。”

Sharma estimates a 4-year-old diesel engine could produce enough carbon to fill an HP cartridge within 60 minutes. A chimney would take only 10 minutes approximately.
夏爾馬估計(jì)一個(gè)使用了四年的柴油內(nèi)燃機(jī)60分鐘內(nèi)產(chǎn)生的炭能填滿一個(gè)惠普墨盒。一個(gè)煙囪大約只需要10分鐘。

Recreating that ink wouldn't take much effort.
制造這種墨并不費(fèi)事。

"Usually, people don't know about this, but the ink you're buying is nothing," he says. "It's just carbon black mixed with a few chemicals, and that's all. If you're making your own ink, the cost would definitely be much, much lower."
“一般來說，人們不了解這點(diǎn)，不過大家買的墨真沒什么特殊的，”他說，“炭黑摻些化學(xué)品就制出來了，就這些。如果自己制墨，成本絕對非常非常低。”

Sharma hopes that his handheld device could scale to a size that sits on par with leading carbon-capture systems: huge walls of fans that trap carbon lurking in the air.
夏爾馬希望他的手持裝置再大點(diǎn)，能用到主流炭捕集系統(tǒng)上：比如捕集空氣中隱藏的炭的巨型風(fēng)扇墻。

Vocabulary

exorbitant: （要價(jià)等）過高的

英文來源：techinsider
譯者：楊軒
審校&編輯：丹妮