Fine Dust Filtration System Produced Out Of Residues

There is an urge to reduce fine dust particles in ambient air in cities worldwide. According to a Global Burden of Diseases Study by the WHO, 4.2M deaths worldwide per year are caused by fine dust particles. OECD projects that the market costs of air pollution (reduced productivity, additional health expenditure, crop losses, etc.) will increase to 2% of the European GDP by 2060 (OECD 2016). Moreover, the welfare costs due to premature deaths from air pollution are projected to more than double in European OECD countries by 2060 (EP briefing 2017). Nano plastics and micro plastics pollute our environment and are being found into human bodies. The effect of this is not cleared.

The urge to reduce these particles is our motivation. Until now filter systems for fine dust are available for indoor use cases only. That kind of filters are meshes or fabrics, produced out of paper, plastics or glass fibers, which are produced with huge input of energy and expenses. Furthermore, glass fiber filters are under suspicion to be carcinogenic.

The technological challenge is to produce a filter system, which does not use fossil resources, which does not eat up extra energy for producing it and which does not need a huge amount of technology expense, available for a low price. Finally, the filter material itself and the production should not be harmful to health.

Currently there is a huge demand in Germany to reduce fine dust and nano particles. 50 affected German cities are under pressure to reduce fine dust and particles of PM 10 below 40 µg/m3 and particles of PM 2,5 below 25 µg/m3 as a balance per year, because of legal demands of the European Union. One possible solution could be the reduction of the downtown traffic. It is also in consideration to ban selected combustion processes like biomass furnaces in the downtown areas. This will have a huge impact on urban living and on the daily cycle of peoples living. The reduction of car-driving or usage of wood stoves is imminent.

Our solution does not rely on more prohibitions. We address the issue of high particle concentrations by sucking ambient air into our filter system, collect and agglomerate the fine dust and nano plastics particles into our filter and release clean air. Additionally, we will recycle the filter and the agglomerated fine dust and the collected metals and noble metals e.g. in the tire or cement industry. The main cause for fine dust and also for nano plastics is the abrasion of tires and brakes from vehicles, so we will start to have a recycling system for fine dust filtering and reusing it as raw material.

There is a worldwide need for clean and healthy ambient air – our system can address this in all cities and all urban regions worldwide too.

Our fine dust and nano plastics particle filter system is unique, because it is produced out of biomass residues of the food processing industry. These residues are transformed by a thermal process, resulting in a very well-defined filter powder with the needed characteristics (amorphous, mesoporous, >95 % SiO2, no harmful ingredients) - Silica. This filter powder is embedded into a special design matrix as an open cell structure that works as deep filter. With this Silica powder we can precipitate ultra-fine dust particles out of ambient air and out of process and exhaust gases. The filter is sustainable, because we generate it from renewable biomass residues from food processing industry and it is recyclable. The filter media and the predicated fine dust particles can be recycled e.g. in the tire production or as surcharge for plastics, paints and concrete.

The production process generates heat. In using this heat by heat contracting, we can reduce the production costs about factor 10 in comparison to the actual production process of Silica.

Our filter media is far more sustainable than conventional used filter materials, like paper, plastics or glass fiber.