Pollutant feeding air anemone idea
This image is a kinetic sculpture by Anthony Howe. The idea behind the sculptures movement and my anemone "theoretical" invention would fit perfectly together with the right tech. Read more to find out why and what my idea is. .
I had an interesting thought yesterday while observing a sea anemone at a pet store. What if we could use the same concept behind the way carnivorous anemones eat to clean up the atmosphere from pollutants? after a bit of research I found that anemones have three different ways in which they capture their food.
1. filter- dead particles pass over the tentacles getting traped and pulled into them.
2. raptorial- zooplankters and motile benthic prey are caught by the tentacles
3. passive capture- sessile prey are dislodged by predators or wave action and carried into the tentacles.
The technology would have to be engineered for different situations and different environments similar to how different anemones have different traits depending on their location, environment, and their needs.
So my idea is, since we have different pollutants like aerosols from crop burning and production pollution, if we could engineer a device that had tentacle like limbs that moved around in the air that some how, with adhesive, vacuum, or another type of collecting material or mechanism could collect pollutants and aerosols in the surrounding air we could clean up the atmosphere. This device once modified could even be used for pollutants in the hydrosphere. Now it would make the most sense to start with the biosphere prototype first since we have a living mechanism that already preforms a similar process with particles in the water but pulling that idea further into the atmosphere and aerosols is such a neat idea to think about.
Lets look at it from the creature that does this naturally.
There are hundreds of different types of anemones around the world, all adapted to their different environments and needs. For this particular brain storm about the pollutant feeding air anemone I am going to use basic similarities and facts about anemones.
A sea anemone usually adheres itself to a rock and with its tentacles catches passer byers and ingests them, now they have a toxin that paralyzes the victim...but obviously my techno air anemone is not going to need a toxin to capture pollutants. Not knowing much about the specificity's of the different pollutants produced and how they could be collected I'm just going to throw some ideas out there.
(These ideas are strictly for brain storming)
CLEANING TECH
Bonding the gases/ aerosols to its bonding partner to make it happy [a complete molecule is a happy molecule] (now this is a ify idea since most aerosols are ash but for gaseous particle maybe)
some type of adhesive for the aerosols to stick to (this could be costly since once the outer layer of the adhesive is covered it would have to be cleaned/replaced) but think about fly tape or just tape dust sticks to it so for this invention something similar maybe?
vacuums... I once read an article about a man that walked around China with a vacuum for a year and made a brick out of all of the pollutants that it sucked out of the air. so this idea could work. The air anemone could suck up the pollutants and compact them at its core.
ENERGY SOURCE
as a young scientist I would have to say solar energy, it makes the most sense, but for prototypes electric plug-in tech would be the start. And for the devices movement something like the KE sculpture, imagin how cool that would be!
MATERIAL
in ideal world I would say some something like the kinetic sculpture and of course the other required tech to clean the air or water (click here to see more of them!)
comment your thoughts on my idea! I would love to hear about what you guys think.
Ciao :)
