科学家将污染物变成打印机墨水

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.

阿尼鲁德·夏尔马不仅想除掉空气中的有害炭物质，还希望创造一种更便宜的普通打印机油墨，解决墨水价格高昂的问题。

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.

夏尔马最近发明了一种名叫“Kaala的装置，它能吞掉有害污染物并迅速将其变成有用物质，只需加点酒精和油，就能生成黑色打印机墨水。

One day, Sharma hopes to commercialize the device so it can live in every home around the world.

将来，夏尔马希望能将这个设置商业化，希望世界上的每家每户都能使用它。

The idea came to him after one-too-many smog-filled trips to his home country of India.

他经常去烟雾严重的祖国印度，如此往返，就有了灵感。

"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?'"

“在酷热的夏日，如果你拿手帕擦皮肤，手帕就会变得乌黑，麻省理工学院(MIT)媒体实验室的科学家夏尔马说，“所以我们就想‘能不能把这种我们天天抱怨的东西变成日常用品呢?’

For the device to work, it first needs to be exposed to exhaust. In his demo, Sharma uses the flame of a candle.

要让这个设置运行，得先把它放在废气中。做实验时，夏尔马用的是蜡烛燃烧产生的废气。

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.

蜡烛燃烧时，用真空泵吸走周围的空气，令黑色的炭物质——即燃烧产物——与其余空气分开。接下来，黑灰聚焦到一个小隔间，加入酒精——此例中用伏特加——和一滴橄榄油。

Lastly, the newly formed liquid can be injected into an ordinary ink cartridge for everyday use.

最后，混合而成的液体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.

夏尔马承认墨水还可以更黑。但这只是个研究项目，投入市场前，Kaala也得满足正式的无毒标准。

"With a little bit of research," he says, "it can become as good as the printing ink HP sells to you."

他说：“只需再研究研究，它就能跟惠普(HP)卖的打印墨一样好了。

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.

夏尔马估计一个使用了四年的柴油内燃机60分钟内产生的炭能填满一个惠普墨盒。一个烟囱大约只需要10分钟。

Recreating that ink wouldn't take much effort.

制造这种墨并不费事。

"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."

“一般来说，人们不了解这点，不过大家买的墨真没什么特殊的，他说，“炭黑掺些化学品就制出来了，就这些。如果自己制墨，成本绝对非常非常低。

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.

夏尔马希望他的手持装置再大点，能用到主流炭捕集系统上：比如捕集空气中隐藏的炭的巨型风扇墙。

Vocabulary

exorbitant: (要价等)过高的