Dutch Students 3D Printed a Car that purifies Air by sucking Carbon

Students from Netherlands 3D-printed an electric-vehicle that captures more carbon than it emits, thus purifying air along the drive.

While climate-change and global warming has been bothering mankind degenerating the normal livelihood, top automobile makers started stepping into a pact of becoming completely electric to get rid of gasolines and its harmful exhaust gases. Electric Vehicles are the new normal (at least trying to be) now. In a take ahead of that, dutch students made an EV that is capable of purifying air as it swift through.

Though electric vehicles emit zero CO2 on the drive, it creates so during the battery cell production, that pushes EVs to run tens of thousands of miles to achieve “carbon parity” with comparable combustion-engine models. So, EVs can be really worth the ‘environmental’ purpose only after running miles on roads. However, this innovative move from the students might help vehicles to achieve the carbon parity much sooner than they were.

ZEM Car

Called Zero Emission Mobility (ZEM) car, it captures more carbon dioxide (CO2) than it emits, and is designed by the student team of Eindhoven University of Technology. The two-seater car resembles a BMW coupe, but is cheaper and is also unique.

Powered by a lithium-ion battery pack, the car’s most of the parts are 3D-printed from recycled plastics, Jens Lahaije said, who is Finance manager for TU/ecomotive Students team.

“The target is to minimize carbon dioxide emitted during the car’s full lifespan, from manufacturing to recycling,” he explained. “Our end goal is to create a more sustainable future,” Lahaije added.

ZEM uses two filters that can capture up to 2 kilograms of CO2 from the air for every 20,600 km of driving at 60km/hr, the team estimated. The filters are then to be emptied at the charging stations, cleaned using green energy. If the technology is deployed to millions of vehicles on the roads around the world, real positive change of curbing carbon could be achieved.

The students are showing their vehicle on a U.S. promotional tour to universities and companies from the East Coast to Silicon Valley.