Indian student in UAE designs drone to fight air pollution and global warming

Indian student in UAE designs drone to fight air pollution and global warming

Dubai: A Dubai student has designed a drone that he says will absorb pollution from the air, which should in turn also help fight global warming. Tanay Jagannathan, a Grade 8 studentat at GEMS Modern Academy, said he was building an attachment for a drone that would carry sodium hydroxide, a chemical that absorbs carbon dioxide "” an air pollutant. Carbon dioxide in the air also traps heat, contributing to global warming, which can imbalance the ecosystem. Tanay said tests for his idea (at Al Hoty Stanger Laboratory in Dubai) showed sodium hydroxide was found to be most effective among four types of hydroxides to absorb low concentrations of carbon dioxide. Last month, his study was featured in the Journal of Emerging Investigators, a United States-based science journal that publishes "original research" by students. Tanay told he was designing the drone attachment using 3D printers and "liaising with various government and non-government organisations" to conduct actual trials of the drone. He got the idea to use a drone-based pollution absorber after watching a TV show that showed how lithium hydroxide was used to absorb carbon dioxide in a spacecraft. "I extended the same concept to come up with an idea