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Bike Eats Pollution & Exhales Oxygen

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Breathing_Bike_Filters_Air_Pure

Designers at Thailand’s Lightfog Creative & Design want to make the world a better place, one bicycle at a time. As more people turn from cars to bikes (yay!) air-quality should be improving and commuters’ lungs should be thankful for that. But why not take it a step further. See the bike that breathes as you breeze past the break…

3023176-inline-s-bike-03 copy

Lightfog envisions this concept e-bike with an integrated system that not only sucks in polluted air and filters it, but also creates oxygen “via a reaction between water and electric power,” a phenomenon termed “Photosynthesis System.” In a statement to Co.Exist, creative director Silawat Virakul said they “wanted to add more value to a bicycle by adding its ability to reduce the pollution.” Does it work? Who knows… either way, accolades to them for forward thinking.

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Robo
Robo
10 years ago

cooooooooool

Chris S.
Chris S.
10 years ago

Interesting idea, but why don’t we take care of the problem at the source instead of dealing with the results after-the-fact?

bennyTheIcarus
bennyTheIcarus
10 years ago

….Silawat Virakul said they “wanted to add more value to a bicycle by adding its ability to reduce the pollution.”

Then why don’t you start with removing the electric motor?
Another no-sense concept and design. Porsche among other car makers, has been successfully developing air-purifing cars for few years. And let’s stop calling these things electric bikes. They are electric mopeds, with throttle cables. And aimed to a-oles that do not want to pedal, do not want to pay insurance, do not want to stop at traffic lights, and do not want to be stuck in traffic.

BRADMANN
BRADMANN
10 years ago

ONE DOES NOT JUST PEDAL AN ELECTRIC MORTOR

Gunnstein
Gunnstein
10 years ago

Hey look, a fancypants design bike without hubless wheels! They must be on to something. Oh wait, hubless crank. Nevermind 🙂

Pete
Pete
10 years ago

Burning coal creates electricity and pollution.
This bike uses electricity and removes some pollution.
If you’re concerned about your carbon footprint.. wouldn’t you get a traditional bike?

James S
James S
10 years ago

Let’s see… you create pollution by building an electric motor and other extraneous items that you then add to a bicycle. Then you charge up a battery using coal, natural gas, or nuclear power and create more pollution. (The percentage of renewable energy is still very low and even solar panels and windmills create pollution in their manufacture). Then after all that, this device sucks in a little bit of air and cleans it. And then you throw the dirty air filter in the garbage, creating more pollution still.

You just have to love humans and their insane love affair with technology. We could just stop doing the things that are going to eventually kill us, but instead we pile up the technocrap and hope that it will save us. Brilliantly stupid.

nobrand
nobrand
10 years ago

That purified air exhaust needs to be coupled to a respirator mask to complete this design.

chuck
chuck
10 years ago

Finally, my crotch will have the purified air it needs!

WG
WG
10 years ago

Okay, but how EXACTLY does this bike purify air? And how is an “air-puryfing” moped different from a stationary “air-purifyng” apparatus of a similar construction? And above all, why can’t I resist the feeling that producing electricity to power this device might lead to the emission of even more pollution than it can inactivate?

I do understand not everyone needs technical details, but the very minimum amount of information would be very welcome.

Marc
Marc
10 years ago

@WG

It’s because they didn’t figure the technical details yet. Why? Because there is no point with such a ridiculous idea.

WG
WG
10 years ago

Why didn’t I think of that before? I guess it was too obvious to find out… Cheers!

Nash
Nash
10 years ago

This is a complete load of cr@p, “but also creates oxygen “via a reaction between water and electric power,” a phenomenon termed “Photosynthesis System.”” Photo means light not electricity. Thailand is renowned for its cutting edge R&D of course, so they would be the first to understand and recreate the quantum mechanics of actual photosynthesis.

PeterFal
PeterFal
10 years ago

Wouldn’t it be great if every motor vehicle had a carbon scrubber, like a catalytic converter except it removed the carbon out of the emissions? Every service interval you’d replace the filter full of carbon.

Unfortunately, carbon dioxide is a fussy compound and separating the carbon from the oxygen is a complicated process requiring lots of energy at this time with current technology. Whatever these guys have in mind wouldn’t work.

Rico
Rico
10 years ago

It’s definitely food for thought, especially for those of us non-science dudes. I appreciate both the concept and the discussion about it’s workings. Tx

Booyahbooyah
Booyahbooyah
10 years ago

Greenwashing at it’s finest

WG
WG
10 years ago

@PeterFal – the problem is that cars produce vast amounts of CO2. Ford Fiesta, for example, produces as much as 98 grams of CO2 per kilometer! Moreover, the CO2 a car produces weighs much more than petrol it consumes because oxygen is heavier than hydrogen it replaces during combustion (which, in simple terms, goes like this: C8H20 -> 8CO2+10H20).

Therefore it’s simply impossible to store CO2 in a car… and by the way, where and how would we store it in the end? Nobody knows has found an answer to that, unfortunately.

Nick
Nick
10 years ago

Or maybe, PLANT A TREE

TonyLee
TonyLee
10 years ago

Why not just put an K&N air-filter in the bike’s handlebar and a Bonsai in the rear rack?

Anonymous
Anonymous
10 years ago

“but also creates oxygen “via a reaction between water and electric power,””

Yeah, you can use electricity to get oxygen from water. You also get hydrogen. It’s called electrolysis, not photosynthesis. This process also REQUIRES quite a lot of energy…

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