科學家將污染物變成打印機墨水大綱

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.
阿尼魯德·夏爾馬不僅想除掉空氣中的有害炭物質，還希望創造一種更便宜的普通打印機油墨，解決墨水價格高昂的問題。

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.
夏爾馬最近發明了一種名叫“Kaala”的裝置，它能吞掉有害污染物並迅速將其變成有用物質，只需加點酒精和油，就能生成黑色打印機墨水。

One day, Sharma hopes to commercialize the device so it can live in every home around the world.
將來，夏爾馬希望能將這個設置商業化，希望世界上的每家每戶都能使用它。

The idea came to him after one-too-many smog-filled trips to his home country of India.
他經常去煙霧嚴重的祖國印度，如此往返，就有了靈感。

"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?'"
“在酷熱的夏日，如果你拿手帕擦皮膚，手帕就會變得烏黑，”麻省理工學院（MIT）媒體實驗室的科學家夏爾馬說，“所以我們就想‘能不能把這種我們天天抱怨的東西變成日常用品呢？’”

For the device to work, it first needs to be exposed to exhaust. In his demo, Sharma uses the flame of a candle.
要讓這個設置運行，得先把它放在廢氣中。做實驗時，夏爾馬用的是蠟燭燃燒產生的廢氣。

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.
蠟燭燃燒時，用真空泵吸走周圍的空氣，令黑色的炭物質——即燃燒產物——與其餘空氣分開。接下來，黑灰聚焦到一個小隔間，加入酒精——此例中用伏特加——和一滴橄欖油。

Lastly, the newly formed liquid can be injected into an ordinary ink cartridge for everyday use.
最後，混合而成的液體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.
夏爾馬承認墨水還可以更黑。但這只是個研究項目，投入市場前，Kaala也得滿足正式的無毒標準。

"With a little bit of research," he says, "it can become as good as the printing ink HP sells to you."
他說：“只需再研究研究，它就能跟惠普（HP）賣的打印墨一樣好了。”

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.
夏爾馬估計一個使用了四年的柴油內燃機60分鐘內產生的炭能填滿一個惠普墨盒。一個煙囪大約只需要10分鐘。

Recreating that ink wouldn't take much effort.
製造這種墨並不費事。

"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."
“一般來說，人們不瞭解這點，不過大家買的墨真沒什麼特殊的，”他說，“炭黑摻些化學品就製出來了，就這些。如果自己制墨，成本絕對非常非常低。”

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.
夏爾馬希望他的手持裝置再大點，能用到主流炭捕集系統上：比如捕集空氣中隱藏的炭的巨型風扇牆。

Vocabulary

exorbitant: （要價等）過高的