Thailand: Indonesian High School Students Turn Cigarette Smoke Into Oxygen

Source from:  Jakarta Globe (id)  07/06/2012

Semarang. Two state high school students in Semarang have received a gold medal at the International Exhibition for Young Inventors 2012 in Bangkok for inventing a tool that changes cigarette smoke into oxygen. “We named the tool ‘T-Box Application to Reduce the Dangerous Impacts of CO and CO2 in Smoking Rooms,’” Hermawan Maulana, one of the students who won the competition, said in Semarang on Wednesday. Together with his schoolmate Zihramma Afdi, Hermawan said they began research on the project after feeling disturbed by the increasing number of smokers. They said that with the tool, cigarette smoke containing carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO2) is broken down into oxygen and carbon. “At least smokers will feel comfortable inside the smoking room and would not smoke in other places that could disturb other people,” he said. “We created this because we can’t reduce the number of smokers.” Smoke is sucked into the machine, where an electric charge breaks down the molecules into their constituent carbon and oxygen parts. “Inside this machine, the smoke will be decomposed into oxygen and flow back [into the smoking room],” Afdi said. “Besides oxygen, the filter leaves carbon, but in solid form that could be reused.” The students beat other participants from several countries including China, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan and Japan. Enditem