Led by Postdoctoral Researcher Henri Siljanen, the Active Ecological Air Filtration project has secured funding from Business Finland’s New Business from Research Ideas (TUTL) programme for the development of a novel green house gas removal technique. The goal is to establish technological and commercial preconditions for designing a concept that is based on a new air filtration technology that can be used to capture and remove green house gases from air. The overall funding of the project amounts to 583,000 euros and it spans 1.5 years.
Climate change and green house gas emissions are major problem on a global scale. This is also why the market for air purification technologies is extremely large and global. The global greentech market is constantly growing, estimated to reach a value of 300 billion euros in the upcoming years.
Industrial solutions for removing green house gases from the atmosphere are available, but mainly for carbon dioxide and through carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) methods. For other green house gases than carbon dioxide, very few commercial solutions are available that would cater to the needs of different customer groups ranging from industrial users to private individuals.
The project seeks to introduce to the market an affordable device that could be used for the removal of green house gas emissions by industrial, commercial and private users alike. There is a demand for affordable green house gas removal technologies also among companies with high emissions in order for them to reach their emissions limits and to polish their environmental image. The filtration system to be developed in the project can also be used for green house gas removal in industrial processes that cause emissions, as well as in the purification of combustion gases and vehicle exhaust gases.
“We expect this project to lead to extremely significant and increasingly international start-up activities in Kuopio. The project also strengthens our regional and national innovation ecosystem relating to environmental change in the form of new jobs, partnerships between companies and export activities,” Siljanen says.
The funded project is based on long-term basic research related to green house gases and their application to the modelling of green house gas balances carried out by the Biogeochemistry Research Group at the University of Eastern Finland.
For further information, please contact:
Postdoctoral Researcher Henri Siljanen, tel. +358 40 355 2295, henri.siljanen (a) uef.fi
This release was first published 7 February 2019 by Business Finland.