After thirty years of experimentation, two French engineers have developed an innovative air purifier: Para-PM. Nine copies will be installed on the athletes’ site.
We were familiar with depolluting facades and carbon traps, but the invention imagined by Jérôme Giacomoni and Matthieu Gobbi is even more efficient. These two engineers have developed Para-PM, a vacuum cleaner capable of filtering 99% of the fine particles present in the air. Fans send the polluted air inside the device.
36,000 m2 of air sucked in every hour. Range 30 meters, dimensions 5X5 meters. © DR
Thanks to electrostatic phenomena, fine PM 10 and PM 2.5 particles – the smallest and most dangerous – come to stick against a wall coated with a photocatalytic stain. The secret solution, developed in collaboration with CNRS chemists, destroys these harmful corpuscles. The device then releases 99% purified air. “A 5-meter Para-PM can clean up 10 cubic meters of air per second. That’s 36,000 cubic meters every hour, the equivalent of 15 Olympic swimming pools, ”lists Jérôme Giacomoni.
During the Paris Olympics, the devices will serve as a barrier against pollution emanating from the A86
No wonder the idea germinated in the minds of these two polytechnicians at the head of Aerophile. They are the ones who deployed the balloon with the Generali logo which has been flying over the André-Citroën park in Paris since 1999. Few know that it has the property of destroying fine particles thanks to the same photocatalytic stain. “Our captive balloon is perfectly white even though it has not been cleaned for four years. This demonstrates that the process works”, continues the president of Aerophile. During the Paris Olympics in July 2024, athletes will breathe clean air near the nine Para-PMs located near the Olympic Village. They will serve as a barrier against pollution emanating from the A86.
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The project, which won a call for tenders from the Olympic Works Delivery Company, does not stop at the Paris suburbs. Other communities want to install them near schools and highways to provide clean air to their inhabitants. Price of the device: 100,000 euros, “no more than a standard bus shelter”, according to Jérôme Giacomoni. Finally a hope for the urban areas where we are suffocating.
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