Words by Smiley Team
Dutch students have created an electric passenger car that absorbs more CO2 than it produces.
The students, who attend the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, have dubbed the project ‘the Zem’. While driving, the Zem passes air through a special filter, capturing the CO2 and storing it for later disposal.
The Zem can travel 320 kilometres (about 198 miles) before the filter has to be emptied. The team behind the Zem hopes that one-day filter emptying stations will be available with car charging stations that are already available for electric and hybrid vehicles.
“It’s really still a proof-of-concept, but we can already see that we will be able to increase the capacity of the filter in the coming years,” says team manager Louise de Laat. “Capturing CO2 is a prerequisite for compensating for emissions during production and recycling.”
The team behind this incredible innovation has stated that they hope to make the Zem carbon neutral from the beginning of its life all the way through to its end, even including the process of creating the car in the first place.
The Zem is capable of capturing two kilograms of CO2 at 20,000 travel miles a year - this means that just ten of this car will be able to capture the same amount of carbon dioxide as the average tree.
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