Transcriber: Marina Naguib Reviewer: lisa thompson
One of the components that create life
but also take it away from the beginning of the industrial revolution is air.
Today, there are a large number of urban environments around the world
that have a problem with air pollution.
It most often causes cardiovascular pulmonary diseases,
and in some cases, even migrations of the inhabitants of those places.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is not saved from this problem.
Even more so, we are at the very top of the air pollution problem in the world.
To understand the air pollution problem in Sarajevo,
we need to go back to the period of the 60s and 70s,
when the industry was just beginning to develop.
Then, the city was not built as it is today.
Then, there were no wild buildings that sprouted from all sides.
But in contrary to that,
they had an increased risk of harmful particles
throughout the various industries.
Some of those industries were: Energoinvest,
a company that produced nuclear reactors, computer systems,
measuring devices, and many other things;
Pretis, our largest weapon factory in Europe at that time;
and FAMOS, a company that produced car engines
and contributed over 10% of the economy of the whole city of Sarajevo.
Today, the industry has shrunk,
but the record air pollution is again being recorded.
Because of the technical limitations of that time,
it was impossible to measure in quantity and quality as it is today.
By the stories of the elderly and also some experts,
they claimed that then the problem was much bigger and more dangerous,
even 10 times so.
They just had to learn to live with it.
With the communication technologies,
many experts and professors have teamed up today to analyze the harmful particles
so they can determine what they actually are.
A group of professors
from the mechanical faculty at the university in Sarajevo
and also International University in Sarajevo
are doing fluid simulations.
In other words, they’re trying to determine what they actually are.
There is also an initiative for building insulation,
for insulating buildings that lose a large amount of heating
due to poor insulation.
Bosnia and Herzegovina has a bureaucratic approach to this problem.
By using scientific methods while writing their strategies,
they have successfully massed an adequate approach to this problem.
That approach is an engineering approach,
an approach that will, with the help of the analyzed data,
create a solution that will directly remove smog from the air.
But before I continue to tell you about my idea of direct smog removal,
I want to tell you a little bit about myself.
I was a student at the High School of Catering and Tourism in Sarajevo,
and although I went to cooking school, my ideas were born in the kitchen.
While doing practice in [an] Italian restaurant in Italy,
I was mixing pasta,
and I realized that pasta could be used as an organic material.
If we create a pasta in the shape of [a] parabola,
we could fill it with a silver iodide and gunpowder filling,
and thus making a module.
That module would be attached on a small amateur rocket.
The amateur rocket would be launched at an altitude above the smog.
The module would be activated, and silver iodide would be dispersed.
The silver iodide is the main component of this project.
It has the ability to collect small particles of water
and create droplets out of them.
With enough droplets, we create artificial rain.
The silver iodide has been used in the anti-hail rockets since the 1960s,
and also it has been used for the past 20 years
in a cloud seeding method,
usually in the regions where there is little to no water.
So great.
We have a solution that has been used in other industries with great success.
Now what?
After I gave another thought to the whole project,
I realized I was heading in the wrong direction.
I realized that people from Sarajevo
wouldn’t like the idea of any rockets exploding above their heads.
So I went back to the drawing board.
I was looking at what is current today in technology.
I saw a group of people attaching things on a drone
and transferring them from one location to another.
So I thought to myself, well, this concerns my idea as well.
OK, so we have a proven silver iodide
and we have a drone that will carry it above the smog.
Now we just need a way to disperse it.
After watching Mark Rober’s video, Glitterbomb against Porch Pirates,
I designed, in CAD software,
a module that would function on the same principle.
So the module would be filled with silver iodide.
It would be attached on a drone.
The drone would fly above the smog.
The module would be activated, and silver iodide would be dispersed.
By creating artificial rain,
we technically drill holes in the smog
that allow sun’s heat and rays to reach the asphalt.
And with that, we start the natural cycle of vertical heating of the soil
and also local horizontal heating of the smog.
With that, we achieve a slight rise of smog over time.
When the altitude of smog reaches an altitude approximately one kilometer,
it will be left to high winds
that will deconcentrate it and disperse it.
The efficiency of the project
could be achieved with a larger number of drone units,
and also the scalability of the whole project is achieved.
With this, we also can transfer the whole system
to another urban environment.
To have more of these solutions, we need to change the way we look at the smog.
We will not be able to solve smog problem in Bosnia and Herzegovina
for a long time.
We will have to learn to live with it.
But what we can do is change the approach to the problem.
First, we would have to divide the smog response into a short-term strategy,
and that is up to seven days when we have a concentrated smog,
and that is when we can use solutions like mine to cleanse that concentration
or simply what we can do is activate a dam on Miljacka river
or simply washing the streets.
And we have our, also, long-term strategy.
In that, the strategy would work up to a long-term construction planning,
building insulation, and many more new potential solutions.
And also with this,
we achieve a simplification of approach to the problem.
And also with this, we allow students, pupils,
individuals to contribute their knowledge in resolving this problem.
Some of the problems that maybe they can do is create sensors
for measuring air quality, create filters for car exhaust,
organizing a lot more science fairs,
create innovative systems for cleaning urban spaces,
and also organizing spaces for open discussion about air pollution
and possible air solutions in elementary and high schools.
Conclusion: we can continue measuring air pollution in Sarajevo and do nothing,
we can stop measuring and have our clean air,
or we can measure
and react to a problem with certain engineering approaches and methods.
As Thomas Tredgold said,
“Engineering is the art of directing the great sources of power in nature
for the use and convenience of man.”
I truly believe that science is for everyone --
students, professors, even pensioners --
and everybody should have an opportunity
to try to resolve some problems in their local communities.
Let’s be pragmatic.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)