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Air pollution is one of the most urgent and critical problems
that humanity faces today.
Many activities that are essential to our
progress, our economy, and our well-being are
very unfortunately associated with generation of pollution.
These are manufacturing industries, chemical industries,
oil and gas refining industries, they all generate
a lot of pollutants that need to be removed or
destroyed before they release their exaust into the air.
To remove these pollutants, catalytic converters are
currently introduced into the exhaust lines.
In the heart of the catalytic converter is a catalytic coating,
which contains precious metal nano-particles,
which are the active ingredients of the system.
The problem is that not all of these nano-particles are efficiently utilized.
Only a fraction of the nano- particles are being exposed to the exhaust pollutants,
and this is the most costly ingredient of the system.
Catalytic converter producers spend about 70-90% of their total cost on precious metals.
Within, probably even 50 years, main sources
of platinum, palladium, iridium, metals that are used in catalytic converters,
would go down or maybe disappear completely.
So what we try to do is to think about how to optimize materials,
based on biological design, based on something that nature has developed through millions of years of evolution.
The Wyss Institute is supporting a broad range of bio-inspired materials, devices, and approaches.
The design of our coatings is definitely inspired by butterfly wings and it has the same porous architecture.
If you look at its micro- structure, it is structured in a way that will allow the wing
to be aerodynamic, hydrophobic, and not become heavy or sticky in the rain.
And it also creates the beautiful coloration of the butterfly.
The butterfly actually doesn't produce any pigments.
We realized we don't have to invent any new chemistry,
or new materials, we can just structure our materials
in a way that will allow much more efficient use of the
precious metal nano-particles, based on these bio-inspired principles.
We can precisely put them at the interface of the pore
and make them fully accessible to the exhaust gasses.
This drammatically improves the performance of these coatings,
making it much cheaper and accessible.
What is really unique about our technology is that it provides
a "plug and play" solution. There is no need to modify manufacturing processes,
our technology can be easily adapted to the current manufacturing processes.
I do think that this is a really good example of an approach
that does both, that improves cost and economic considerations
and actually purifies air as the outcome of that.
We applied for the President's Innovation Challenge and
have been preselected from over 200 teams to compete with
15 other teams within three different categories.
It's a validation of your business vision,
it's a validation of your technology, already,
without even winning this prize.
And now we have "Open- Track Runner Up":
"Air Crew"
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And it's capable of bridging this very difficult gap between
the conception of the idea, and being able to commercialize it.
So, that process, being able to connect that, to
build this bridge is the mission of the Wyss Institute.
If we will see that this technology has transferred into
products that make a substancial positive influence
on the environment and society, this will be the real recognition.