Kristen Tapping, a graduate from London South Bank University, has invented a bike wheelthat she says can help clean pollution from the air. It's called Rolloe.
The wheel uses fins to pull in air as it turns, It then usesfilters(过滤器) to take in polluted air and give off clean air back into the environment. The wheel can filter more air if it goes faster, although it still works at low speeds.
Tapping said users would need to change the filter every week, or after about 250kilometers, to make sure the wheel continues to work well. The wheel fits in thefront of a standard bike and weighs about one kilogram.
Tapping said she was encouraged to create the wheel when she was biking aroundLondon. " In traffic, you always notice the pollution; the heat, the gases and the smell, " she said. She predicts that if 10 percent of cyclists(骑自行车的人) in London had a Rolloe on their bike, they could filter about 266, 865 m3 of air a day, although this has yet to be tested.
A recent report shows that London's health costs because of air pollution are the highest outof the 432 European cities. The World Health Organization (WHO) has also said that outdoor airpollution causes about 4. 2 million deaths around the world each year.
Tapping wants to use the wheel on shared bike projects at first, with the aim of making thewheels available for all bikes to use. She says she would also like to create a wheel that would fitin the back of a bike, as well as making them available in different sizes.
