The Cryo-Trap (Storyboard prototype)

Description

How It Works
​The device operates in three stages to “freeze” (immobilize) and compress pollutants:
1.​Thermal Cooling (The “Freeze”):

As hot exhaust enters the box, it passes through a heat exchanger. This rapidly lowers the temperature of the gases, causing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to condense from a gas into a liquid or solid state, effectively “freezing” their movement so they can be caught.
2.​Electrostatic Capture:
The cooled “black smoke” (which is mostly Carbon-2.5 and soot) passes through a chamber with a high-voltage electric field. This charges the particles, acting like a magnet that pulls the black soot out of the airstream and sticks it to the walls of the device.
3. ​Mechanical Compression:
Periodically, a mechanical scraper or screw system scrapes the collected soot from the walls and pushes it into a storage cartridge. Here, the loose soot is compressed under high pressure into a dense “carbon brick” or a thick sludge.
​The Result
​Clean Air:

The air leaving the tailpipe is transparent and significantly cleaner.
​The “Carbon Brick”: instead of smog, the waste product is a small, solid block of pure carbon.
​Recycling:

This carbon block can be harvested and upcycled into useful products like black ink (for pens), paint, or tire fillers.
​Real-World Parallel:

This idea is similar to existing technologies like Graviky Labs’ Kaalink, a device that captures soot from vehicles to create “Air-Ink.”