◊ By Pure & Eco India

17-year-old Darsh Doshi from Mumbai has built a prototype of a portable power-saving air purifier, ‘PoCoMo’. PoCoMo stands for ‘Portable, Controllable, Movable’.

Built from recycled plastic containers, and with the help of his mother’s “fashion design advice” with regards to the filters’ materials, PoCoMo has been designed to remove particulate matter like smoke, pollen and soot from the air in houses, streets, industrial areas, fields and other places where air pollution is rampant.

The purifier has two layers of filters – one coarser and the other, finer, and one below the other. As the fan rotates, a vacuum is created in the container which sucks air from the top.

As the air is sucked, the first filter blocks out larger particulate matter present in the air such as large dust particles, pollen, pet hair, etc, while the second filter filters the smaller dirt particles present in the air, such as smoke and soot particles.

The container has some slits, which push out the filtered air. This process continues as the pollutants in the air are removed and the air is purified.

The unique feature of PoCoMo is its mobility, which is controlled by an app. The purifier is attached to a chassis, which drives it in different directions. The app was developed using the MIT App Development software, which has ‘Forward’, ‘Left’, ‘Right’, ‘Stop’, and ‘On’ and ‘Off’ functions in the chassis.

In order to purify the entire house, multiple air purifiers need to be bought for each room or one purifier has to be shifted constantly from one room to another.

However, since PoCoMo is attached to a chassis, one can choose the room she wants to purify first and accordingly, drive the purifier there using the app, thereby saving money, and more importantly, power.

PoCoMo saves approximately Rs 7,500 and 160W of power daily.