Survival recipes in a smoky city

The instructions for oxygen extraction can be found on the Internet on the sites and forums of chemists, and with the onset of weather anomalies and obvious oxygen starvation, recipes for preparing oxygen from water, hydrogen peroxide and manganese can also be found in the "live magazine". But bloggers are not the first to remember school experiments in chemistry. Dmitry Belenets long before the current oxygen hunt came up with an oxygen hookah, even posted a simple but quite informative site on the Internet. In the summer of 2010, the demand came up, but Klyanov is not available-everyone dispersed from friends, the inventor of the oxygen hookah Dmitry Belenets told us:

-It is called "oxygen hookah" due to similarity with ordinary hookah. It has a water filter, only in hookah the smoke passes through water or through another liquid, and here it passes not smoke, but pure oxygen. Oxygen and water vapor are formed from hydrogen peroxide. To inhale not so many water vapor, a water filter is used, and it gurgles, like in a hookah.

- And what effect does a person feel from the inhalation of oxygen hookah?

- Ordinary oxygen. Oxygen bars have existed for a long time. Since oxygen has become significantly less on the planet, people to a greater or lesser extent experience its lack. When a person simply inhales oxygen, at least for a short time, he experiences a surge of strength, vigor.

- Is the oxygen hookah your original idea?

- In this form when oxygen is formed from hydrogen peroxide, this is my idea. Although this idea, in principle, is not new, it is described in school textbooks. It turns out much cheaper than when using oxygen concentrates. The equipment itself is extremely simple: the sausage, a test tube ... Initially, it was planned that together with delivery in Moscow, the price of a hookah would not exceed 500 rubles.

If the oxygen hookah Dmitry Belenz requires elementary knowledge of chemistry, then the experiments with a vacuum cleaner described in the same “living magazine” are already a consequence of acquaintance with the laws of physics. It is proposed to use wet fabric and a hole in the air of the on the vacuum cleaner. At five times rising prices for modern filters and air conditioners in Moscow, this advice may be not notable. But before turning the vacuum cleaner into a filter and “smoke” oxygen hookah at home, you need to keep in mind that all this in a 40-degree heat can be useless after a typical “European-European Republic”. This is evidenced by the director of the Laboratory "Ecology of Life Space" Anton Yastrebtsev:

- at elevated temperatures, synthetic materials, which are now actively used in everyday life, begin to more intensively distinguish various components: toluene, benzene, styrene, phenols, formaldehydes. This is especially true for low -quality materials. The most dangerous are the mastics that are used for the parquet stickers, for waterproofing work, anti -noise linings, simply put, grounds. When heated, they very actively emit polytechnic aromatic hydrocarbons that smell very sharply.

- When you buy a device that improves the climate, what should you keep in mind?

- Of course, not all devices perform a universal function. It’s not easy to clean the air, especially such a smoke that is now observed in Moscow. There are water filters, which, as a rule, are installed in houses. They filter various dust very well, smoke is worse, but they also filter. They dissolve in themselves oxides of sulfur and nitrogen oxides, which are an integral part of the smoke, but the carbon monoxide does not dissolve.

Activated coal filters are well filtered by sulfur oxides, and nitrogen oxides, and even carbon monoxide, although not completely. In addition, such filters also cope with aromatic hydrocarbons, which are also an integral part of smoke. There are also filters based on ionizers, various membranes, but they actually only eliminate the smell of smoke. They cannot cope with sulfur and nitrogen oxides, but they remove hard particles, smells, that is, the air is less annoying.

The last type of filter, which was mentioned by the expert Anton Yastrebtsev, is very similar to the ion air purification generator. And this invention also belongs to the Russian - Yuri Tkachenko. Several stations at which ion generators work are in Dubai and one in the south of Moscow.

- Fires will end sooner or later, but without them smoke in Moscow is quite strong - exhausts from cars, and just dust. To maintain the city in constant cleanliness, such stations should be at least 10-15 for Moscow. In Dubai, in the Arab Emirates, where there are always increased dustiness of the city, there are our stations. We have experience that is confirmed by space pictures when, with the help of generators, we managed to stop a dust storm. Of course, if such generators were available, for example, at the Ministry of Emergencies, then we could prevent these fires, just destroying the anticyclone in time, says Yuri Tkachenko.

- Some may say that your idea is akin to such an impact on the climate as acceleration of clouds, and of course, it is criticized. What would you answer them?

- You know, I would answer this way: now, when thousands of tons of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere, all this soot settles in the lungs of people. What is better - to expel this bar into the upper layers of the atmosphere, which is what our generator does, or leave everything as it is by enduring your health?

Yuri Tkachenko draws attention to the fact that, unlike the household ionizer for premises, using an ion generator, you can not only fill the atmosphere with beneficial ions, but model the weather: change humidity, reduce dusting, in addition, increase the tone of people in the territory of the station. According to the developer, the metropolitan authorities were given a sanction for an experiment with an ion generator of air purification in Moscow. So stinging remarks about the fact that the mayor of Luzhkov knows how to disperse the clouds, but to catch up with the rain is not able to seem to be no longer relevant. But the inventor of the ion generator Yuri Tkachenko complains about the passivity of the metropolitan authorities:

- None of the Moscow government came to us, although they are well aware of our work. I say: come and look - at the station a clear sky, no burn. After all, it costs cheaper than other brands of private cars.

Yuri Tkachenko created an ion generator to clean the air and is sure that with its help it is possible to save Moscow from Smog, and the Sochi Olympics from high humidity. Among the partners of his project in the capital, he indicated Mosecomonitoring, whose specialists on these hot days are the main persons and votes of television and radios. But the name of the expert, who could give an assessment of the ion generator Yuri Tkachenko, could not be called.

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  Evgenia Nazarets

  Acting director of the Russian service Radio Liberty

  Nazaretse@rferl.org