Criteria
To determine if our scrubber met the goals we had in mind, we analyze the amount of C02, BTEX, and other harmful pollutants before the application of the scrubber and afterwards. We determined that any significant, noticeable change (5%) in the concentration of the compounds would meet our emission reduction goal.
Procedure
Our initial round of testing was conducted on the metal version of our second prototype. We used a simple CO2 sensor provided by Mr. Guthrie to measure to amount of carbon coming out of a car's exhaust before and after the application of our scrubber. In addition to testing the metal version, we used resources provided at MTSU to test our 3D printed version as well.
For our second round of testing, we took our updated, 3D printed version of our third prototype to MTSU to accurately analyze the concentration of the compounds. Using a diesel engine, we captured the exhaust without the scrubber and with the scrubber into plastic tedlar bags. From there, we inserted the collected gas into a vacuum chamber and ran tests using the Infrared Spectroscopy Machine. The IRS produced graphs detailing the amount of each compound in the gas by ppm. We also used this method to test our 3D printed second prototype.