objava v Government Europa

A shift to safer and healthier driving with negative ions

Air ionization technologists IONEX d.o.o have developed an environmentally friendly innovation, contributing to the safety of transport and helping to achieve the European transport and mobility goals. The IONEXAir project, the most efficient and innovative IONEX air ioniser for installation in all types of vehicles; has recently been awarded a SMEInstrument Phase 1 grant.

Mobile phones are not the only thing that can deter your concentration from the road. A depletion of negative ions in your car from pollution is another factor which can heavily affect your concentration levels. You wouldn’t look at your phone whilst driving, so why would you continue to drive in an environment which is causing fatigue and slow reactions?

The IONEXAir ionizer has the potential to save your life by adding life-essential negative ions to the air inside a vehicle’s cabin.

The science behind the wheel

The air inside the cabin of a car is heavily polluted and completely depleted of negative ions. This lack of negative ions arises due to the physics phenomena – a vehicle’s body acts like a Faraday cage and, therefore, the negative ions cannot get inside the structure. In addition to this, air conditioning destroys negative ions which would otherwise enter the cabin through ventilation from outside.

This picture represents the Faraday cage effect. There are no negatively charged ions inside the vehicle cabin due to its metal constuction.

Living in environments with no or low quantities of negative ions is scientifically proven to be harmful for human health, therefore, they are having to be added to the depleted air artificially by negative ion generators (ionisers).

The lack of negative ions causes somnolence, fatigue, slow reactions, loss of concentration and increased irritation. Loss of concentration and fatigue contributes to 17-27% of road crashes, according to the European Commission’s road safety report.

Fortunately, we can remedy concentration loss and fatigue simply by adding negative ions back into a car cabin. Negative ions – emitted from air ionisers – can prevent these risks by reducing the level of stress hormone, increasing the level of oxygen in your blood, and thus improving the driver’s concentration and contributing to safer driving. The stress hormone is constantly produced while driving, according to the 2011 Occupational Safety and Health in transport sector.[1] If we lower the stress hormone, concentration and driving performance can increase; in turn, the traffic slows, and the number of accidents can decline.[2]

The IONEXAir Project

The IONEXAir ioniser adds a sufficient number of negative ions into the car to improve air conditions inside a vehicle’s cabin. The main feature is a uniquely designed and patented carbon brush which emits large amounts of negative ions without ever generating harmful ozone and cleans the air of carcinogenic particles.

The ionizer activates automatically when the car engine starts. The carbon brush emits up to 2.7 x 10⁷ negative ions/cm3/sec and 0.31 x 10¹³ ions/sec). As a result, every second the IONEXAir ionizer emits 27 x 10¹⁰ negative ions per litre of air, of which can instantly clean the cabin air. In comparison, there are about 100 million (1 x 10⁷) particles of exhaust gases in each litre of air in cities, and 1 x 10¹⁰ particles in a litre of air on highways.

Air ventilation carries negative ions around the cabin air, and because negatively charged particles cannot exist by themselves, they bind to the nearest sub micrometre particle of exhaust fumes, soot, and dust in the air, and bring them down onto surfaces. Being ionized, the pollutants cannot become airborne again and are therefore efficiently eliminated from the air we breathe, preventing enormous amounts of pollutants from accumulating in the lungs of passengers. Large quantities of negative ions mean a much more efficient solution than that which current ionisers/ filters can offer.

The Significance of IONEXAir

The innovation is significant as it improves the indoor air conditions in all types of vehicles by integrating air ionisation. As a result, the air is completely clean and enriched with remaining negative ions, which have beneficial effects on health as they enter through the lungs into the blood. Subsequently, the level of stress hormone is lowered, whilst enabling the driver to be more focused, alert and careful.

Furthermore, prevention of fatigue and sleepiness (by some studies, concentration can be improved by 30%) thus increases safety through fewer accidents. Scientific evidence on the beneficial effects of negative ions for humans has been published by many world-renowned institutes and famous scientists. Many of them have been summarised in the book »Negative ions as a method of healing – Evidence by Scientific Institutes Worldwide« by ionisation specialist Lorena Leonardos.

IONEXAir ionizer emits negative ions into car cabin.

To sum up, the aim of the project is to solve two main challenges in traffic:

• To lower the number of road accidents; and
• To protect passengers from constant accumulation of exhaust fumes and soot from traffic in their lungs.

“These carcinogenic sub-micrometre particles cannot be stopped by air filters, causing irreversible damage”, explains Mrs Leonardos, the innovator of this solution and the owner of the IONEX company.

Although electric mobility contributes to lower exhaust fumes, there is still a long way to go to achieve a fume free environment – especially free from diesel engine fumes which emit most carcinogenic particles. As said before, this innovation would come in handy even in a completely fume free environment because its importance is in improving the concentration of the driver, not only air cleanliness and quality.

The project is beneficial for final users, especially professional and long-distance drivers, and should be implemented in all cars. By increasing levels of negative ions, IONEXAir automatically creates an environment that is safer, human-friendly, stress-free and healthy. Installation is easy, flexible (simply added to the air conditioning system in cars), and therefore cost efficient.

IONEXAir ionizer with carbon brush.

Further development of IONEXAir project

IONEX aims to finalise and commercially deploy this solution throughout the EU and worldwide during Phase 2 and 3.

After being successfully awarded an SME Instrument Phase 1 grant, IONEX now intensively works on the pilot implementation. Regarding partnership with potential target customers, a major shift in focus has occurred and we have concluded that the key target customer should not be the automotive industry itself, but instead producers of air conditioning and ventilation (HVAC) systems/devices for the automotive industry, so more specific segment. HVAC industry should be responsible for introducing such novelties as negative ions to their field.

But the objective and concept of the project have not changed. The priority is intensive search for a partner to work closely and fast on the project development to reach commercialization as estimated in the application.

IONEX would like to appeal to all interested potential partners in the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) field to conclude a research and development partnership with us. HVAC products, with an incorporated IONEX solution, will achieve a market advantage and improve its competitiveness, as well as improving the air cleaning capacities of current devices.

The usage of IONEXAir is not limited to integration in HVAC systems of vehicles, but also can be integrated in HVAC systems of buildings, in heat recovery ventilation, it can be integrated in furniture (like ion-kitchen to remove odours, or ion-bathroom, etc.)  So, this innovation is interesting also for building sector, HVAC sector in general (as integration in various air cleaning devices) and furniture industry.

We have already received some interest from manufacturers of HVAC devices, such as dust collectors.

IONEX would also like to attract the co-operation of health organisations (IOSH, WHO) to educate the market around the dangers of carcinogenic exhaust gases and solving these issues.

Take a look at the video about this project.

Lorena Leonardos,

CEO of IONEX d.o.o.

+386 40 191 313, +386 1 4396 980

ionex@ionex.si

www.ionex-ionizers.com

www.ionex.si

[1] European Agency for Safety and Health at Work: page 198, http://bit.ly/2iyFhTb, ISBN 978-92-9191-303-9: Workers in transport sector have more stress than the avg. working population. Within the EU-27, about 22% of the workers report work affects their health in terms of stress. This % is much higher in the land transport sector where about 33,3% of the workers report stress.

[2] Severe stress reaction may disrupt driver’s attention, so may impair driving safety and also can lead to driving violations. »Examining factors influencing safe driving behaviours and traffic safety culture«, Agnes Hoge-Nagy, 2016, Doctoral School of Human Science, Page 3, http://bit.ly/2xpkckq