college applications lead one to resort to desperate measures to ensure that the 60k-90k a non-local student pays annually is of enough valor for the ancestors to not regret making the shift from a warrior society to an academic one. my ace-in-the-hole was elon musk's xprize carbon removal competition: a trillionaire's money laundering scheme disguised as an altruistic battle against co2 causing the sixth mass extinction. i stumbled upon it while laying belly down on my bed abusing youtube to cope with my feeling of incompetance as applications approach. i think it was a kurzgezagt video or something that mentioned this competition, but i decided to make this my final gambit.
after funneling $25-dollars off to mr. musk i started my plan which starts with the following schematic drawn on my twelfth grade teacher's whiteboard:
the gist of the machine is as follows: using something called a cockroft-walton multiplier will multiply voltage the ac output of a wall socket to around 3000v, which is enough to ionize air. those ionized particles will stick to carbon dioxide or any other pollutants in the air, which will give it a charge. those charged pollutants will then be attracted to a ground plane where it will be collected and create world peace. i even created an ltspice simulation of this project:
i had simulations ran for it, which i do not have currently as the screenshot was on an old laptop. i remember it did multiply voltage to around 3000v ac, with a massive oscillation of voltage. the only sensible thing to do is to actually build it, which is what i did. after ordering the capacitors off amazon and buying a bunch of diodes, the following monstrosity was created:
since it is expected to create a stupid amount of voltage, four 1n4007 diodes rated for 1000v in series was used with the logic of adding their voltage ratings to create what's basically a 4000v diode. it probably did not work like that, but i was in high school so save me the talk. the capacitors were rated for high voltage, though i forgot the exact voltage, and they were 0.01 uf capacitors i think if i followed the schematic. a 1mΩ resistor was used to limit current. as you can see, it is directly connected to mains power using a torn apart power cable for hotpots and household appliances. the ground was connected to a piece of a soda can i was drinking in my father's office, and the setup was placed in a box used to store my freshly dead great-uncle's belongings which included various membership cards, stale-smelling clothing, and books he wrote syncretizing christianity, buddhism, daoism, and korean cults.
first, i had to ensure that the contraption actually multiplied voltage successfully. there are, however, no multimeters rated for over 1000v. the multimeter i used was my friends, who got it from his dad who got it from his friend. unfortunately, passing that much voltage through it caused it to bust and is therefore now effectively broken. if you are that person and are reading this, i would like to apologize and am sincerely sorry; if you want i will buy you a brand new one. while it could not read up until 3000v, i was able to read this short second of it hitting over 1000v, meaning it at least works in multiplying voltage to a multimeter-frying value.
to experiment with it, i placed it in the box and oriented it so that it the ionization happened above the ground plate. i used a lighter to burn a piece of facial tissue and shut the box. as the box filled with smoke, i let the machine run until i got impatient and uncovered the lid. who would have guessed that it did not work in practice. perhaps the ionization rate was too low and did not generate ions efficiently enough to cause significant carbon capture or the oscillation did not provide a constant high voltage to generate ions. either way, i did not see any residue collect on the ground plate, spelling failure for my attempt to save the world for the time being
one day, the day will come when i become the founder of a carbon capture company and finally bring the world out of the smoke using a hopefully better lightning tower, but until then i will fight for my life to understand what an i2c is.