Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Could dirigibles with pollution capture device clean up Mexico City’s air?

A Mexico City engineer and architect is proposing an airborne laboratory and pollution capture device to clean up the air in the country’s capital.

Salvador Silva Contreras this week presented an atmospheric clean-up and rehabilitation project, which utilizes a dirigible balloon flying at an altitude of 100-300 meters over areas with high concentrations of pollutants.

The airship would be equipped with an atmospheric laboratory, a suction device, a filter and a storage container.

Pollutants captured through a thermo-chemical process could be buried in the Sonora desert, in an area already used for similar purposes, explained the inventor, who has been working on his plan for 10 years.

Silva has identified the Chichinautzin volcano south of Mexico City as a suitable place to perform a trial run.

He proposes the use of three airships in areas with the worst air pollution levels.

Silva explained that each airship could clean 11% of the city’s polluted air in two years for a total investment of US $25.5 million.

Some funding could be obtained by selling advertising space on the Zeppelin’s surface, he said.

The inventor wants to present his project to Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and is waiting for an opportunity to do so.

Another proposal for addressing the city’s air pollution, which was so bad last week that an Extraordinary Environmental Contingency was in effect for four days, was to install giant exhaust fans that would push the bad air out of the Valley of México through tunnels in the mountains. The mayor has nixed the idea on the grounds that it would not address the root cause of the problem.

Source: El Sol de México (sp), Puerto Libre (sp)

Have something to say? Paid Subscribers get all access to make & read comments.
Mexico's budget deficit

Mexico slashes budget deficit by US $8.5B as tax collection surges 8.9%

6
A 38.4% boost in revenue from import taxes and a 5.3% decrease in public spending from January-May helped to majorly reduce Mexico's budget deficit.
the commute from Tijuana to San Diego

Number of cross-border workers from Baja California drops 20%

0
INEGI data showed that Baja California residents who commute regularly to work in Southern California stood at 70,642 in Q1 of 2025, down from 87,190 in the first quarter of 2024.
Sinaloa violence

20 killed in gruesome massacre attributed to ‘Los Mayos’ in Culiacán

0
The massacre of 20 people, five of whom were decapitated, is the deadliest single episode of violence of what has widely been described as a "war" between "Los Chapitos" and "Los Mayos."