Dr. Ernest Blatchley

So, in the swimming community, indoor air quality is a big deal because it has the potential to adversely affect the athletes.

But I think for just everyday swimmers also, it's a relevant issue.

So,

The swimming community broadly is interested in improving indoor air quality.

And I was contacted about the Paris Olympics and the company that installs the facility that was built there, the temporary indoor pools that are used for many high-level competitions, because they had apparently read some of the work that we had published and

Because there was an opportunity there to conduct an experiment that would allow us to evaluate the performance of this air stripping system that was developed specifically for that purpose.

Sure.

So air stripping is a process that promotes the transfer of volatile chemicals from the liquid phase to the gas phase.

So basically what we want to do is literally strip those volatile chemicals from the water.

And the way that this is often done is to introduce tiny bubbles into water in a controlled setting, and then having those bubbles move upward through the water.

And as they do, the volatile chemicals will move into the bubble.

And then if you can collect the air off the top of that column, whatever that water column is, and send it away from the water, or in this case away from the pool,

then you have a mechanism to basically bypass where the people would ordinarily be breathing it.

Exactly, to the outside.

I mean, they're going to end up outside regardless.

So really, it's just sort of a short circuit.

Rather than go through the indoor space where the swimmers and the spectators and the lifeguards and everybody else is, it's just going straight outdoors.

Rather than going through the lungs of all those people I just listed and then outdoors.

That's exactly right.

So if you're familiar with pools and it sounds like you are, typically what will happen is water will flow over a gutter or over the edge of a gutter and it'll be fairly shallow in this gutter and then it'll move to a treatment system.