An indoor barbecue to prevent pollution problems

AS THEY REOPEN after lockdown, many restaurants are firing up their barbecues. Diners appreciate food grilled over glowing charcoal embers, but the neighbours often do not. Pollution levels near restaurants can be notably higher than average, largely because of emissions from kitchens. With the increasing popularity of indoor barbecuing, it is a problem that is set to get worse.Faced with complaints from residents about fumes and lingering smells, the German Environment Agency asked Mohammad Aleysa, an expert in combustion technology at the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics in Stuttgart, to investigate. The results of his experiments were so shocking they drove Dr Aleysa and his research team to invent a cleaner system for indoor charcoal grilling.