AIR CONDITIONING Reimagining roadside air Daniel Wood
As part of Carrier’s Airside team, Daniel Wood, Head of Sales and Chris Ekins, Airside Sales Engineer, London North West, have played a central role in assisting the development and deployment of bespoke air handling systems for Pollution Solution’s Roadvent, a fi rst-of-its-kind roadside emissions capture technology. Here, they explore how the partnership came to life and what it means for the future of outdoor air quality.
W Chris Ekins
It reminds us that the air we breathe is as much a design challenge as the buildings we live and work in. And for us, that’s the future of HVAC: responsive, radical and rooted in purpose.
hen you work in HVAC, you spend your days thinking about how to control air. How to heat it, cool it, clean it or move it with maximum effi ciency. But
every once in a while, a project comes along that reshapes your perspective on what’s possible, not just in terms of air handling, but in how your work can have a tangible, life-changing impact on public health. That’s what happened when we met the team behind Roadvent, a street-level emissions capture system developed by UK clean-tech innovators, Pollution Solution. It’s not often that you encounter a concept that’s equal parts technically ambitious and socially urgent. At Carrier, we’ve been proud to stand alongside their team as engineering partners, helping bring their vision to life.
Roadvent, patented in 21 countries, is a pioneering system designed to reduce human exposure to traffi c-related air pollution at the roadside, particularly at congestion hotspots like traffi c lights, pedestrian crossings, school drop-off zones and busy urban bus stops. Using a network of bespoke and modifi ed linear slot drains embedded into the road surface, the system extracts polluted air directly from where it accumulates, fi lters it using a series of high-performance systems and reintroduces it into the environment as clean air. When Pollution Solution’s founder, Thomas Delgado,
approached us, he already had a system built and the concept proven, but needed a trusted engineering partner to develop a completely bespoke air handling solution to integrate into the system. From our earliest conversations, it was clear this wasn’t a retrofi t job or an off -the-shelf application. It was about co- developing a one-of-a-kind prototype together. The unit we’ve built with the Pollution Solution team is best described as a custom air handling unit (AHU), but one designed entirely around their specifi cation and requirements. That includes everything from the fan selection and casing geometry to the fi ltration stages and control panel integration. The fans are confi gured to generate a strong suction eff ect,
drawing vehicle emissions down through the re-engineered linear slot drains set into the road. These are connected via subsurface pipework to the external air handling cabinet at the kerbside. There, the air is passed through a sophisticated fi lter
20 September 2025 •
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bank of HEPA fi lters, electrostatic precipitators and activated carbon layers, targeting fi ne particulate matter, exhaust gases and other harmful compounds. What emerges is clean, fi ltered air. The control logic is managed through a bespoke panel developed by Pollution Solution and integrated to interface with real-time sensors located inside the air handling unit, off ering data insights and customisable features. Another example of how this system is pushing the envelope in adaptive IAQ control.
Why it matters It’s easy to become absorbed in the engineering side of things; the specs, the logistics, the testing. But what sets this project apart is its impact potential. Roadvent targets the exact locations where pollution poses the most signifi cant risk to people: at school gates, congested crossings and narrow streets with tall buildings that trap emissions. One such location is the fi rst live deployment of Roadvent, planned for a primary school site in Lewisham. An area made tragically famous due to the death of nine-year-old Ella Adoo Kissi-Debrah, the fi rst person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death. Lewisham Council is now taking a leading role in piloting this system as part of its Air Quality Action Plan (2022–2027), which supports the borough’s wider Climate Emergency Action Plan. Through this initiative, the Council aims to raise public awareness and address the health impacts of air pollution. Working on a project with that kind of emotional and social weight adds a real sense of purpose. At Carrier, we’ve always been committed to improving indoor air quality, but Roadvent extends that mission to the outdoors in a way that very few solutions have ever attempted. The concept isn’t just visionary; it has already been validated. A full-scale prototype installed at Millbrook Proving Ground achieved a 91% reduction in human exposure to roadside air pollution, measured at the average height of a child. That number alone is reason enough to be excited about what Roadvent can do. The product has already attracted the attention of other local authorities, government bodies and MP’s. This shows that
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