We're planning a kitchen remodel and one of our options is to locate the range in the island. My wife isn't too keen on a ceiling hung hood and we want to use a slide-in range rather than separate stove top and oven.

Thinking about the design of the island, I'm considering locating against a 3'10" - 4' tall 'wall' and it occurs to me that I could located a 'fixed' down draft extraction system in that space, think a pair of vents/grease traps mounted in the 10-12" of wall running along the back edge of the island, with duct running down to a remote blower in the basement.

I can find remote blowers/speed controllers available online, and obviously the duct work is standard, but has anybody ever seen a wall mounted grease trap style vent?

An alternative option might be to make the 4' wall deep enough to accommodate a conventional pop-up down draft. Would this potentially improve the effectiveness of the system because it would now be drawing air from a point higher than the tops of the pans and wouldn't be fighting the laws of physics quite as much. Has anybody ever tried an install like that?