There has been a protype air purifier inaugurated by former cricketer and BJP MP from East Delhi at Lajpat Nagar in Delhi.
In November, the supreme court had passed orders to the state to have some strong steps taken to curb the rising pollution in the atmosphere by installing ‘smog towers’.
Do we literally know what ‘smog towers’ are?
Smog towers are basically large-scale air purifiers. Thy filter large quantum of air with large filters fitted inside them, there are multiple filters to capture the dust particles. The smog tower that has been installed at Lajpat Nagar has a capacity to filter 6,00,000 cubic meters or air every 24 hours and can also filter out around 75 percent of particulate matters of 2.5 and 10. The towers release clean air after treating the polluted air.
The state government of Delhi has planned to install more such smog towers at Cannaught place in Central Park. The smog tower would be as high as 20 meters and would try filtering out particulate polluted matter suspended in the air. These large-scale air filters shall draw the polluter air through fans installed above them that would suck in polluted air and release fresh air towards the ground. The smog towers would be using carbon nanofibers as a primary component.
The project was possible only by 3 premium institutes coming together for a much-needed help to cleanse the polluted and dangerous air in the surrounding. The collaboration was between IIT B (Powai), IIT Delhi and the university of Minnesota. The latter had been the primary research institute that designed the same smog tower in the Chinese city of Xi’an. The tower was as high as 100 meters.
These towers of utmost need to battle air pollution across the globe, this has helped reduce pollution to a drastic level for instance the worlds larger smog tower reduced the PM 2.5 by 19% in an area of around 6 sq km in its vicinity.
The interesting factor of this smog tower built and designed by Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde is that the carbon waste generated during the filtration procedure will product gemstones. With just 30 mins of filtration process the towers can produce black gemstones that can be used as jewelry and other exotic stones.
