A Tower That Fights Smog Is Waging a Battle in China

Smog Free Tower cleans up air within 65 feet of it
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff
Posted May 19, 2017 10:38 AM CDT
A Tower That Fights Smog Is Waging a Battle in China
The Smog Free Tower is outperforming expectations, but in a limited area.   (Studio Roosegaarde)

With pollution levels in pockets of India and China reaching deadly levels, innovators around the world are designing and engineering ways to fight the war on smog. One device, a 23-foot-tall wind-powered air purifier called the Smog Free Tower, sucks in air from its surroundings and filters out tiny pollution particles that might otherwise find a home in our lungs. Designed by Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde in 2015, it was installed in Beijing in 2016 and found to be not all that helpful in a test conducted by the China Forum of Environmental Journalists. But a scientist has conducted new tests on the tower, now installed in a field in Tianjin, and says that it actually outperforms previous findings, capturing up to 70% of PM10 and 25% of PM2.5 (two pollution particles), reports Fast Company.

Roosegaarde says that while the tower only has a limited impact on the air 65 feet around it (when filtered air is combined with surrounding air, the effect is air containing 45% less PM10, per the new test), the smog-fighting tower could still provide relief and become part of a longer-term solution. Under the larger Smog Free Project, he's also designing bicycles that spit out positively charged ions that capture pollutants, reports Digital Trends. Roosegaarde says his team is building a prototype and hopes to develop a partnership between the Netherlands and China to install the bikes into local bike-sharing programs such as Mobike. (California is home to eight of the 10 US cities with the worst air pollution.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X