The world’s largest air purifier has just been deployed in the center of Rotterdam Park in the Netherlands where it will suck out all the smog of the surrounding air. At 23 feet in height, the Smog Free Tower can purify up to 1 million cubic feet of air per hour, enough air to fill an entire indoor sports arena in 10 hours.
“When this baby is up and running for the day you can clean a small neighborhood,” explains Daan Roosegaarde, the Dutch designer who built the project in collaboration with Delft Technology University researcher Bob Ursem, and European Nano Solutions, a green tech company in the Netherlands. Roosegaarde is the same designer who paved the 60 miles of road outside of Amsterdam with glow-in-the-dark lines, earlier last year.
What may be effectively classified as a giant ionic air purifier, the Smog Free Tower absorbs surrounding air and positively charges all airborne impurities smaller than 15 micrometers, drawing them to a grounded counter electrode in much the same way that magnets attract metal shavings. The remaining oxygen, now filtered, is vented through the tower’s lower quadrant. (Note that because Smog Free Tower does not create ozone, as this would require charging particles with a positive voltage instead of a negative.)
Again, the underlying technology is not innovative in and of itself, but its robust application and artistic design creates a marketable solution with socially conscious application. Roosegaarde hopes his idea will catch on, believing that the tower’s beauty will draw attention to problems typically swept under the rug by overly bureaucratic city government. As such, he intends to travel around the world pitching his idea to officials in Beijing, and other places particularly famous for their smog.
Some whom he’s already spoken to, however, don’t bear the same enthusiasm as Roosegaarde himself, questioning the logistics and efficacy of applying his design en mass. “The proposed technology, while not new, would need to be well demonstrated on a large scale in a highly polluted urban area,” says Eileen McCauley, a manager in the California Air Resources Board’s research division.
Roosegaarde doesn’t see the tower as a final solution, but as step in the right direction.
Source: Wired
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