Battling smog China builds world's largest air purifier
The tower is situated in the city of Xian in central China's Shaanxi province.
XIAN (Web Desk) - China has built the world’s largest air purifier in an effort to control the country’s chronic smog problem.
The tower is situated in the city of Xian in central China’s Shaanxi province. It is 100m (328ft) long and can filter 353 million cubic feet (10 million cubic metres) of air per day.
Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Earth Environment are monitoring the project. The scientist leading the project says that the tower has brought a noticeable improvement in air quality.
The purifier works by sucking air into vast greenhouses the size of half a football pitch at the tower’s base. The polluted air is heated by the sun, causing it to expand and forcing it up through the filters in the tower.
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Research leader Cao Junji said it had improved air purity in a six-square-mile area, filtering 353 million cubic feet (10 million cubic metres) of air per day over the past few months, but on bad days it can only reduce the pollution from “severe” to “moderate”.
Cao said: “The tower has no peer in terms of size. The results are quite encouraging. It barely requires any power input throughout daylight hours. The idea has worked very well in the test run.”
Cao said larger planned towers would have diameters of 200m (656ft), use greenhouses covering almost 12 square miles and would be able to purify the air over a whole city.
