To tackle air pollution, China builds world's biggest ‘Air Purifier'

Beijing, January 17: After years of efforts to tackle smog, China has made a major move by building the world's largest air purifier at 330 ft in Xian. The 100-mt tower, currently under the testing phase, is said to have improved the air quality over an area of 10 square km. It has been reported that the tower is releasing 10 million cubic metres of clean air per day.

The system works through greenhouses covering about half the size of a soccer field around the base of the tower.

Polluted air is sucked into the glasshouses and heated up by solar energy. The hot air then rises through the tower and passes through multiple layers of cleaning filters.

“The tower has no peer in terms of size the results are quite encouraging,” said Cao. Xian can experience heavy pollution in winter, with much of the city’s heating relying on coal.

The tower’s operators say, however, that the system still works in the cold months as coatings on the greenhouses enable the glass to absorb solar radiation at a much higher efficiency.

Cao’s team set up more than a dozen pollution monitoring stations in the area to test the tower’s impact. Cao said the results were preliminary because the experiment is still ongoing. The team plans to release more detailed data in March with a full scientific assessment of the facility’s overall performance.