China’s industry is growing at a very fast pace, and so are the pollution levels in the country. It is having a hard time dealing with the pollution problems. This January, 32 Chinese cities were issued a red alert for extremely high smog levels. The country is making a lot of effort to deal with the pollution crisis, may it be a temporary ban on cars or forest cities.
A Smog Free Tower was built in Beijing to address the smog problems by Studio Roosegaarde, and the same company is now adding up to its pollution-fighting tools with a bike that purifies the air.
The Smog Free Tower stands at 7 meters tall, 3.5 meters in thickness, powered by the wind to create a bubble releasing positively charged ions in the air. When these ions attach to very fine dust particles, the tower recaptures them with an internal negatively charged surface. Scientists at the Eindhoven University of Technology studied the effectiveness of the Smog Tower and found that it could capture 70 percent of particulate matter with less than 10 micrometers diameter and 50 percent of 2.5 micrometers or less. It cleaned the 30,000,000 cubic meters of air in a 41 day period.
The Dutch artists Daan Roosegaarde wants to implement the same technology in a bicycle, giving people an incentive to minimize the use of cars. Bike sharing programs are becoming popular in China, and the idea has a great potential for it.
The idea is still a concept, and no technical details have been revealed yet. It is meant to work on the same principal as the smog tower, inhaling the polluted air, and releasing the cleaned air as you maneuver around the town on your bike.
The designer Roosegaarde says, “Beijing used to be an iconic bicycle city. We want to bring back the bicycle as a cultural icon of China and as the next step towards smog-free cities.”
The studio is not limiting themselves to the tower or the bikes, another idea of smog-free jewelry is also in the works.
Source: Studio Roosegaarde
