China has always taken a strict action against pollution. It recently announced plans to plant a forest the size of Ireland to combat pollution. The latest efforts to combat pollution comes in the form of world’s biggest air purifier. The tower is situated in Xian in the Shaanxi province, where researchers from the Institute of Earth Environment at the Chinese Academy of Sciences are running tests on it.
“The tower has no peer in terms of size … the results are quite encouraging,” said Cao Junji, the head of research for the air purifier. According to the researchers’ report, it improves air quality over a 10 square kilometre area in Xian. This information came just a day after Shanxi and other regions had the highest air pollution readings in recent months.
“By noon on Monday, the air quality index for the city of Linfen had shot up to 428, according to the China National Environmental Monitoring Centre’s real-time data,” the South China Morning Post reported. “The number refers to the concentration of small, breathable and toxic particles known as PM2.5. Smog levels above 300 are considered dangerous and the scale tops out at 500.”
However, the world’s biggest air purifier could be the solution that China is so desperately searching for. The tower has already been functioning for a few months to provide a benchmark for researchers to work on. The research team has almost completed their study and the results should be shared very soon.
In the worst pollution-filled days, Cao said in an interview that the tower could reduce smog to nearly moderate levels. “It barely requires any power input throughout daylight hours. The idea has worked very well in the test run.”
The government still has not commented if the world’s biggest air purifier would be a standalone project or if there would be a string of similar towers in other cities. This tower is part of the war China is waging against smog and pollution. It is nice to see that some countries in the world are actually serious about controlling pollution and taking adequate action.
