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Modular Air Filtering Towers Could Solve China’s Air Pollution

Along with its economical rise, China also recorded a boom on its automotive sector, with over 20 million cars being bought there in 2013 alone. Add the fact that most of those cars are used in urban environments, the country’s success relying on energy created by burning coal, thousands of factories spewing uncontrolled emissions and you get the idea about what kind of air pollution problems some of the cities are confronted with.
air cleaning tower 1 photo
Photo: Alexander Balchin/edited by autoevolution
The battle against air pollution has put some limitations on emissions, but that’s not going to clean the air fast enough. Now a project envisioned by China-based architect Alexander Balchin promises to solve the problem, fortunately.

The image above is not a Half Life 3 piece of artwork as you might have thought. It’s a modular skyscraper designed to suck up dirty air and clean it. Sort of like your home air filter that uses water, only a couple hundred thousand times bigger.

Water is the key

Currently being only in its conceptual phase, the tower is said to suck up the air through a central chimney and filter out the soot using a Venturi scrubbers.

In simple words, dirty air comes in, gets bubbled through water and exits clean enough to be pumped through the rest of the building. The process could go further with the air being sent through a separate ionizing system that collects other particles and send cleaner air back into the city.

The rushing air could be used to provide part of the building’s power but more interesting is the fact that the tower is designed using a modular structure. Which means that as soon as the air in the city got clean enough (Binhai being the example here), one or more such buildings could be taken apart and erected elsewhere.

And if you thought the rest of the building will simply stand there and pointlessly occupy vertical space, each module is topped by a green garden, where people can go and enjoy normal outdoor activities.

Although there’s no current information about Chine starting to build these air cleaning towers, we do hope this project will attract funding and become a reality soon.
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