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The tower that eats up smog and spits out clean air

Reporter: Liqiong 丨 CCTV.com

10-01-2016 00:11 BJT

This gives you a reason to go and enjoy life and artworks outdoors even on polluted days. A tower that takes in smog and releases clean air has been unveiled in Beijing. The tower's Dutch designer hopes to tackle the city's air pollution issue with his innovative metal structure.
 
In Beijing's 798 arts district, Daan Roosegaarde has unveiled his newly designed Smog Free Tower comprised of 45 silver plates.

The 7-meter metal structure takes in smog and breathes out cleaner air.

The tower contains an air-purifying machine that catches pm2.5 particles and turns them into a pitch black powder.

"Basically the design was inspired by the Chinese temple, so it is sort of like a clean air temple, so the polluted air comes in from the above, gets cleaned on the nano level, the ultrafine particles. And then the clean air comes through here, and actually goes into the area surrounding us. Creating areas which are around 75% more clean than the rest of the city. So we are now in one of the cleanest spots in Beijing," said Daan Roosegaarde, designer of Smog Free Tower Project.

Daan claims that the tower catches particles at a rate of thirty thousand cubic meters per hour, which could clean a size of a soccer stadium per day.
However, Daan's team doesn't dump the collected particles, but instead, turns them into rings.

"So here you see the cube that sort of floating in mid air, this the incredibly disgusting small particles that we harvested from a thousand cubic meter of clean air. Compressing it and then sort of shielding it because it is very polluting. And we have wedding couples purchasing this as sign of true love, giving it to each other. And actually the finance we made when selling the jewelry helped us to build one of the first smog free towers," said Daan Roosegaarde.

Daan claims that by sharing the smog free jewelry, people donate 1000 cubic meters of clean air to the city.

The tower began running in Beijing one week ahead of its formal unveiling.

It will also be shown in other Chinese cities in the coming year, including some cities in Hebei and Shenzhen.

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