8 ms·
China builds ‘world’s biggest air purifier’ and it seems to be working
- alex_duf 9y agoEdit: as pointed bellow it's using filters. Sorry didn't see that If I understand correctly this "air purifier" is just shooting polluted air up, bringing cleaner air from above. That sounds like a very short term solution, but it's interesting
- radarsat1 9y ago"The hot air then rises through the tower and passes through multiple layers of cleaning filters."
- radarsat1 9y agoI really like how simple this solution is. Just using the sun to heat up air and have it go up through a bunch of filters, no moving parts. It strikes me as the right way to go about it. I wonder if you could use the greenhouses for growing plants, and the rising air to run small turbines..
- IanDrake 9y agoAs far as running turbines go... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower
- reacharavindh 9y agoI wish there was some technical background of what such a "purification tower" does. If they found a genuinely innovative way of purifying air and dumping the toxins and by products sensibly, that is mazing for all of us kudos to them! However, if they tried to push the problem away by shooting polluted air away and sucking in fresher air, then it sucks.
- Knufen 9y agoIt says in the article that >"The hot air then rises through the tower and passes through multiple layers of cleaning filters." Meaning you just have to clean the filters
- elnurmen 9y agomaybe they can just shower them with water?
- ocardoso 9y agoI think we should find a better way to heat ourselves without burning coal, because this air purifier will reach a limit in the future and we will be back on step one.
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y agoTo reduce air pollution the Chinese government forbad heating with coal in some regions and installed gas pipes there. It turned out they severely underestimated the spike in demand in winter and the rising gas prices. Residents illegally switched back to coal heating because heating with gas was 2-3x more expensive. Later, the government officially sanctioned coal heating for the time being. So the Chinese government tries to get away from coal but it’s not as easy.
- Overtonwindow 9y agoThose filters must be epic in size.
- SurrealSoul 9y agoI wish there was more than anecdotal evidence for this. China has very strong statistics for their pollution levels that are often recorded in their weather reports. For a project this big, they should be able to quantify the results instead of just relying on what people say about the air :/ EDIT: I'm a dummy, although the article leaves with an anecdotal, there are some nuggets of stats "The average reduction in PM2.5 – the fine particles in smog deemed most harmful to health – fell 15 per cent during heavy pollution." & "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."
- amelius 9y ago> I wish there was more than anecdotal evidence for this. Perhaps this will help: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-5P/Sentinel-5P_brings_air_pollution_into_focus http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Copern...
- makethetick 9y agoMore readable non-mobile link: http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2128355/china-builds-worlds-biggest-air-purifier-and-it-seems-be-working http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2128355/china...
- whoiskevin 9y agoI couldn’t help but think of the book “The Water Knife”. In the book it is the the Chinese that build massive liveable spaces that recycle the water and purify the air. Just a small step in that direction.
- jefurii 9y agoOr the Two Rivers solar updraft tower in Suarez' "Freedom TM".
- quadcore 9y agoSide node: is China doing ok in terms of innovation? If yes, how come in such a regime? I would expect everything to be stuck in bureaucracy.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoChina is authoritarian on political issues but extremely laissez faire on almost everything else, which is how they grew their economy so quickly but also got into this pollution mess in the first place. There is a bureaucracy for sure, but you can often ignore it if you are prepared to ask for forgiveness rather than permission (or they eventually crackdown).
- zxcvvcxz 9y ago>If yes, how come in such a regime? I would expect everything to be stuck in bureaucracy. Haha you're funny... It's us in the West stuck with bureaucracy. China's growth is unprecedented, with a labor force that's becoming more educated and has always been very hungry for work (no beer or foosball needed). We're finally starting to see engineers and scientists trained here going back after they graduate. For a startup, China potentially has all the following advantages: - Lower operating costs - Less regulations - Bigger market Those are pretty huge. Of course there's the big authoritarian elephant in the room, but in practice this is less detrimental to most startups than one would think.
- stelonix 9y agoIf anything, it goes to show representative democracy plus unrestrained capitalism is not the only way to run a modern, advanced civilization.
- Kayou 9y ago>Xian can experience heavy pollution in winter, with much of the city’s heating relying on coal. Have they tried to filter directly the air at the source of pollution? For instance, placing filters on the coal heating facilities. It should be more efficient, as you wouldn't release as many particles in the air in the first place.
- chapium 9y agoArticle mentions coal based heating being a big culprit, which is most likely used residentially in homes and small businesses.
- Kayou 9y agoI thought it was a central source of coal heating, but if it's in every home, it's probably too difficult to filter then.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoIn city heating is typically central, in then countryside it is by home. When I visited Tianjin in 1999, however, the apartment I was staying at had a coal furnace.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoFiltering at the source reduces efficiency and has overhead in capital costs, so most people ignore it, even at big power plants and factories (otherwise they get creamed by their competitors who are ignoring it). China’s pollution problem is basically a rule of law problem, and it is difficult to fix it barring external solutions (this) or inevitable blanket restrictions (the banning of coal completely this year in and around Beijing).
- jhugg 9y agoSo... to drop the PM2.5 amount by 15%, this tower must be removing many many tons of particulate matter every day. How is it removed from the filters they speak of? How expensive is that to do? I have some questions about the practicality. On the other hand, I wonder if anyone's ever built a 100m placebo before. It could be a really interesting university study on the placebo effect in disguise.
- lawlessone 9y ago>I wonder if anyone's ever built a 100m placebo before. It could be a really interesting university study on the placebo effect in disguise. See the protests that erupt over mobile(Cell) phone towers. People claiming towers that weren't even on made them sick etc. https://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/01/15/1516245/tower-switch-off-embarrasses-electrosensitives https://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/01/15/1516245/tower-switc...
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago> many many tons of particulate matter every day Let's do the math. Guidelines state that the limit on PM2.5 particulates is approximately 10 micrograms per cubic meter for an annual average. Xian, where the tower was installed, is currently (http://aqicn.org/city/xian/ http://aqicn.org/city/xian/) under 231 ug/m^3 of pollution. The tower is supposed to process 10 million cubic meters of air per day. 10^7 m^3 x 231 x 10^-6 g/m^3 x 10^-3 g/kg x 0.15 = 231 x 0.15 x 10^-2 => 0.34 kg of particulate contamination removed per day. Not many tons. But someone check my math, please - that seems impossibly low, unless combustion is cleaner and generates lower quantities of PM2.5 particulates than I'm imagining. I did assume that it only removes PM2.5 contaminants, ignoring larger dust particles and PM10 pollution. Let's also check the amount of air it should be processing. It's about 100 meters tall, and intended to cover 10 square kilometers. We'll conservatively assume that this volume represents the total quantity of air it needs to process. Ihe volume is: 10 km^2 x 10^3 m/km x 10^3 m/km x 10 ^ 2 m = 10^8 m^3 or 100 million cubic meters, so it's intended to process one tenth of that volume per day. The math still seems low. Micrograms per cubic meter are hard to intuit.
- OskarS 9y ago
- gressquel 9y agoPlease refrain from using AMP links. We need to take a stance against Googles abuse of monopoly.
- pcx 9y agoIsn't AMP open source? How is it bad, and an abuse by Google?
- Something1234 9y agoI believe that it routes them into a proprietary cache by google. Taking page views from the provider or at least that is my understanding of it.
- fenwick67 9y agoI can't speak for everyone, but my objection to the AMP cache is that it's just another way for Google to collect your browsing data.
- gressquel 9y agoAMP is all fine, but most of the newspapers are lured to implement it by Google with promise of higher page rank on its search results. It all ends up in a walled garden and when the publishers are reliant on it, Google will control the chain of supply. Disgusting behaviour. Just waiting for more people to lobby in EU so they get another fine.
- captainmuon 9y agoDevil's advocate: Google is generous by caching AMP sites on their own servers. The only thing you can't do is to include your own invasive third party tracking (ok, you can use Google's of course), which is bad anyway. But you can still include your ad just as a <img> in the page, no JS and tracking. Like a dumb print ad. I don't really have a problem with that.
- Hello71 9y ago
- _salmon 9y agoHas it not been completely built? The article features a few pictures of it under construction and then an artist's impression of how it would look.
- SurrealSoul 9y agoThey are building several towers, the project should be completed in march
- darethas 9y agoThis may sound like a naive question, but how does this compare to say, trees?
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoTrees don’t do much for PM2.5. They are a reasonable solution for dust storms, which do generate lots of (but not all) PM10.
- darethas 9y agoFollow up, can you define much here? I am just interested in this, I read this paper as a primer to my own question, and it seems that with proper city and road planning combined with the effect trees have locally on the air quality it seems we could have noticeable improvement, especially during the leafy seasons. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231016307336 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135223101...
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoTrees can help with carbon, but we are talking about small particles here. I guess they could trap them or something, but not on the scale of a typical polluted day in say Beijing. Anyways, in northern china, this wouldn’t be very workable as the pollution season corresponds to leafless tree season (and the trees turn a dreary brownish grey due to dust).
- darethas 9y agoCorrect my understanding here where I am wrong - In my mind, if a leaf of a tree or any vegetation photosynthesizes, it is pulling in air (dirty air by your account which is why those leaves are brown) By the very virtue of that fact, it would be pulling in those small particles as well. The paper I referenced states that this happens to an extent, which is why trees during the leafy season are more effective at reducing PM2.5 than when they are bare.
- jostmey 9y agoI don't see Humanity becoming less destructive on the environment, so this represents our future. It would be nice if an outside source could verify its effectiveness
- anon151516888 9y agoIt'll be much better when/if the third world poor countries enact similar pollution policies as the Western developed world has. Have faith.
- jcbrand 9y agoThe "Western developed" world uses more energy per capita than most developed countries (the gulf states being an exception), with the US having one of the highest energy consumption per capita ratings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_co...
- ChuckMcM 9y agoSeems like a reasonable way to pump air through a filter. It will be interesting to see long term effects and maintenance costs (eventually the filters need to be replaced as efficiency would go down with increased air resistance in the tower). This FastCompany article from 2013 (https://www.fastcompany.com/2682151/5-imaginative-buildings-that-breathe-pollution-and-clean-the-air https://www.fastcompany.com/2682151/5-imaginative-buildings-...) had some additional concepts that could be added.
- xkcd-sucks 9y agoSuch a mainland solution... The air's dirty, install an air filter. There's lots of air and it's really dirty? Build a bigger air filter! ...especially if my uncle manufactures air filter membranes and needs to get rid of some extra inventory
- golem14 9y agoMaybe also an attempt to test solar updraft power generation ?