News:Recently,the Supreme Court has directed the Centre and the Delhi government to draw up a comprehensive plan to install ‘smog towers’ across Delhi to deal with air pollution.
Facts:
About Smog Towers:
- Smog towers are structures designed to work as large-scale air purifiers.
- They are usually fitted with multiple layers of air filters, which clean the air of pollutants as it passes through them.
- China has the world’s largest smog tower and has reduced the particulate matter pollution by 19% in an area of around 6 sq km in the tower’s vicinity.
Smog Tower in Delhi:
- The smog tower project in Delhi will be headed by the Indian Institute of Technology(IIT) Bombay in collaboration with IIT-Delhi and the University of Minnesota.
- The smog tower is expected to reduce particulate matter by 50% in the area.
- The smog tower filters being installed would use carbon nanofibres as a major component.However,the proposed smog tower is focused only on reducing particulate matter load at present.
Additional information:
About Smog:
- Smog is derived from two words i.e smoke and fog which is also described as the type of fog having smoke or soot particles in it or a mixture of various gases with dust and water vapour and makes breathing difficult.
- It is a yellowish or blackish fog mainly formed by a mixture of air pollutants like nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides and some other organic compounds that combine with sunlight to form ozone.
