After China, India set to battle air pollution using the ‘world’s largest and strongest air purifier’

• A Delhi-based startup, Kurin Systems, recently acquired the patent to build the ‘City Cleaner’ that they’re claiming is the ‘world’s largest and strongest air purifier’.
  
• Using HEPA filters, 28 fans, and solar energy, the ‘City Cleaner’ can produce 1,300,000 cubic meters of clean air in an hour.
  
• While China’s smog tower uses ionisation technology to battle air pollution, India’s air purifier will be employed HEPA filters instead.
  

India’s capital, New Delhi, has become the poster-child for the country’s deteriorating air quality. But there may be some respite for on the horizon for the city’s residents with plans of implementing ‘the world’s largest and strongest air purifier’ underway.

Kurin Systems, a Delhi-based startup, has come up with they call the ‘City Cleaner’ as published by the World Intellectual Property Organisation. Learning lessons from China’s smog tower, the ‘City Cleaner’ will be solar-powered in order to keep it environment-friendly.

The startup even claims that their technology will be thrice as effective as China’s smog tower in Xian — which was able to clean 10 million cubic meters of air in one day. The underlying reason being that India’s smog tower will be implementing a different technique altogether.

Chinese smog tower uses ionisation technology, which means that electrically charged ions are sent out into the atmosphere to bond with harmful impurities. But ionisation is not capable of cleaning the air pollutants completely.

The ‘City Cleaner’, on the other hand, uses an H14 grade highly effective particulate arrestance (HEPA) filter which can wipe out 99.99 percent of particulate matter present in the air.

The only catch is that while HEPA filters may be more efficient that ionisation technology, the maximum area that it can cover is compromised.

Here’s what you need to know about India’s first smog tower

The ‘City Cleaner’ will stretch 40 feet (12 meters) into the air and be 20 feet wide (6 meters) once it’s built and equipped with 48 fans to make sure the clean air keeps coming.

The purifier is capable of cleaning 32 million cubic metres of air per day and will absorb air from 360-degree angles. It will then release 1,300,000 cubic metres of clean air in an hour. That’s 32 million cubic meters of clean air in a day.

Pavneet Singh Puri, who owns the startup has claimed that just one such purifier can impact the lives of 75,000 people by cleaning all air in 3 km range. He added that the company only needs 4 months to build the tower once the government gives its approval.

Puri also added that they have tested the core technology by giving away the prototype to hospital, veterinarians and commercial spaces. Although the sample was only 6 feet tall, the device worked efficiently.

The implementation of a ‘Smog Tower’ in Delhi will be a boon against the city’s think smog, that not only creates respiratory problems, but also affects visibility in the capital. The government, thus far, has prohibited the sale for fireworks and placed restrictions on their usage. Going forward, it’s even considering banning private vehicles from the road altogether.

While their efforts are commendable to address pollution causing agents, at the end of the day, they are temporary. The ‘City Cleaner’, on the other hand, will actually clean the air of the pollutants that already exist and will be a more permanent solution to the city’s deteriorating air quality.