“We are also negotiating with cities in Guangzhou, Hebei and Henan (to build similar facilities).” “We have submitted a proposal for another 300-meter tower in Xi’an,” the project's lead scientist, Cao Junji, said. Glass panels near the roof of the structure are heated through solar radiation, and this warms up the air and causes it to rise toward the base of the tower, where it passes through several industrial filters, before being released through the top of the chimney. The chimney sits atop a large circular structure. Monitoring stations located close to the chimney, across an area of 10 square kilometers (3.8 square miles), recorded 19% less particulate matter in the air compared to other parts of the city. The $2 million facility was built by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and has been promoted as an affordable model for “mass-scale air filtration.” Although the results from the experiment haven’t been published in any scientific journal, and therefore haven’t undergone peer review, preliminary reports determined the chimney emitted between 5 million cubic meters (176.5 million cubic feet) and 8 million cubic meters of filtered air every day. Although scientists conducted their first set of tests to check its efficiency at cleaning up polluted air in January, the experiment only hit national and international headlines last week. Both the central authorities and local governments are looking into how scientists and clean tech startups can be turned into foot soldiers in this drawn-out campaign.Ī poster-child for these innovative attempts is a 60-meter-high (197 feet) smog-sucking chimney, built in the northern Chinese city of Xi’an. One of the recurring themes at the meetings and in recent years is how innovation can be used as a weapon in China’s “war” on air pollution. Meanwhile, delegates attending the country’s top annual political meetings - of the top legislature and the top political advisory body - were hammering out new proposals and ideas on how China should fine-tune its strategy to curb pollution. Earlier this week, as Beijing was enveloped by one of its worst bouts of smog in recent months, China’s internet was again abuzz with questions on what policymakers were doing to ease the problem.
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