From Smog to Jewelry

To improve indoor air quality, we often put an air cleaner in our home. It absorbs the polluted air and releases fresh and clean air. So... What if we put a huge air cleaner outside the house? THIS is what Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde and his team did in Beijing, the world's largest smog vacuum cleaner.

fig 1. Daan Roosegaarde's Smog tower in Beijing

The smog free tower shows a local solution to air pollution by cleaning 30,000 cubic meters per hour with no more than 1170 watts of electricity. The tower is relatively effective, as it collects more than 75% of PM2.5 and PM10. Roosegaarde also creates limited series of smog free rings that are made from the compressed smog particles collected by the smog free tower. By sharing a smog free ring, one would donate 1000 cubic meters of clean air to Beijing.

Although Roosegaarde's smog free projects do not have a large-scale impact on the air quality in the city, they arouse the public's awareness of air pollution problems as artworks. The tower may not be the ultimate solution to air pollution, but it makes people start thinking about the environment we live in.