
Tower purifies a million cubic feet of air per hour - anigbrowl
http://www.wired.com/2015/09/tower-purifies-million-cubic-feet-air-hour/?mbid=social_fb
======
SCHiM
> “We’ve gotten a lot of requests from property developers who want to place
> it in a few filthy rich neighborhoods of course, and I tend to say no to
> these right now,” he says. “I think that it should be in a public space.”

I love the idea if it's really as healthy and good as the article makes it
appear. But it immediately saddens me to see such a short-sighted attitude.

Why not sell it to the 'filthy rich' and then with that money build some more
in public spaces? In the end you have more air purifying towers than if you
only built them in public parks. Not to mention that, obviously, air moves
around. So it doesn't much matter where you put the things.

~~~
akiselev
This. Hell, you'd probably sell a _lot_ more by jacking up the price to 10x
the cost of production/distribution instead of 3x and donating several
purifiers to deserving communities for each one sold to the filthy rich.

On the other hand, this looks less like a common appliance purchase and more
like a $10-20 thousand piece of capital equipment, so all bets are off.

------
Animats
It's an electrostatic precipitator, which will pull solids out of the air.
Those have been around for a long time; Honeywell sells them as furnace
filters, they were a staple of Sharper Image catalogs, and every decent coal
plant has a huge one pulling fly ash out of flue gases.[1]

Any large precipitator needs a way to get the solids off the plates and into a
collection bin. Home precipitators typically lacked that; the user had to take
out some component and wash it off regularly. Industrial-sized ones have
"rappers" which bang on the collector plates to knock the dirt off. How does
this thing do that?

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdRk3op2zpE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdRk3op2zpE)

~~~
ihsw
Seems to imply that it's a manual process:

> She adds that there are concerns around efficacy and logistics like how
> often something like this would need to be cleaned. But Ursem himself has
> used the same technique in hospital purification systems, parking garages,
> and along roadsides.

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rincebrain
Here's a promotional video from the building opening that I saw before this
article:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IWaSHJCE80](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IWaSHJCE80)

I got curious what sort of airflow would result around this building with the
numbers stated, and the possible ramifications of it.

1M cubic feet per hour sounds much more impressive than ~278 cubic feet per
second, particularly across the entire surface area of the building.

Let's say it's 5.75ft to a side and square-ish, since it yields a building
that's got a perimeter of 23 feet, and ignore the roof, since that's intake -
you're pushing ~278 cubic feet per second through 529 square feet of surface
area, so you're displacing about half a foot of air per second over the entire
surface, or a gentle breeze when you're right up against the building surface,
let alone any distance away.

(I'm aware the building is finned, not flat, and that this is just sketchy
math. I just thought I'd share it because it gives interesting insight into
what this could feel like right next to it.)

------
fredkbloggs
> a radial ventilation system at the top of the tower (powered by wind energy)
> draws in dirty air

> “We’ve gotten a lot of requests from property developers who want to place
> it in a few filthy rich neighborhoods of course, and I tend to say no to
> these right now,” he says. “I think that it should be in a public space.”

So there's enough wind available to power this device, but not enough to make
cleaning the air a public benefit unless the device is located in a public
square or park. That seems like a contradiction. Then there are the other
benefits of getting a new product into the hands of early adopters: getting
feedback, process and volume improvements that cut costs (and price), market
awareness, and that little thing called staying in business long enough to
matter. This guy's cutting off his pollution-cutting nose to spite his oh-so-
socially-conscious face. Not too bright.

~~~
ars
It's quite shortsighted to refuse to work with the developers.

Take their money and use it to build more for the public.

~~~
molmalo
At first, I thought that. Why wouldn't they just take their money and use it
to subsidize more for the public?

But then, I thought that maybe, they are thinking something like this: If smog
is not a problem anymore for the rich, because of these devices, there would
be less incentive to stop producing it, and go green.

I thinks that it's something similar to public school or public health. If the
rich have access to private alternatives, their concerns about the quality of
the public offering is reduced. In this case, if they are not the ones
breathing smoggy air, their concern about air pollution (in poorer zones) is
significantly reduced.

~~~
Pyxl101
Or the increased demand will make them cheaper to produce and the consumption
will justify further investment into making them better.

No, seems pretty shortsighted to me not to work with developers. That kind of
attitude tends to be reflective of being dogmatic (screw the rich), rather
than taking a rational approach designed to maximize public value (willing to
admit that it could be the case that the rich will be early adopters whose
consumption benefits everyone).

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angusb
This really doesn't seem like a lot. 1m cubic feet is a 30x30x30m cube. In one
day it processes 24 of those. Even if there was no such thing as wind or
diffusion and you only needed to treat the 30m of air next to the ground, this
"neighbourhood" would only be 150m long and 150m wide for it to be cleaned in
a day (as they claim).

TBH I don't rally like Wired's reporting on this kind of stuff. To get an
overall view of whether this is useful or not, we need to know:

\- lifetime of the pollutant

\- air changes per day

\- whether this type of pollutant is an important one to tackle

...without that we can't know whether this is just an art project or something
practically useful.

~~~
akiselev
Even 100 x 100 meters is a decently sized city block and that's pretty good
depending on how much they cost. Considering it took California decades to
clean up Los Angeles air using new technology and regulations, Im pretty sure
Beijing residents wouldn't have a problem seeing a pretty, oversized Porta
potty every 50 meters if it meant clean air.

Taking into account the long term strain on healthcare of polluted air (it
makes almost everything worse), this might be an economically viable solution

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arghbleargh
When this kind of device is being used outside, does it actually have a
noticeable impact on the air quality? Purifying enough air to fill Madison
Square Garden sounds impressive, but it's nothing compared to the volume of
air that cycles through the atmosphere.

~~~
tadfisher
Not only that, but will the net effect be positive if this device is powered
by, say, a coal-burning electrical plant?

~~~
jashephe
Not sure why you're being downvoted; this seems like a totally legitimate
concern. Depending on the efficiency, you might end up just moving the
pollution to a different location.

~~~
SCHiM
>you might end up just moving the pollution to a different location.

Still if one is convinced that, for whatever reasons, pollution cannot be
helped. This could be a good thing.

~~~
Scene_Cast2
Taking this one step further, can these clean the exhaust air from coal
plants?

~~~
varjag
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghouse)

------
nathancahill
As a rule of thumb, whenever a "big" number is used in a headline, it is
usually a much smaller than amount than it sounds.

I don't have domain experience in this field, so I can't say in this case if
it's significant.

~~~
MichaelGG
So true! Give us some comparisons as to what these large numbers actually
mean. Otherwise it's just jabbering.

Well, a good PC case fan does 160 CFM. A $200 Honeywell air purifier can do
300CFM. So a million cubic feet/hour (16,666CFM) is 55 of these little
purifiers.

Furthermore, it's recommended that air be changed a few times per hour, even
for residential use[1]. MSG is 10,800,000 cubic feet, so you'd want over 30 of
these towers to keep the air lightly clean in there.

Amazon has an eletrostatic purifier that does 1000CFM, so 1/16th of this
tower, for $330.[2] 30-1/4 by 24 by 12 inches, so probably still doable in the
same volume as the tower.

But this tower looks a lot cooler, making it worth an article I guess.

1: [http://www.berriman-
usa.com/sizing_table_air_cleaners.htm](http://www.berriman-
usa.com/sizing_table_air_cleaners.htm) 2:
[http://www.amazon.com/708620B-AFS-1000B-Filtration-
Electrost...](http://www.amazon.com/708620B-AFS-1000B-Filtration-
Electrostatic-Pre-Filter/dp/B00004R9LO)

------
Roadgazer
This type of devices can be potentially used in the areas with poor
ventilation, like in between the mountains. Poor ventilation (lack of the
winds) leads to the situation when all smog stays there, and just smog from
the cars is enough to create breathing problems. Years before, at some
European resorts, buses were forbidden due to this reason, only electrical
trolleys allowed.

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jahnu
Build your own!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5YFK8mmeRQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5YFK8mmeRQ)

[http://rimstar.org/science_electronics_projects/electrostati...](http://rimstar.org/science_electronics_projects/electrostatic_precipitator_smoke_precipitator_simple.htm)

------
x5n1
I wonder if Chinese people are watching this. I could see China produce and
install thousands of these all over the place in probably less than a year.

~~~
Frqy3
It looks like Daan is already on it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcH0TAdR8FE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcH0TAdR8FE)

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h1fra
Like it's said in the article, it's not a solution but something that "hide"
the real issue.

You can be against nuclear power, it has huge drawback in the long term, but
it has a lot of effect in the short/mid term. Hopefully we'll find a way to
recycle nuclear waste or a more cleaner energy.

But in the meantime I don't see any advantage to search for a way to clean air
while we still producing lot of pollution...

------
eldude
Hypothetically, when pollution removal becomes a logistical issue, how will it
affect technological progress?

Forget present biases, how does society change when waste pollution becomes
merely a business cost?

What technological achievements are presently limited by the morality of
environmental destruction?

~~~
emp_zealoth
Putting morality into solutions doesn't work.

Source: any political issue with morality stuck to it

~~~
eldude
What a ridiculously useless and distracting comment stemming from ignorance on
the origins of morality. Even secular morality originates from some manner of
cultural common good.

In this case, I'm obviously alluding to the morality associated with
environmentalism, which acts as an umbrella for why anyone cares about the
destruction of an external resource: self-interest.

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ck2
I thought ionizers were bad because they make ozone.

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benihana
So what happens to the particulates after they're collected? Is this a matter
of "let's take these molecules and use them somewhere", or is it like we have
a shit-ton of solid waste full of sulfur and hydrogen and we have to bury it?

~~~
akiselev
We're talking about air pollutants which are mostly industrial waste and
exhaust so they're practically useless and have to be stored.

Since this pollution is already in our air regardless, it doesn't really
matter how we store it as long as it's not in our lungs.

------
amelius
I've got a better solution. All engine exhaust pipes should end in the cabine
of vehicle. That will make car-owners spend money on filters, instead of
letting the environment take the burden.

