Current Affairs Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination (Topic: Smog Towers)

Current Affairs Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination

Smog Towers

The Supreme Court on 29th July 2020, warned of contempt action against Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-Bombay) after it backed out of the proposed smog tower pilot project in Delhi. The court’s reference was to its January 13 direction to set up smog towers in the capital to combat increasing air pollution.

Air pollution in the national capital has been an issue of concern for quite some time as Delhi and its suburbs have ranked among the most polluted cities in the world frequently since 2014, when the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Delhi the most polluted city in the world.
In November 2019, Supreme Court rebuked authorities in Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh for failing to control the practice of stubble-burning on farms, which contributes to air pollution.
The Bench directed authorities to take measures, including asking the Delhi government and the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to submit a comprehensive plan on setting up “smog towers” in the capital.
A proposal on the towers was then submitted by the IIT-B to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). In January, the Supreme Court directed that two towers should be installed in the capital by April, 2020 on a pilot project basis.

A smog tower is a structure designed to work as a large-scale air purifier, fitted with multiple layers of filters which trap fine dust particles suspended in the air as it passes through them.
Air is drawn through fans installed at the top of the tower, passed through filters, and then released near the ground.
The large-scale filters expected to be installed in the towers in Delhi would use carbon nano-fibres as a major component, and would be fitted along the peripheries of the towers, project experts had said, adding that the height of the towers would be 20 metres.
The towers to be installed in Delhi were to be the result of a collaboration between the IITs at Mumbai and Delhi, and the University of Minnesota. The university has helped design a 100-metre high permanent smog tower in the Chinese city of Xian. This tower was completed in 2017, and is supposed to be the world’s biggest air purifier.

Experts involved in setting up the smog towers in Delhi have said that the towers would create “clean air zones” in the city. An estimate made of their impact on air quality shows a tower would reduce 50% of the particulate matter load — fine dust particles suspended in the air — in an area of 1 kilometre in the direction of the wind, as well as 200 metres each along the sides of the tower and against the direction of the wind.
An affidavit submitted by the Delhi environment department to the Supreme Court in December had stated, “The (Delhi government) committee is of the view these smog towers may not be useful for the whole city, but they can be useful in creating ‘clean air area’ zones in different parts of the city.”
Smog towers have been experimented with in recent years in cities in the Netherlands, China, South Korea and Poland. The first such tower was erected in 2015, in Rotterdam, Netherlands, created by Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde.

Smog is air pollution that reduces visibility. The term "smog" was first used in the early 1900s to describe a mix of smoke and fog.
Most of the smog we see is photochemical smog. Photochemical smog is produced when sunlight reacts with nitrogen oxides and at least one volatile organic compound (VOC) in the atmosphere. Nitrogen oxides come from car exhaust, coal power plants, and factory emissions. VOCs are released from gasoline, paints, and many cleaning solvents.
When sunlight hits these chemicals, they form airborne particles and ground-level ozone—or smog.
Smog is unhealthy to humans and animals, and it can kill plants.