Buildings which clean air.

Day by day, we can see how big cities are increasing the level of pollution in their atmosphere. The main solution could be to stop the emission of harmful gases but we are using still fossil fuels, therefore we have to do other actions to improve our air.  It is so important avoid this situation that even buildings can help to achieve a better air for these population.

Pollution.

In the year 2011, a spanish research group of the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia discovered that a substance called OFFNOx  which is found in the ceramics and which can be used in the construction of buildings which would work with a very similar principle to that of plants for purifying air.. This substance creates a chemical reaction in contact with harmful gases in the atmosphere transforming them into nitrate, harmless to the environment.

ceramic.

BRICs countries (Brazil-Russia-India-China) mainly and the rest are growing more and more with the risk of increase the pollution. In China,  this is becoming in a huge problem mainly for health, meteorology and visibility, in a lot of cities. In Tianjin over 1000 people died due to pollution the year 2011.

CCTV building surrounded by pollution, Beijing. 

While different solutions are found for this problem, a new revolutionary project to contribute for solve pollution has been presented recently. The Clean Air Tower project is a green building which allow clean the air of Tianjin.

The tower has a industrial aspect and makes use of the stack effect to clean 8.500.000 m3 of air per year. This project has been developed by the architect Alexander Balchin who has been based on factories exhausts for design it. A huge chimney runs through the building from the surface to the top. Clean air is returned from the top of the tower to the city besides the residents of the building also receive clean air. The toxics particles will be trapped by panels located inside the chimney as a filter of air. In addition, for complete this action correctly the tower has in the top a system of turbines to provide energy to an electrostatic precipitator which ionize harmful particles called PM2.5.

Clean Air Tower, project. 

The tower features large landscaped upper platforms. It is thought that the main structure will be steel.