The Worlds Largest Ioniser

The Worlds Largest Ioniser

It seems like everyone who is not talking about the economic meltdown in China, is talking about the pollution. Beijing pollution has reached record highs to 900 micrograms of particulate matter per square meter (A LOT!). Not only that but this is specifically referring to the most hazardous kind, measuring less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. So what are we doing about it?

The Ionising Tower

Well simply, the answer is something quite beautiful, as we found out in Rotterdam. Locals have got together to build, what is creator claims it is the world's largest ioniser, and he opened the doors to us just before its official opening.

It was inspired after witnessing pollution in Beijing. It is a local solution that works, it makes sure the air is 75% cleaner than the rest of the city, so it is good for parks and playgrounds and the children can play outside when the smog alert is on. However it is only a "local" version, due to the way it works and of course, it will never clean a whole city, not unless they build a lot of them and bigger ones too. There are no easy complete answers to the smog issue in the new world, but it does create an awareness. In a place where technical companies, inventors, makers and concerned citizens can work together and create a solution. It only took one man to say "what do we need to do to make our city smog free?". This is a very simple device, it just sucks in polluted air through the top and purifies it before releasing it through the slots on the side.

The question we wanted to know was "how much smog can it really hoover up?" Well the system can create bubbles of 40 or 50 metres wide around it, so not really that much. We do however, think that it is an important step towards a clean future. It uses just 1700 watts of power, which the creator Dan says will purify 30,000 cubic metres of air per hour.

Under the hood of the tower you can see how it works. There are these three metal boxes with fans at the top that suck in the dirty air. Inside the boxes are electrodes, which impart a positive charge to the dirty air, and next to them are negatively charged plates on which the particles collect. This is the dust they scraped from those charged plates. Even this doesn't go to waste. It forms part of Dan's crowd funding strategy. Dan explains that "We compress it for 30 minutes, and we are making smog-free jewellery from it".

These types of ionisers may soon be cleaning up a city near you. Beijing, Paris and Los Angeles are among possible future locations.

How Do Air Ionisers Work?