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a team of Dutch inventors has unveiled a giant air-cleaning vacuum that they say filters out fine particle pollution from the surrounding air, but this project isn't about art, it's purely about functionality.
"It's a large industrial filter about eight meters long, made of steel... placed basically on top of buildings and it works like a big vacuum cleaner," Henk Boersen of the Envinity Group, the makers of the device, told the AFP.
The device can suck in air from a 300-meter radius and from up to four miles above and can clean 800,000 cubic meters of air an hour. It filters out 100 percent of fine particles and 95 percent of ultra-fine particles, based on prototype tests carried out by the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands.
All they need now is to build another two dozen coal-fired power plants to run the vacuums.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Friday October 28 2016, @04:28AM
Exactly what I was thinking.
Dust is a self solving problem.
I thought we were supposed to be working on CO2 extraction from the air?
http://www.sciencealert.com/a-canadian-start-up-is-removing-co2-from-the-air-and-turning-it-into-pellets [sciencealert.com]
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/531346/can-sucking-co2-out-of-the-atmosphere-really-work/ [technologyreview.com]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @07:16AM
Particulate mater is not exactly 'self solving'. Right after it rains it is ok. But eventually guess what drys out and gets blown around again?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @08:58AM
From what I understood, heard.
CO2 is a problem ofcourse, but the fine particulates from car exhaust are much worse for public health than C02. It's this kind of particles that cause reduced air quality in cities, not so much CO2. (Your lungs aren't worried to much when they see CO2, the other stuff however, ...)