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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: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 28 2016, @06:25AM
The quest is folly. The earth has probably never had "pure air". We've known for a long time that we could cause it to rain by seeding the clouds with particles. All it takes is the right kind of particles, in the right quantity, right place at the right time.
Volcanos, to sand/dust storms, the air is always laden with whatever. Forest fires, pollination, insects, there is always something in the air. Arachnids are known to go sailing, often for many miles. This huge sucking thingy may very well extinct some little known spider.
And, birds. Birds are rather large particles, but they're going to have to put a bird filter to keep them out, right?
I've breathed "pure air". You find it near the Arctic Circle, and way up high in the mountains. Oddly, there isn't a lot that grows in those environments. The more pure the air gets, the more sterile the environment is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @07:21AM
there isn't a lot that grows in those environments. The more pure the air gets, the more sterile the environment is.
You have it backwards. The air is more sterile because there is nothing growing there not because the env is sterile. Plants and animals shed LOTS of stuff more than you would think. Every 2-3 years I get to water blast the crap off my driveway from the trees I planted. Those areas are desolate because the temperature is too cold for life that we like.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @12:05PM
I roll coal because I love Mother Nature.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @12:27PM
The earth has probably never had "pure air".
Sure, and smog has been a widespread problem for thousands of years.
This isn't an air purifier, it's an air cleaner. The goal is not pure air, the goal is to reduce the volume of manmade particulates [wikipedia.org] like soot from the air, to reduce the health bill caused by traffic and industry:
In 2013, a study involving 312,944 people in nine European countries revealed that there was no safe level of particulates and that for every increase of 10 μg/m3 in PM10, the lung cancer rate rose 22%. The smaller PM2.5 were particularly deadly, with a 36% increase in lung cancer per 10 μg/m3 as it can penetrate deeper into the lungs
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @10:16PM
Wait, no, NONSENSE!!! Socialism, mainstream media, WW3, abortions.... whatever it will take to avoid the facts?
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday October 28 2016, @10:59PM
I've breathed "pure air". You find it near the Arctic Circle, and way up high in the mountains. Oddly, there isn't a lot that grows in those environments. The more pure the air gets, the more sterile the environment is.
Isn't this more because the air in such environments tends to not have much moisture (at least not usable moisture)? Not to mention a tendency for cold and shorter growing seasons due to the weather. I do not believe in such a case that a lack of particulate pollution has any effect.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 28 2016, @11:14PM
I am only pointing out that we don't breathe "pure air". For whatever reason, if you find yourself in a location near one of the poles, you will be breathing clean, pure air, laden with very few if any impurities. That means organic and inorganic impurities. There isn't much that grows there, and there aren't a lot of people there either.
That "pure air" is refreshing, in a way, but there is a cost to go with it. The environment, taken as a whole, is not conducive to growing crops, or to long life, or the American Way of Life.
Down here at the lower latitudes and lower altitudes, you aren't going to breathe "pure air". The air, wherever you are, if full of particles, both organic and inorganic. Any place that the environment is conducive to life, life fills the air with all kinds of stuff.