On August 23, India’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal inaugurated the smog tower in Delhi which is actually India’s first-ever smog tower, located in the capital’s Connaught place area. The smog tower has an overall 20-meter height. The main reason for setting up this smog tower in Delhi is to improve the air quality. The radius to which this smog tower can improve the air quality is about 1 km.
India’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said after the inauguration event about the reason behind setting up this smog tower. He said, “to fight pollution we have installed India’s first smog tower in Delhi today. It can help clean air within the 1 km range. It has been now installed on an experimental basis and data from it will be analyzed by IIT Delhi and IIT Bombay” after the inauguration event.
This 20 m tall smog tower in Delhi can help to clean the air of the areas within the 1 km range. Another great use of this smog tower is that it can purify 1000 cubic meters of air every second. In addition to this, a control room has been set up near the smog tower site, which will help to monitor the operations and the working of the smog tower. According to some reports, it is also said that to ascertain the effectiveness of the smog tower a pilot study will also be undertaken. The cost to build each smog tower was around Rs 22 crore. It is also estimated that these smog towers will help to reduce the concentration of PM 2.5 up to 70% of the area within a 1 km radius around them.
Due to the spread of coronavirus and the restrictions to control the coronavirus pandemic, the construction of the smog tower was actually delayed. The pilot project was initially approved in October last year by the Delhi cabinet.
As an initiative to control the air pollution another smog tower of 25 meters in height was also built by the central government at Anand vihar. According to the officials of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), this 25 m tall smog tower is also expected to become operational by August 31st. And as per some reports, it is also found that these two smog towers are actually built by Tata projects limited (TPL). Tata projects limited is building these smog towers along with the technical support of IIT Bombay also with a collaboration with IIT Delhi. And for the project management consultant, The NBCC (National Buildings Construction Corporation) India Ltd. got appointed.
Another specialty of these two smog towers is that they have 1200 air filters. These 1200 filters were actually developed by the experts of the University of Minnesota, located in the United States. The experts of the University of Minnesota have also helped to design a smog tower in Xian in China, which is actually a 100-meter tall smog tower.
The nodal agency for the tower at Anand vihar is the CPCB (Central Pollution Control Board). While on the other hand, the nodal agency for the smog tower, located at Connaught Place in Delhi is the pollution control committee. In January, last year, the supreme court also directed the central government to construct a smog tower as an initiative to reduce the increase in air pollution at Anand vihar. The supreme court also directed the Delhi government to develop a similar smog tower at Connaught place within 3 months.
In August, the central government and the state government were also reprimanded by the apex court as the central government and state government missed the deadline for completing the construction of both the smog towers.
