Delhi gets smog tower in Connaught Place: All you need to know about it

Delhi got another smog tower on Monday, after chief minister Arvind Kejriwal inaugurated the pollution fighting structure at Baba Kharak Singh Marg in the Connaught Place. It has been inaugurated months before the pollution level spikes in the national capital due to burning of crop waste by farmers.

The Delhi government plans to add more smog towers after studying the impact this one makes on pollution. Delhi's environment minister Gopal Rai said the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will form a team of experts for the study which is expected to last two years.

Here's everything you need to know about the newly-inaugurated smog tower:

• Smog towers are structures designed to work as large-scale air purifiers. They are fitted with multiple layers of air filters and fans at the base to suck the air.
• After the polluted air enters the smog tower, it is purified by the multiple layers before being re-circulated into the atmosphere.
• The tower inaugurated by Kejriwal today is a 20-metre-long structure, which has been set up to improve air quality in a radius of around one kilometre.
• The tower has been constructed at a cost of ₹20 crore. It will function at full capacity after the monsoon season, Rai had said earlier.
• He had earlier said that the smog tower at Connaught Place will be able to purify 1,000 cubic metres of air every second.
• Another such tower has been constructed at Anand Vihar, one of the pollution hotspots in the national capital. The 25-metre-tall tower is expected to become operational by the end of August, according to Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).
• Both the towers have been built by Tata Projects Limited (TPL), with technical assistance from IIT Bombay and in collaboration with IIT Delhi.
• Following high pollution levels in the national capital, the Supreme Court had in November 2019 asked the Centre and the Delhi government to come up with a road map on installing smog towers in the national capital region (NCR) to combat air pollution.
• The smog towers are being installed on the lines of China, which has experimented with this technology in its capital Beijing and other cities.
• Delhi was the most polluted capital city in the world in 2020 for the third consecutive year, according to a report by a Swiss group (released in March this year) that ranked cities based on their air quality measured in terms of the levels of ultrafine particulate matter (PM 2.5) that can enter the organs and cause lasting damage.