Delhi: Smog tower in to be made fully functional by October 1, says Gopal Rai

New Delhi: The state government’s first smog tower, in central Delhi’s Connaught Place, will be completely operational from October 1, Delhi environment minister Gopal Rai said on Wednesday

New Delhi: The state government’s first smog tower, in central Delhi’s Connaught Place, will be completely operational from October 1, Delhi environment minister Gopal Rai said on Wednesday.

New Delhi, India - Aug. 23, 2021: The newly inaugurated smog tower on Baba Kharak Singh Marg in New Delhi, India on Monday, August 23, 2021. (Photo by Arvind Yadav/Hindustan Times) (Arvind Yadav/HT PHOTO)

He said that the trial of the tower, at Baba Kharak Singh Marg in Connaught Place, has been completed and added that a team of experts from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai and Delhi as well as the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) has also been constituted to monitor its functioning.

“The trial for the smog tower has been completed. This will start functioning in its complete capacity from October 1. For its monitoring a team of scientists from IIT-Bombay, IIT-Delhi and DPCC is ready,” Rai tweeted on Wednesday.

Rai said that the structure will help filter air and help Delhi in its fight to reduce the pollution levels. This is part of a slew of measures taken by the Delhi government to manage the city’s deteriorating air quality, which tends to worsen every year during the winters. The government has also announced the formulation of a detailed winter action plan for Delhi this season, for which they have roped in all state agencies in the city, with an aim to check local pollution sources.

The CP smog tower, which is a 24-metre-high structure, was inaugurated by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on August 23 this year. It has 40 fans and 10,000 filters developed by experts from the University of Minnesota in the United States which also helped design a 100-metre-high smog tower in Xian, China.

The tower cost the government ₹20 crore and has been designed to purify air in a 1km radius around it at a rate of 1,000 cubic metres of air per second. Earlier this month, another smog tower was also inaugurated at Delhi’s Anand Vihar, which was installed under the supervision of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).