Dutch Designer Daan Roosegaarde’s Air Purifier Turns Smog Into Beautiful Jewellery

Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde has reportedly developed a huge a 23-foot (7-metre) air purifier called the Smog Free Tower which releases smog-free clean air, leaving the surrounding area with air that is about 75 percent cleaner.

What the Smog Free Tower does is that it sucks up smog like a vacuum from the top and after filtering the air releases it through its six-sided vents. The tower uses innovative ion technology to capture harmful, ultra-fine smog particles from the air such as PM2.5 and PM10. The air purifier has the capacity to clean more than 30,000 cubic metres of air per hour and runs on 1,400 watts of green energy.

Roosegaarde thought of the idea to develop a Smog Free Tower when visited Beijing in 2014. "When I arrived I could see the city clearly, but as the days went by Beijing became increasingly covered in smog. Instead of being sad about it, I decided to do something," said the Dutch designer.

"By charging the Smog Free Tower with a small positive current, an electrode will send positive ions into the air. These ions will attach themselves to fine dust particles. A negatively charged surface - the counter electrode - will then draw the positive ions in, together with the fine dust particles. The fine dust that would normally harm us, is collected together with the ions and stored inside of the tower. This technology manages to capture ultra-fine smog particles which regular filter systems fail to do," the Smog Free Tower's Kickstarter page read.

The most unique thing about the Smog Free Tower is that it turns the smog particles it collects into Smog Free Cubes that can then be made into jewellery. "Instead of having pollution in our lungs, we can have it in a ring," said Roosegaarde.

The fine carbon particles collected in the tower is compressed to create tiny gem stones that can be used in jewellery pieces like rings and cufflinks. Each piece of jewellery contributes to the purifying of 1000 cubic meters of polluted air.

After three years of research and development, Roosegaarde piloted his Smog Free Tower in a Rotterdam park last year. The tower is set to arrive in China in September, starting with Beijing before travelling to four other Chinese cities.