Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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City Air Cleaning Tower

To work in conjunction with subway vents
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The basic concept is a tower that cleans the air the way nostrils do for you. This tower is essentially a tube which the inside diameter is 40ft and the structure is 150 ft high. The structure of the tower is honeycombed with tubes that radiate out from the center and the tubes have fresh water seeping into them. This gives them them the ability to trap air particles just like your nostrils.

The rising hot air from the subway vent creates a vaccum pulling air into the tower and then is cleaned. The subway air will run into the wet inside diameter of the tower and be cleaned a bit more. Plus it will heat the tower to keep the water from freezing in the winter. An electrostatic precipitator would be placed at the top to catch anything that misses the walls. It can be left out of the plans if need be.

The tower will look like a weeping tower and have the added benefit of cooling down the surrounding area because of the evaporation of the water.

The tubes can be power washed to keep down the growth or certain mosses could be planted to combat unwanted growth. The water at the bottom can be filtered and recycled adding to the fresh water being supplied to the tower.

sartep, May 16 2003

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       A croissant only if it's shaped like a giant nose. Kids can bath in its "mucus".
oatcake, May 16 2003
  

       Don't forget the occasional sneeze heard for k/m|ile|s.
thumbwax, May 16 2003
  

       Problem 1: Too much pollution - tower ineffective.   

       Problem 2: What to do with the huge volume of effluent.
FloridaManatee, May 16 2003
  

       Pollution in big cities may be overwhelming, but even a slight reduction would be worth something. And big cities do have existing ways of getting rid of effluent, since they have to deal with what comes out of their sewage systems.   

       Someone recently did an analysis of the economic value of a New York City tree. It included the amount of pollutants removed from the atmosphere over the course of its lifetime. There's a lot to be said for planting a tree. Or a forest.
DrCurry, May 16 2003
  

       Uh, sorry, was I standing too close to you?
DrCurry, May 16 2003
  

       I remember reading once about an inventor who had come up with a catalyst compound that, when heated, would scrub Carbon Monoxide or Ozone (or one of those baddies) from the air. He was trying to push the idea of painting this catalyst on the radiators of cars, so as you drove down the freeway your car would "clean up" the exhaust coming out of the car in front of you. You could potentially buy a new gasoline car that had zero or even negative emissions, because of the cleansing effect it had on the air around it. Nice bit of out-of-the-box thinking, I thought.   

       Thanks for the link, buddha.
krelnik, May 16 2003
  
      
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