Outdoor Air Purifier Debuts in Peru

"Outdoor air purifier" seems faintly ridiculous, but that is precisely what many have been proposing.

Several concepts have been suggested to mitigate outdoor airborne contamination in large urban areas.

One idea, making some progress in Japan, involves covering entire buildings with photocatalytic titanium dioxide paint.

Lima, Peru, is the capital and largest city in the South American country. Home to nearly 8 million people, Lima is the world's 17th most populous urban center.

In the past two decades air pollution has risen dramatically, giving Lima very poor air quality.

Lima’s poor air quality is mainly caused by motor vehicle emissions.

Exhaust fumes from Lima’s one million 20-year-old cars and 17,000 old smoky diesel buses make street level life miserable.

Leaded fuel is still widely used.

Petroperu, the state-owned oil company, sells high-sulphur content fuels. The result is high levels of sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions.

A private Peruvian environmental remediation company, Tierra Nuestra S.A.C., has begun a demonstration project, installing the first of a projected 100 outdoor Urban Air Purifiers (UACs) in Lima.

The large UAC, suitable for installation on street corners or traffic islands, is claimed to purify 8,340 cubic meters of air per hour.

Running 24/7, each UAC processes 200,000 cubic meters of air per day.

A typical person breathes around 10 cubic meters of air per day.

The urban air purifier is claimed to remove as much carbon dioxide from the air as 1,200 trees.

UAC also sterilizes the cleaned air, eliminating microorganisms.

Tierra Nuestra also predicts its machines will remove up to 25 percent of airborne sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.

The pilot installations will be at street corners with traffic lights, and bus stops where people wait near traffic.

Running overnight, the Urban Air Purifier is expected to erase much of the previous day's contamination, preventing smog build-up on the city's many foggy and gray days.

The machine uses water to filter the air, costs just $100,000, with a mere $6.50 a day operating expense.

Dirty water is disposed of daily via sewage drains.

The industrial sized UAP generates little noise - 60 db - almost unnoticeable in Lima's busy streets where 90 db noise is common.

The government has not as yet sponsored any of the Urban Air Cleaners, of which the company estimates 400 would be needed to clean up the entire city.

Tierra Nuestra plans to complete the 100 unit pilot project by year end.

Apparently just cleaning up the cars is not politically feasible in a country of extreme wealth disparity. The middle class drive the cars, and political elites profit from the fuel and used car import deals.

Outdoor air purifier, why didn't I think of that?

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

Albert Einstein

End Outdoor Air Purifier Debuts in Peru, see Sitemap for air quality info