Air purifier fights smog:

China has a found a novel way to tackle its massive air pollution problem: Putting up a giant air purifier the size of an industrial smokestack in the middle of a smog-plagued city.

Instead of pumping out billows of black smoke like the chimneys rising from factories in the northern province of Shaanxi, the 60-meter (197-foot) tall structure on the outskirts of the regional capital Xian blasts clean air.

Standing between highrises, the device is capable of cleaning between five million and 18 million cubic meters of air each day, depending on the weather, season, and level of pollution, according to a report by the Chinese website Thecover.cn.

The tower can reduce the density of PM 2.5 — the tiny airborne particles considered most harmful to health — by between 10 and 19 percent in a 10 square km (3.9 square mile) area, the website said.

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