Emerging infrastructure: TATA Projects Limited, the infrastructure-building arm of India’s powerful and varied TATA industrial group, recently announced the grand opening of India‘s first “Smog Tower.” This pollution-fighting piece of urban infrastructure was inaugurated in the city of Delhi–which was, according to independent air quality data provider IQ Air, the 10th most polluted city in the world in 2020–in the presence of Delhi’s Chief Minister, Hon. Mr. Arvind Kejriwal.
The smog tower is a 24-meter (78.74-foot)-high structure at Delhi business and financial hub Connaught Place. The tower was built using a downdraft air-flow model, and is equipped with 40 industrial fans that suck air from the top of a specialized canopy structure, releasing clean, filtered air.
“TATA Projects Limited is proud to have constructed the nation’s first smog tower…bringing this technological solution to India,” TATA Projects VP and Buildings Business Unit Head Sandeep Navlakhe. “This solution will hopefully reduce India’s urban air pollution, thereby improving the lives of citizens. Large areas of cities can be covered if such smog towers are strategically placed at densely populated urban locations. We are prepared to offer our expertise and experience in setting up more such smog towers across Indian cities so that citizens can breathe cleaner air.”
The tower was developed in cooperation with the Delhi Pollution Control Committee, using technology developed by experts at the University of Minnesota, and Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) in Bombay and Delhi.
In addition to high-rise infrastructure, TATA Projects is also busy underground. In May, the company received an order from Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) for a nine-km Phase 2 stretch of bored tunnels connecting the metro stations of Venugopal Nagar and Kellys Station in Chennai. The contract adds to underground metro projects for TATA Projects in the cities of Mumbai and Pune, in the state of Maharashtra, and recent completion of an underground metro line in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.
