By Sean Henahan, Access Excellence

LOS ALAMOS, NM (Sep. 5, '96) Huge fiberglass towers could someday help cool cities like Los Angeles while also cleaning up the air and providing electricity, report researchers here.

Melvin Prueitt, a guest scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, has already received four patents for his designs of towers that do all of these things. Prueitt's design calls for 650-foot structures supported by steel masts with fiberglass coated with Teflon stretched between the columns for the frame.

Sea water or chlorinated waste water would be sprayed at the top of the tower creating a fine mist that causes the air in the tower to become more dense than outside air. The mist is electrostatically charged, and because particles in the air carry a charge, they are attracted to each other. Then the drops of water collect pollution from the air. The excess water is drained back into the ocean or waste water facility. The clean air is released at the bottom of the tower. The clean air exits through the skirt section of the tower and is cooler and more dense than the outside air. The humidified air spreads out near the ground, forcing the ambient air to rise and enter the tower at the top.

When water is sprayed at the top of the towers, the heavier, more dense, air falls through the tower and a cool downdraft is created. When the air falls in the tower it compresses and increases in temperature, lowering the humidity in the tower section. The water drops continue to evaporate, keeping the relative humidity near 100 percent. The remaining droplets of water absorb some of the pollutants. Cities on the mainland could use river or lake water for the one-billion gallons of water necessary to operate a series of towers.

At the skirt section of the tower, the air passes through wind turbines, creating more than enough power to run the water pumps, explains Prueitt After the mist passes through the turbines, a second set of sprayers would produce large drops of water to rain out the remaining pollutants. The towers could remove from the air large amounts of pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, ozone, soot and other particles from the air.

Prueitt believes 95 towers could scrub half of the air above Los Angeles every day using water supplied by the Pacific Ocean. Each tower, including wind turbines, would cost about $10 million, meaning Los Angeles could have fresh air for about $1 billion. Prueitt hopes to have a demonstration unit built within five years.