Hyderabad To Tackle Air Pollution With Strata Enviro’s Public Air Purifiers

At a time when people in many parts of the country are fearing for their health owing to the poor air quality and rising air pollution, the Hyderabad municipal corporation is looking at a tech-based solution.

The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) will install outdoor air purifying units across select locations in the city. According to a report in The News Minute, 500 such public air purifiers will be supplied to the GHMC by Pune-based cleantech startup Strata Enviro, which manufactures outdoor pollution controller.

Although the GHMC has not yet confirmed the number of air purifying units will come into use, Strata Enviro has suggested that 500 units will be installed across the city.

The purifiers are expected to be installed at three locations in Hyderabad — Gachibowli, Jubilee Hills and Panjagutta, which tend to have increased air pollution levels at these places during peak traffic hours. Each such public air purifier costs the municipal corporation around INR 50K to INR 12 Lakh, depending on the filtration capacity.

How Strata Enviro’s Air Purifiers Work?

According to Strata Enviro MD Amol Chaphekar, Strata Enviro the company’s air filtering system is now patented and has already been proven successful in Mumbai and Delhi. Founded in 2016, its air purifiers have been mounted on Delhi buses.

“When the bus stops due to traffic, the air purifier becomes operational and cleans the air. We even got a grant from the department of science after they were satisfied with our project,” he added.

Chaphekar added that the air-purifying units are best located at places where there is heavy foot traffic such as traffic islands, railway stations and bus stands.

On the partnership with GHMC, Chaphekar said that it can be either managed by corporate social responsibility (CSR) funding or through public-private partnership model or be fully funded by the municipality.

Moreover, in this partnership, the company has taken the responsibility of operation and maintenance of these air purifiers on a contract basis. “Our purifiers are designed in a way that the filter needs to be cleaned just once in three months,” Chaphekar added.

The media report added that In Hyderabad, the air quality index (AQI) for particulate matter, on Sunday, at different monitoring locations ranged from 91 to 154. An AQI value over 100 is considered to be unhealthy for certain sensitive groups of people. In Delhi, the AQI has hovered between 200 and 700 over the past month, but no public initiatives have been announced to tackle the air pollution besides the haphazard odd-even scheme for vehicular traffic.