City of Zurich tests huge cooling fog cloud
Since the beginning of July, a large cooling cloud of fog has been towering over Turbinenplatz. The pilot project "Alto Zürrus" is intended to provide cooling next to the trees on days like these. These weeks, temperatures are particularly high throughout Europe.
According to the city of Zurich, climate scenarios in the canton also showed that heat days will double in the future and the number of tropical nights will increase even further. According to a Communication up to 44 heat days per year can be expected in the city of Zurich alone by 2040, with temperatures exceeding 30 degrees Celsius.
Finest water particles are to extract heat from the environment
A huge cloud of water will continue to spray its foggy haze over Zurich's Turbinenplatz until September 2024. "At certain points, technical innovations such as this cooling cloud could be a useful addition to reduce the heat," said city councilor Simone Brander at the inauguration of "Alto Zürrus" in early July.
Federation warns of striking heat
The water vapor cloud is generated via an Alinium ring suspended at a height of five meters with nine meters from 180 high-pressure nozzles. The resulting water particles are so small that they can evaporate immediately on hot summer days and extract heat from the ambient air. This can cool the ambient air by up to 10 degrees Celsius.
The idea for the fog cloud came from an employee of Grün Stadt Zürich and was developed within the framework of the innovation credit "Smart City Zurich" supported. The costs amount to about 140,000 francs.
Update, 7/26/2022: The water consumption is 7.5 liters per minute, as it says at the city of Zurich on request: according to media spokeswoman Tanja Huber about one tenth of the annual consumption of a conventional drinking fountain. The cloud, controlled by appropriate temperature and humidity sensors, is expected to operate on 44 dry and hot days.
Since last Monday, several regions in Europe have declared their alert levels due to extreme heat. Still, maximum temperatures are expected to be reached in some places. Last Monday, the federal government also declared alert level 3 of 4 for almost all of Switzerland. The authorities expect temperatures of up to 37 degrees.
Source: City of Zurich
