New Delhi Installs India’s First Microalgae Air Tower to Tackle Highway Pollution

Delhi: In a decisive step toward science-led urban air remediation, New Delhi has activated India’s first microalgae-based PureAir Tower™ along the Aerocity highway corridor transforming a high-traffic median into a living, breathing climate asset.

Engineered to function as a biological air purification system, the installation leverages photosynthetic microalgae to capture carbon dioxide (CO₂), particulate matter (PM), and nitrogen oxides (NOx) at street level. Instead of relying on mechanical filtration like conventional smog towers, this next-generation infrastructure deploys natural bioremediation converting pollutants into oxygen and algal biomass in real time, with minimal energy input and zero filter waste.

The project has been executed by CP Arora Private Ltd, in strategic collaboration with Carbelim Pvt Ltd, an IIT Madras–incubated deep climate-tech start-up accelerated by IIM Lucknow EIC.

“We evaluated international manufacturers across EU, Mexico, Belarus, and Singapore before identifying a solution that could be fully engineered and manufactured in India,” stated Mr. Adithya Munjal, Director at CPA. “This is a scalable, indigenous innovation designed to integrate directly into road infrastructure.”

Infrastructure That Breathes

Each PureAir Tower™ delivers the air-cleaning impact equivalent to more than 15 mature trees continuously absorbing vehicular emissions and releasing fresh oxygen. Building on this deployment, CPA is advancing the installation of three additional towers and a one-kilometer stretch of Carbelim BioDivider™ panels in partnership with Carbelim.

The Carbelim BioDivider™ system converts central medians into active green corridors. Each modular panel delivers purification comparable to two mature trees. Over a one-kilometer span, the collective impact equates to approximately 500 trees without requiring additional land or soil depth. The system operates in a closed-loop cycle, converting captured pollutants into usable algal biomass as bio-fertilizer or biochar rather than generating secondary hazardous waste.

“Living” Solutions Where Trees Cannot Grow

“Where traditional plantation is structurally unviable, infrastructure itself must become biologically active,” noted Dr. Karthika Gopi, Founder & CEO of Carbelim. “Urban medians, bridges, highways, and building facades can evolve into distributed carbon sinks.”

While the Aerocity installation demonstrates roadside air mitigation, Carbelim’s broader strategic focus lies in industrial carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS). The company integrates trained, patented microalgae consortium strains directly with industrial flue gas streams, enabling hard-to-abate sectors to transition toward net-zero operations.

By converting captured carbon into biochar and monetizable carbon credits, Carbelim creates revenue-linked decarbonization pathways. This circular model not only supports climate-resilient agriculture but also enables industrial partners to achieve capital recovery within approximately three years. The company has started its deployments after 3 years of hardcore R&D across India, UK, and the UAE, spanning energy, petroleum, steel, and net-positive industrial initiatives.

Dr. Karthika Gopi further noted that conventional microalgae systems often underperform in harsh climatic conditions; Carbelim’s proprietary breakthrough lies in a trained consortium of seven to eleven microalgae families trained and engineered for enhanced environmental tolerance and significantly higher CO₂ capture efficiency compared to standard strains. This enhanced biological stability enables uninterrupted operations, with field deployments demonstrating up to 18 months of continuous performance from a single inoculation of the trained consortium of microalgae strains.

A Timely Intervention

Delhi’s Air Quality Index routinely breaches the “Severe” category during winter months, with PM2.5 levels frequently exceeding World Health Organization safety thresholds by a factor of ten. The capital continues to rank among the world’s most polluted cities, underscoring the urgency for durable, systemic solutions beyond seasonal emergency measures.

While a single installation cannot neutralize the city’s pollution burden, the Aerocity deployment signals a paradigm shift: infrastructure designed not merely to endure pollution but to actively reverse it.

By embedding biological intelligence into built environments, Delhi’s microalgae air tower positions climate technology as a structural component of urban planning turning highways into high-performance green lungs for the city.

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Published – March 10, 2026 05:39 pm IST