Showroom: News
A Tornado that Cleans the Air
This fall, a 34.4-meter-high whirlwind swept through the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany. But no damage was done by the artificial tornado, which has been created to clear the building of smoke in the event of a fire.
Fire protection regulations specify that when smoke develops, all areas outside the fire level must be kept smoke-free. Given the building’s open architecture, this challenging task can’t be performed by conventional ventilation technology. So the building has been equipped with 144 nozzles that can inject air jets into the atrium to create a small tornado. This artificial vortex draws the smoke upward toward a fan that vents it outside the building. This ingenious safety scheme is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as “the world’s tallest artificially generated tornado.” |
