- Title: The algae 'biocurtain' cleaning city air
- Date: 15th May 2019
- Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (MAY 13, 2019) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF CO-FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF ECOLOGICSTUDIO, MARCO POLETTO, SQUEEZING BIOGEL FROM LARGE SYRINGE BIOCURTAIN HANGING (SOUNDBITE) (English) CO-FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF ECOLOGICSTUDIO, MARCO POLETTO, SAYING: "OK so Photo.Synth.Etica really is an artificial habitat to host living cultures of cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria are microalgae, little cells that are an extremely powerful photosynthetic machine. They convert the energy from the sun and they capture CO2 and most of the particles and gases in the air and they enclose them into their body mass." VARIOUS OF BIOGEL INSIDE BIOCURTAIN POUCHES POLETTO SHOWING BIOGEL LEAVING SYRINGE VARIOUS OF BIOGEL INSIDE BIOCURTAIN POUCHES (SOUNDBITE) (English) CO-FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF ECOLOGICSTUDIO, MARCO POLETTO, SAYING: "We inoculate air like, let's say dirty urban air from the bottom. Air naturally rises through the system and comes into contact with the algae cells. The algae cells as I said are extremely voracious organisms so they eat up all the particles and release oxygen as a consequence of photosynthesis." VARIOUS OF BIOGEL IN BOX (SOUNDBITE) (English) CO-FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF ECOLOGICSTUDIO, MARCO POLETTO, SAYING: "Our technology is both beautiful and highly performative and I think we can, that's where the big impact will happen. It will literally be like the equivalent of a micro-forest being planted. But with virtually no surface area being taken." BIOGEL INSIDE BIOCURTAIN POUCH (SOUNDBITE) (English) CO-FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF ECOLOGICSTUDIO, CLAUDIA PASQUERO, SAYING: "It's not that the carbon is absorbed and put somewhere, it is used by the algae to effectively grow, so it is transformed. It is not extracted from the air and stored but is transformed in the growth and photosynthesis of the microalgae so effectively (it) becomes a biomass that can be used for food purposes and different health purposes like beauty industry, pharmaceutical industry or could also be used for energy." VARIOUS OF BIOGEL IN BOX (SOUNDBITE) (English) CO-FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF ECOLOGICSTUDIO, MARCO POLETTO, SAYING: "Just to give you a very simple term of comparison, we calculated that two square meters of the curtain have the same ability to capture CO2 than a large tree. Now if you compare the weight and the space that they occupy, it gives us a one-to-10 ratio of efficiency." POLETTO SQUEEZING BIOGEL FROM LARGE SYRINGE
- Embargoed: 29th May 2019 12:41
- Keywords: Biocurtains carbon dioxide in atmosphere Photo.Synth.Etica EcoLogicStudio
- Location: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM/ DUBLIN, IRELAND/ MILAN, ITALY/ PARIS, FRANCE
- City: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM/ DUBLIN, IRELAND/ MILAN, ITALY/ PARIS, FRANCE
- Country: United Kingdom
- Topics: Pollution,Environment,Editors' Choice
- Reuters ID: LVA001AF0H8BF
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: A London design and architecture studio is harnessing the power of algae in "biocurtains" which remove carbon from the atmosphere and produce oxygen.
The curtains called Photo.Synth.Etica, which can hang from buildings, contain a stream of biogel. Air enters the curtains at the bottom, before forming air bubbles and making its way up through the gel. There it interacts with algae.
Through photosynthesis, CO2 molecules and other air pollutants are captured by the algae which use them to grow. Oxygen is then emitted from the top of the curtain.
EcoLogicStudio's co-founder and director, Dr. Marco Poletto, told Reuters a square metre of the curtain harvests an average of 31 g (1 ounce) of carbon a day.
"Two square meters of the curtain have the same ability to capture CO2 than a large tree. Now if you compare the weight and the space that they occupy, it gives us a one-to-10 ratio of efficiency," he said.
A square metre of the curtain also produces an average of 24 g (0.4 ounces) of oxygen per day, according to Poletto.
"It will literally be like the equivalent of a micro-forest being planted. But with virtually no surface area being taken," he added.
The algae uses CO2 to create biomass. Such biomass can be used as the raw material for bioplastic, biofuels, fertilizers, food and cosmetics, EcoLogicStudio says.
The biomass needs to be harvested every two weeks to maintain the curtain's photosynthetic power.
EcoLogicStudio envisages the curtains being hung from commercial buildings such as warehouses, in public spaces and on residential buildings.
It has been commissioned in September to cover the outside of multi-storey car park City Parkhaus Raiffeisen Kunst Garage in Linz, Austria. The project is in collaboration with the Linz museum Ars Electronica Center and the city's art and science research laboratory Kulturtankstelle. It works with Linz's Upper Austrian Cultural Quarter and the University of Art and Design Linz. They curtains will hang for at least a year, Poletto said.
In November 2018, several biocurtains were hung from the Printworks Conference Centre in Dublin during the week of the EU-supported Climate Innovation Summit.
The curtains are custom-made according to the location and cost from €300 ($336) to €2,000 ($2,242) per square metre, depending on their components and complexity.
They were made in collaboration academic partners the Urban Morphogenesis Lab at University College London and the Synthetic Landscapes Lab at the University of Innsbruck.
Using the same science, EcoLogicStudio also created the sculpture "H.O.R.T.U.S. XL Astaxanthin.g". There the biogel was integrated into 3D-printed triangular cells.
The sculpture was shown at the "La Fabrique du Vivant" (The Fabric of The Living) exhibition at Paris's Centre Pompidou from February to April this year. It will also feature at Vienna's Museum of Applied Arts this spring.
In 2015, similar technology was used for its outdoor installation "Urban Algae Folly" which featured at the Milan Expo.
In December 2018, an annual report by the Global Carbon Project (GCP) said carbon dioxide emissions are set to rise nearly three percent due to continued fossil fuel use.
World emissions grew by 1.6 percent in 2017 and were due to increase even more due to the sustained use of coal, oil and natural gas, the annual report by the GCP, a group of 76 scientists in 15 countries showed.
The world is on track for a 3-5 degrees Celsius rise in global average temperature this century and if all known fossil fuel resources are used the rise will be even bigger, the U.N. World Meteorological Organization warned in December.
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