renewable energy source

  Moss Voltaics is a green façade system that aims to explore how moss might be used as a source of renewable energy and how it can be implemented to the urban scale. Mentioned emerging technology is called biophotovoltaics (BPV) which uses the natural process of photosynthesis to generate electrical energy. In this process plants using light energy consume carbon dioxide and water from the environment to convert it into organic compounds. Those compounds are required for the vital processes of a plant. “When the moss photosynthesises it releases some of these organic compounds into the soil which contains symbiotic bacteria. The bacteria break down the compounds, which they need to survive, liberating by-products that include electrons.” (From <http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/the-hidden-power-of-moss> ) By providing an electrode for the micro-organisms to donate their electrons to, the electrons can be harvested as electricity. The system can work with other species of plants and algae, nevertheless moss was chosen because of its eligible properties. As mosses are commonly found in cities: in cracks between paving, on roofs, on walls and trees, the system can be well adapted into the urban environment. Advantages of mosses over higher plants include reduced weight loads, increased water absorption, no fertilizer requirements, high drought tolerance and low maintenance. Compared with silicon-based photovoltaic cells, a solar cell that uses biological material to capture light energy would be cheaper to produce, self-repairing, self-replicating, biodegradable and much more sustainable. The manufacturing process is harmless to the environment. Furthermore BPV panels can exist in the places where solar panels are not efficient – northern countries with the lack of direct sunlight. Biophotovoltaic cell represents an organization of units combined in series or parallel circuits. Unit is a full operating bio-electrical system. It consists of the anodic biological material (moss), the anode, the cathode, the cathodic catalyst, the “salt bridge” that permit to the positive charge (generally protons) to travel from the anodic biological material to the cathode. The anode represents the mixture of hydrogel and carbon fibers that help to attract the electrons. Hydrogel is a polymer that can absorb water up to 400 times to its weight, it keeps complementary humidity for the moss and it is pH neutral. The materials are not damaging any metabolism. Thus first tests to check how fibers coexist with moss and polyacrylate were made. One unit 100×100 mm: for the anode were mixed carbon fibers and hydrogel in cubes (sliced for thinner small sheets) + a layer of carbon fabric, the mixture was covered with moss. The cell showed 0,35 volts. Meanwhile “moss plantation” was set up wherefrom anode would be taken for embedding it to the structure. For this fibers with polyacrylate were mixed and moss was placed atop and pressed down + moss was divided in small pieces and distributed over the same mixture. After 1 months moss grew through the mixture of carbon fibers and hydrogel. Design of a system. Bricks represent sort of a container that can create special microclimate that helps to keep

The increasing development and application of “smart” materials in other industries has opened up new design possibilities at the material and “behavioral” scale of architecture. The studio [DMIC] DIGITAL MATTER INTELLIGENT CONSTRUCTIONS in the academic year 2014 at the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia aimed to redefine and embed ‘intelligence’ into the built environment by the use of responsive materials, designing and implementing systems to aid the building performance by digital simulations and fabrication. The built environment then becomes a living thing as part of nature and not outside of it. Buildings start working as organisms with biological systems that are live processes between the building its surroundings. This project aims to speculate the thermodynamic processes in a building and how these can be tackled passively with a class of materials called ‘hydrogel’. The term ‘hydrogel’ refers to a class of substances that absorb and retain 500 times their weight in water.Chemically they can be insoluble polymers of hydroxyethyl acrylate, acrylamide, polyethylene oxide, and others. As a cooling aid they work by exposing the absorbed water to a large surface area. Since the heat of vaporization of water is about 0.6 kilocalories per gram, a cooling effect occurs. Taking this phenomenon as a hypothesis, the project aims at prototyping a custom building element by the hygothermal (humidity and temperature) analysis of buildings to meet the habitable conditions required for the comfort zone in a particular context. The final prototype “Hydroceramic” works as an evaporative cooling device which reduces temperature and increases the humidity and is capable of lowering down the temperature of the indoor environment by about 5 to 6 degree. It’s passive embedded intelligence makes its performance directly proportional to the heat in the outdoor environment i.e. it cools more when it is more hot and doesn’t cool when no evaporation is occurring.These results were determined by an experiment set up to test the effect of hydrogel in reducing the temperature of a closed environment at the same time establishing that clay is the best material to house hydrogel in the prototype. Clay, Aluminum and Acrylic were tested against a control which helped determine that it is the porous nature of clay that makes it aid the cooling properties of hydrogel in the best way. It can help save up to 28% of overall electricity consumption caused by the traditional air-conditioning and can be used as an low-cost alternative building technology as both clay and hydrogel are inexpensive. TEAM: Akanksha Rathee, Pong Santayanon IAAC_Digital Matter Intelligent Consructions_2014 Faculty: Areti Markopoulou Assistants: Alexandre Dubor, Moritz Begle master in advanced architecture 2013/14 Booklet blog May 2014   

A 3d printed wind turbine for generating electricity that could be applied to lots of scenarios due to its scale.The first idea was to create a wind energy generator which does not necessarily interfere with the existing building but rather could be sued or adapted according to different needs and requirements. We focused on improving the design of the wind turbine towards efficiency. Understand its geometry and to create something pleasant for the viewer. The design of the wind turbine became the main objective because we needed to produce certain amount of energy where aesthetics and functionality became our main objective. Our ideas of intervention required a series of small wind turbines. After some tests we focused in the development of the smallest and efficient Wind Turbine we could produce based on our research and the initial idea of the combination to produce energy in a series or parallel circuits. For the initial testing and analysis there were developed series of 3D models by hand using digital tools like laser cutters. After comes the decision to focus the research using exclusively 3D printer machine which allows to produce the complete kit [ only electronics comes apart ] easy to assemble and to generate something that could be printed and used anyplace in the world with basic instructions. The design is based in 3 wings wind turbine. The wings were changed according to aerodynamic analysis, air flow calculations, and empiric test with some prototypes. Prototypes have been made in two 3D printer machines: Makerbot and the Project 1500. Project 1500 allows to have more definition on the surface and on the edges, which makes huge improvement in aerodynamics. The thickness of the wings came through several tests in the Project printer 1500. We decided to test the thickness in other components of the project like the fairing and structural components. There was a possibility to decrease the thickness of the wings to 1 mm which reduced the weight, wind resistance, therefore the speed of the wind turbine. After testing the gears system conclusion is to avoid the use of those at first stage because of the huge increase in the momentum -torque-, any benefit using gears were not reflected. With the connection of two propellers 4 batteries with the collected energy are able to charge any kind of electronic of 5V like MP3 music [iPod] , Smart Phones [iPhone], Tablet [iPad], Systems based on Arduino [Smart Citizen] any kind of system based in USB charger. Even they required 500mAh – 600mAh to get charge, there is a way for stepper or jumper systems which like mintyboost or similar. TEAM: Aditya Kadabi, Gustavo Adolfo Triana Martinez. IAAC_Introductory Studio: Wind Energy Machines_2013 December 2013