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Those who grew up in 1970s America may remember a series of anti-pollution commercials featuring children's drawings. One of the grade-schoolers' wishes was for the invention of a large machine that would suck up smog like a vacuum cleaner. Even as a child, I remember thinking "Man that would never work!"
Luckily California-based Nectar, an engineering and design firm, did not share my pessimistic view and has been working on a similar device:
The CO2 Scraper is a large-scale construction for holding between two to four hundred large-size trees that will absorb potentially dangerous pollutants and convert global warming-related CO2 (carbon dioxide) into breathable oxygen.Designed to be placed near factories or other major sources of pollution, the CO2 Scraper is a relatively simple, primarily concrete construction in which trees would be supplied with water and nutrients via a windmill-powered pump system. [Designed to be energy self-sufficient] via windmills (the only outside power required would be electricity for an elevator to be used by maintenance personnel), the Scraper will be "carbon positive," that is, it will absorb carbon dioxide and increase the amount of life-giving oxygen in the atmosphere.
Aside from absorbing nutrients and converting carbon dioxide into breathable air, the structure would also provide a significant amount of shade, while also cooling the air during the hot summer months because of the temperature-lowering properties of hundreds of trees.
Sounds like it would work, no? And it's also got me wondering if the kid who drew the smog vacuum grew up and got a job at Nectar.
thanks bob!
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Comments
I wish this is a joke. trees? trees aint no filters, this will work as good as 100 square meters of trees. Also its ugly, and it will cost a lot to build, what happens when trees grows and the roots break the structure? or in winter, when 1 kg branches fall 30 mts into the ground. Looks like the kid who drew the smog vacuum didn't grew up, he just learn how to use a CAD software.
Worst idea EVER!
Interesting idea. It seems to be a variation of the urban high-rise farms for urban area. Where fresh produce could be produced in or close to major urban populations to shorten the time and distance from the farmer to the consumer. It is out of the box thinking, like this, that we need for our future.
Apart form the obviously 'engineered' aesthetic (or lack thereof) of this concept there is one MAJOR flaw... It markets itself as a 'carbon positive' project created primarily out of CONCRETE. Have they realized that for every tonne of concrete produced, it releases 3 tonnes of CO2 into the air? quite a major oversight for an engineering company! For a structure this size, not to mention the concrete required to create the foundations, the structure would have to be functional for an insane period of time even to level off the carbon footprint, let alone make it carbon positive!!
For example: Due to the amount of concrete used in the bases of off-shore windfarm windmills, every windmill has to run for over 28YEARS to pay back the CO2 deficit created in its building and manufacture. And electric cars... where does the power come from to power them?... predominantly fossil fuel burning powerstations! (not to mention that it uses 16x more energy to refill a rechargable battery than it will actually give back out!) Just something for them to think about!!
If you are going to propose 'eco-friendly' and even more importantly 'eco-enhancing' products, be sure that you have actually done your research!
This is the most worthless idea I've ever heard... Instead of a massive concrete structure at enormous expense, why not just PLANT TREES AROUND THE SITE!!!!
If you feel the need to engineer something out of this, why not just pipe emissions into a dense forest or something instead of creating a giant ineffective windscreen?
I'm pretty sure 5 minutes worth of thought would provide about a billion better solutions than this one. I hope I'm only missing the joke!
While on paper this appears to be a good idea, in principle I think it is far from sound. Much like the other commenters here, I agree that the concrete used to build such a structure would almost totally negate the pollution it would reduce.
A better idea, I think, would be to blanket the roofs of every city, and many homes, with grass, lichens and trees, making essentially "green roofs." This would keep the buildings cooler, would help reduce pollution, and uses pre-existing structures as a base. Combine this with active solar panels (i.e, computer controlled, swiveling mounts that follow the sun), and it would be possible to reduce overall pollution AND energy consumption in major cities like Los Angeles or New York erewhile producing agricultural products such as fruits and vegetables in a sustainable, inexpensive way.
EXTREMELY unrealistic!
Oh, and I take it that they don't realize that PHOTOSYNTHESIS is all one word!!? or that it is usually called grEywater, not grAy water!... I thought we were all past spelling mistakes on our college A3 project boards, let alone business proposals?!
This structure will probably last long long time so the initial CO2 emission by making of concrete structure should be off setted in relatively short time. CO2 emission on concrete is one ton of CO2 for one ton of concrete. Not 3 tons. Trees will last 80 years and when they reach the time, they can be used as material for houses, which is in scares. Then new ones can be planted on the same structure. It's just like you have to pay lots of money for tooling to get cheaper plastic parts. Over long time, it pays off itself.
Planting trees around the site would not be enough to do the job. In order to plant over 1000 trees, you will need acres of land that are not cheap. Spreading the tree on the flat land require lots more logistics and maintenance vehicles to go around, therefore more CO2 emission. With this CO2 Scraper, thousands of trees can be planted in small foot prints. Smoke stacks are also designed to keep the exhaust up in higher altitude. Having trees on ground is almost useless to catch those CO2 in high altitude.
At this point of human history, people are spending money and effort to just create CO2. If this CO2 Scraper can really sequester CO2 like it is designed to, this could be a really a history in making.
A trees roots go deeper than it is tall, as a rule of thumb. This, in addition to everything above, makes this the WORST "Architecture can save the world yay pat on the back time" rendered bullshit mock up I have ever seen
talk about carbon footprint! lol