TREEPODS Carbon-Scrubbing Artificial Trees for Boston City Streets

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With the earth’s population ever growing, air pollution and air quality is a major issue for many countries around the world.  Air pollutants can lead to respiratory related illnesses in humans and animals, create acid rain, and deplete the ozone layer.  Actions such as, carpooling, reducing the use of fossil fuels, and simply turning off a light when leaving a room are all ways that reduce harmful CO2 levels in our atmosphere.  There is also a natural source that eats away at harmful CO2 gases and that source is trees.

Trees act like nature’s lungs.  They take in CO2 gases from the air and then use those gases for energy during the photosynthesis process.  A byproduct of photosynthesis is oxygen.  Over the course of a year, one tree can absorb up to 13 pounds of CO2 gases. The loss of trees in cities has had devastating results.  Heavy levels of CO2 gases in cities create thick smog and affect the natural ecosystem of the land.  These concentrated levels of CO2 gases create a hostile environment for trees and plants, making it difficult for them to grow properly.
Knowing the benefits, Dr Klaus Lackner, Director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy at Columbia University, came up with an innovative idea to reduce CO2 emissions in urban environments.  Taking from his daughter’s prize winning 8th grade science fair project, Dr Lackner designed a machine that would pull CO2 from the air.  Lackner’s daughter’s project proved that CO2 could be extracted from the air by using a fish tank pump and a battery. Lackner took his daughter’s idea further by designing his structure to act like a living tree.

Inspired by Dr Lackner’s discovers, in Boston, MA, the Boston Treepod Initiative, developed by Mario Caceres and Christian Canonico of Influx_Studio from Paris France, in collaboration with ShiftBoston are proposing to use this environmental friendly technology to help curb CO2 gases in the city.  By using biomimicry, or drawing inspiration from nature, Influx_Studio developed their tree-like structure to be powered by both solar and kinetic energy.  Their artificial tree mimics what real trees do.  It scrubs CO2 from the atmosphere and emits O2 and uses its own power to do so.

From: http://shiftboston.blogspot.com/2011/02/treepods-carbon-scrubbing-artificial.html

 

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