Hamburg Gets Algae-Powered Building

ArupUnveiled Their Latest Hypermodern Architectural Creation in Hamburg

From the outside, the surface of the 15-unit apartment building just looks like a bubbling green lava lamp stretched over an entire building. But those moving bubbles serve a function: they help to feed and order the living algae embedded within theBio Intelligent Quotient(BIQ) building's exterior skin. In turn, the 8-foot by 2-foot glass panels of green scuzz—the building's $6.58 millionbioreactor façade—power the entire structure, making it the world's first algae-powered and theoretically fully self-sufficient building ever.

Conceived in 2009 as part of Hamburg's International Building Exhibition, Arup's BIQ building is part of aEuropeanmovement to design carbon neutral, self-sustaining, and renewably powered structures. (Germany, for example, ispushingto achieve 35 percent national energy reliance on renewables by 2020.) Alongside aseries of housesdemonstratingsolid timbercarbon-locking constructions andgreywater recycling systems, the BIQ was funded in large part by the German government as a means to incentivize the development of new adaptive,smart construction materials. Of all the technologies on display, though, algae power has perhaps the finest pedigree and greatest potential.

Research on the energypotential of algae, once just considered a slimy pond nuisance, began in earnest during the gas crisis of the 1970s at America's National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Producing about five times as much biomass per square foot as soil grown plants, andthriving on carbon dioxide, algae have the potential to grow almost limitlessly and produce oily lipids and gases that can be transformed into relatively clean energy. But official researchlargely endedin the 1990s as scientists concluded that the benefits of feeding, fostering, and harvesting algae were not yet competitive with then-low oil prices. Still, many independent research groups kept the dream of algae power alive over the next couple of decades, slowly improving the efficiency and cost effectiveness of proposed systems.From 2009 onwards, at least a few plans for algae bioreactors have floated around the design community and academic circles, although few very have become reality.

The BIQ is the first residential structure to fully realize the dreams of algae power advocates. The building is coated on its two sun-facing sides with glass-platedtanks of suspended algae. Pressurized air is pumped into the system, feeding the organisms carbon dioxide and nutrients while moving them about—creating the lava lamp effect—to keep them from settling on the glass and rotting. Scrubbers clean off any sticking biomass, freeing up more sunlight for the remaining algae to perform photosynthesis. Periodically, algae are culled, mashed into biofuel, and burned in a local generator to produce power. Excess can be sold off for food supplements, methane generation to external power providers, or stored for future use. The result is a building shaded from summer heat by algae foliage, insulated from street noise, and potentially self-generating the power to sustain its own harvesters, heat, and electricity.

Criticsof the design and of algae power in general argue that transforming algae into biofuel requires energy, as does manufacturing and pumping in nutrients. They also take issue with the fact that the BIQ is not totally self-sufficient and that algae technology is more expensive than solar power. They claim that these points make the technology more of a novelty than a useful solution—or at least that its potential has been over hyped.

EvenArup will concedeto most of these points, admitting that the BIQ has only achieved 50 percent energy independence thus far. However they believe that total independence is within reach, especially by integrating solar into the design. The costs—$2,500 per square meter for the bioreactor system alone—are astronomical, but the developers hope that as the technology evolves, prices will decrease, while the savings of fuel reduction will offset the remaining extra costs. They hope that soon high-energy consuming businesses like data centers will help pilot their tech in the search for grid independence, and that algae power can take off in residential homes within a decade.

Source: Good

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