Algae Haus

Last class we talked about wind, solar and nuclear energy sources. I found an article in Sierra magazine for a building in Germany powered by bioreactors of panels of algae. Slime walls. Very cool.

The last two steps seem a lot like what happens in a nuclear reactor, even in step four when they are like "???what??? do we do with this stuff??" Like nuclear waste, there are ways to recycle the waste, but, in this instance, it is costly and doesn't serve the cause of lowering carbon emissions. Its nice that the heat produced by the algae can safely be used for the apt building.

Here is a picture of the actual goo-wall

I scanned the images from the mag because the image in the Sierra source kinda sucks. Click them to make them bigger. The first image shows the first part of the process and the second image the last part of the process.

How it works:

1. BIQ's bioreactors are bolted to the south-facing sides of the building and are designed to work with barely any human intervention or cleaning. Each bioreactor is three inches thick, more than eight feet high, and holds about six gallons of water between panels of laminated safety glass.
2. A complex circulatory system keeps the algae alive and pushes water, phosphorous, and nitrogen through the bioreactors. The food supply—carbon dioxide—comes from the exhaust pipe of a ground-floor generator. (In future installations, the algae might gobble CO2 emitted from other buildings.) Blasts of compressed air prevent the algae from growing too thick, while tiny beads scrape the glass and keep the organisms from clinging to it.
3. When algae reproduce, they give off heat, meaning that on a sunny day the water in the bioreactor can hit 100°F. That water courses through an exchanger and heats up a second supply of water, which circulates through pipes embedded in the floors to warm the rooms—or to preheat the water used in showers and kitchens. Excess hot water is stored in eight 260-plus-foot-deep boreholes under the building. Altogether, the algae from the bioreactors produce enough calories to heat four apartments year-round.
4. At least every week, the algae are filtered from the water and trucked three miles to a university, where they are processed for methane and hydrogen. If they were burned, they could be used to generate electricity—though this may be a costly and ineffective way to negate carbon emissions.
   
   -Stephanie
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