Researchers have developed a new approach to designing more sustainable buildings with help from Bacteria.
In a study published in the journal Matter, CU Boulder researchers describe their strategy for using bacteria to develop building materials that live and multiply—and might deliver a lower carbon footprint, to boot.
You can’t buy these microorganisms turned bricks at your local Home Depot just yet. But the researchers say that their ability to keep their bacteria alive with a high success rate shows that living buildings might not be too far off in the future.
Such structures could, one day, heal their own cracks, suck up dangerous toxins from the air or even glow on command.
Though this technology is at its beginning, looking forward, living building materials could be used to improve the efficiency and sustainability of building material production and could allow materials to sense and interact with their environment.
Making the cement and concrete needed for roads, bridges, skyscrapers and other structures generates nearly 6% of the world’s annual emissions of carbon dioxide.
The researchers experimented with cyanobacteria. Under the right conditions, these green microbes absorb carbon dioxide gas to help them grow and make calcium carbonate—the main ingredient in limestone and, it turns out, cement.
To begin the manufacturing process, the researchers inoculate colonies of cyanobacteria into a solution of sand and gelatin. With the right tweaks, the calcium carbonate churned out by the microbes mineralize the gelatin which binds together the sand—and, presto, a brick.
As an added bonus, such bricks would actually remove carbon dioxide from the air, not pump it back out.
The researchers also discovered that they could make their materials reproduce. Chop one of these bricks in half, and each of half is capable of growing into a new brick.
Those new bricks are resilient: According to the group’s calculations, roughly 9-14% of the bacterial colonies in their materials were still alive after 30 days and three different generations in brick form.
News Source: CU Boulder
