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World’s first ‘BioSolar Leaf’ to tackle air pollution in White City

by Deborah Evanson29 April 2019

Artist impression of Arborea panels on London roofs

(credit: Imperial College London // Thomas Glover)

Imperial College London is to collaborate with startup Arborea to

develop pioneering ‘BioSolar Leaf’ technology to improve air
quality in White City.

The technology, which is the first of its kind in the world, purifies the
air through the photosynthesis of microscopic plants, removing
greenhouse gases from the environment whilst generating breathable
oxygen.
 Professor
Neil Alford, Cllr Stephen Cowan, and CEO Julian Melchiorri

Arborea have developed an innovative cultivation system which

facilitates the growth of tiny plant-life - such as microalgae, diatoms
and phytoplankton - on large solar panel-like structures. These can
then be installed on land, buildings and other developments to
improve surrounding air quality.

The team say that Arborea’s cultivation system can remove carbon
dioxide and produce breathable oxygen at a rate equivalent to a
hundred trees from the surface area of just a single tree.

The system also produces a sustainable source of organic biomass

from which Arborea extracts nutritious food additives for plant-based
food products.

Arborea was founded by alumnus Julian Melchiorri, who completed

two masters in Innovation Design Engineering in 2014, a course
administered jointly by Imperial College London and the Royal
College of Art.
Pilot project

In 2017, Julian’s ‘Bionic Chandelier’ – a living and breathing

structure which purifies the air indoors using microalgae – became
part of the V&A’s permanent collection.

Play video
As the V&A’s first Engineer in Residence, Julian Melchiorri was
interested in exploring how the latest advances in biotechnology and
engineering could be applied to everyday objects to improve the quality
of our lives.

Imperial will be partnering with Arborea as part of its commitment to

mitigating the environmental impact of its development at White City.
The College will be providing the company with funding to facilitate
the development of an outdoor pilot of their BioSolar Leaf cultivation
system on Imperial’s White City Campus South Site.

The
Arborea team

Over the length of the project, the pilot will showcase how pioneering
technologies are addressing environmental and social issues in real
working conditions. It is envisaged that the pilot will become the
centre piece for outreach activities with school students from the local
White City area.
This news comes as Imperial and Hammersmith and Fulham
Council are collaborating on a Partnership for Growth and Innovation
- or ‘Upstream’ - which aims to transform White City into a world-
leading innovation district fuelled by close collaboration between
academics, businesses, entrepreneurs and the local community.

Arborea are currently based in the Translation & Innovation Hub (I-
HUB) at Imperial’s White City Campus and recently received the
‘Peres Award for Social Innovation’ from The European House
Ambrosetti. The company were previously supported by the European
Institute of Innovation and Technology’s Climate-KIC Accelerator
and Innovate UK.

Sustainable solution

Professor Neil Alford, Associate Provost (Academic Planning) at

Imperial College London, said: “Air pollution is one of London’s
most urgent challenges, and Imperial is committed to finding
sustainable and resilient solutions to this threat. This collaboration
with Arborea is an exceptional opportunity to showcase the power of
Cleantech at our White City Campus. Through our White City
masterplan we are bringing forward sustainable solutions that have the
potential to improve environmental outcomes in west London,
throughout the UK, and across the world.”
 Cllr Stephen
Cowan, Leader of London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham,
said: “Arborea’s BioSolar leaves are set to revolutionise air quality in
London and across the world. Our administration is planning to be the
first to put them into our borough as we're determined Hammersmith
& Fulham will lead the way in cleaning our filthy air.

"This cutting-edge biotech is the latest and most radical innovation to

come out of the White City biotech hub – the cornerstone of the
Hammersmith & Fulham industrial strategy. The Imperial campus in
White City, including the I-HUB, is already changing the world, and
shows what can be achieved when a council, a world-leading
academic institution and business come together to lead the way and
grow a local economy that works for all.”

Julian Melchiorri, Founder and CEO of Arborea, said: “We are

proud to be part of the world-class innovation district that is
flourishing at White City and excited about this new collaboration
with Imperial. In our ever-growing modern cities, cooperation
between start-ups, academic institutions and governmental bodies is
critical to enable and accelerate sustainable innovation that benefits
both our society and environment.”
“When I founded Arborea my goal was to tackle climate change while
addressing the critical issues related to the food system. This pilot
plant will produce sustainable healthy food additives while purifying
the air, producing oxygen and removing carbon dioxide from the
surrounding environment. It will provide the opportunity to fully
harness Arborea’s BioSolar Leaf dual action in real operating
conditions and help to unlock the technology’s full potential.”

Article text (excluding photos or graphics) © Imperial College

London.

Artificial tree

Trees are nature’s way of cleaning the air, but they come with
the downside of needing time in order to grow. A Mexican
startup called Biomitech has a way around this, however. The
company has developed an artificial tree that it claims is capable
of sucking up the equivalent amount of air pollution as 368
living trees. That’s not only a saving on growing time, but also
on the space needed to accommodate them.

Called Biourban, the near 14-foot metal tree employs

microalgae that pulls carbon dioxide and other contaminants
from the air and returns pure oxygen in exchange. Since
launching in 2016, the company has installed one tree its home
city of Puebla, Mexico, another in Columbia, and a third in
Panama. It has additional contracts for two more trees in
Mexico, and the possibility of “planting” others in Mexico City
and Monterrey.

“What this system does, through technology, is inhale air

pollution and use biology to carry out the natural process [of
photosynthesis], just like a tree,” Jaime Ferrer, a founding
partner in Biomitech, told TechXplore.

It’s a fascinating idea. Biomitech’s goal is to help cities to

achieve cleaner air in scenarios where it’s not feasible to plant
the massive number of trees that would be necessary to achieve
this the natural way. That’s a worthy ambition since, according
to the World Health Organization, an estimated 7 million people
die from exposure to air pollution each year. That is more than
five times the almost 1.25 million people who die in road
crashes each year. The downside of the project is that each tree
costs around $50,000. If it saves even one life per year that’s
worth it, but it may price the company’s solution out of the
market for certain parts of the world where this technology
would be much-needed.
This isn’t the only project of its kind. German firm Green City
Solutions has developed the CityTree, a large vertically installed
square of moss culture which uses photosynthesis to clean the
surrounding air. CityTree also boasts special sensors that allow it
to collect environmental and climatic data, as well as
transmitting digital and visual information using technologies
such as Wi-Fi and NFC.

An air purifying tower the size of a small skyscraper has been

built in the city of Xi'an, China. Reports from the scientists
behind the project seem at first glance to be rather positive,
offering a technological route to clean pollutants out of the air at
the sort of scale that could help an entire city. But as there isn’t
any hard data publicly available to support the claim, for now a
dose of scepticism is likely in order.

This isn’t the first project to use a technological or natural

intervention to try and clean up pollution from ambient air. In
India water cannonshave been used recently in an attempt to
wash out particles, while in London NOx-eating paint has been
promoted as a solution to harmful nitrogen oxides. And many
cities have mooted the planting of more trees and shrubs as a
route to cleaning up the air.

Environmental aspects of the electric car

Electric cars (also known as battery electric cars) have several
environmental benefits compared to conventional internal combustion
engine cars. They have lower operating and maintenance costs, produce
little or no local air pollution, reduce dependence onpetroleum, and also
have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However
producing batteries for electric cars requires additional resources and
energy, so they may have a larger environmental footprint when new.
Furthermore, the UK government estimates two thirds of car pollution
arises from tire, brake and road dust and as electric cars are
proportionally heavier, electric cars could pollute more than traditional
vehicles.[1][2]
Advantages and disadvantages[edit]
Electric cars can have several environmental benefits over
conventional internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs), such as:
 They have lower operating and maintenance costs, so reducing
their environmental footprint as compare with conventional IEVs.[3][4]
 a significant reduction of harmful tailpipe pollutants such
as particulates (soot), volatile organic
compounds, hydrocarbons,carbon monoxide, ozone, lead, and
various oxides of nitrogen.[5][6][7]
 the potential for a significant reduction in CO
2 emissions. However, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted depends
on theemission intensity of the power sources used to charge the
vehicle, the efficiency of the said vehicle and the energy wasted in
the charging process. For mains electricity the emission intensity
varies significantly per country and within a particular country, and
on the demand, the availability of renewable electricity and the
efficiency of the occasional fossil fuel-based generation, less and less
used.[8][9][10]
 Plug-in hybrids capture most of these benefits when they are
operating in all-electric mode.
Electric cars have some disadvantages, such as:

 Electric cars rely on electricity, which is mainly generated by fossil

energy or nuclear power that can also generate pollution.
 Heavy reliance of rare-earth elements such
as neodymium, lanthanum, terbium, and dysprosium, and other
critical metals such as lithium and cobalt,[11][12] though the quantity of
rare metals used differs per car. Though Rare Earth metals are
plentiful in the Earth's crust, few miners hold exclusivity to access
those elements.[13]
 Possible increased particulate matter emissions from tires. This is
sometimes caused by the fact that most electric cars have a heavy
battery, which means the car's tires are subjected to more wear. The
brake pads, however, can be used less frequently than in non-electric
cars, if regenerative braking is available and may thus sometimes
produce less particulate pollution than brakes in non-electric
cars[14][1] Also, some electric cars may have a combination of drum
 brakesand disc brakes, and drum brakes are known to cause less
particulate emissions than disc brakes.
 As in combustion cars, the carbon dioxide emitted for the
manufacturing should be taken into account.
 The Carbon dioxide emitted for the manufacturing and production of
oil must be a part of the total tailpipes calculations of carbon dioxide
emitted for ICEVs cars
Lower operating and maintenance costs[edit]
All-electric have lower maintenance costs as compared to internal
combustion vehicles, since electronic systems break down much less
often than the mechanical systems in conventional vehicles, and the
fewer mechanical systems on board last longer due to the better use of
the electric engine. Electric cars do not require oil changes and other
routine maintenance checks.[3][4]
Internal combustion engines are relatively inefficient at converting on-
board fuel energy to propulsion as most of the energy is wasted as heat,
and the rest while the engine is idling. Electric motors, on the other
hand, are more efficient at converting stored energy into driving a
vehicle. Electric drive vehicles do not consume energy while at rest or
coasting, and modern plug-in cars can capture and reuse as much as one
fifth of the energy normally lost during braking through regenerative
braking.[3][4]Typically, conventional gasoline engines effectively use
only 15% of the fuel energy content to move the vehicle or to power
accessories, and diesel engines can reach on-board efficiencies of 20%,
while electric drive vehicles typically have on-board efficiencies of
around 80%.[3]
Electric cars usually also show significantly reduced greenhouse
gas emissions, depending on the method used for electricity generation
to charge the batteries.[4][15] For example, battery electric and hydrogen
vehicles do not produce CO
2 emissions at all, but only if their energy comes from renewable
electricity.[16]
Even when the power is generated using fossil fuels, electric vehicles
usually, compared to gasoline vehicles, show significant reductions in
overall well-wheel global carbon emissions due to the highly carbon-
intensive production in mining, pumping, refining, transportation and the
efficiencies obtained with gasoline. This means that even if part of the
energy used to run an electric car comes from fossil fuels, electric cars
will still contribute to reduce CO
2 emissions, which is important since most countries' electricity is
generated, at least in part, by burning fossil fuels.[17]Researchers in
Germany have claimed that while there is some technical superiority of
electric propulsion compared with conventional technology that in many
countries the effect of electrification of vehicles' fleet emissions will
predominantly be due to regulation rather than technology.[18] Indeed,
electricity production is submitted to emission quotas, while vehicles'
fuel propulsion is not, thus electrification shifts demand from a non-
capped sector to a capped sector. This means that the emissions of
electrical grids can be expected to improve over time as more wind and
solar generation is deployed and the efficiency of photovoltaic solar
panels improves over time (most solar panels are not over 20% efficient
which means that, at best, only 20% of the light captured by the panel is
turned into electricity.)
Many, but not most or all countries are introducing CO
2 average emissions targets across all cars sold by a manufacturer, with
financial penalties on manufacturers that fail to meet these targets. This
has created an incentive for manufacturers, especially those selling many
heavy or high-performance cars, to introduce electric cars and
turbocharged cars as a means of reducing average fleet CO
2 emissions.[19]