Towards a Bioremediation Building Envelope System for Improved Air Quality
Creators: name: Theodoridis, Andreas
name: Dyson, Anna
name: Tsamis, Alexandros
Publisher: name: Georgia Institute of Technology
Year: 2023
Subjects: Air pollution
air quality/inequality
bioremediation
envelope-system

description: ConCave Ph.D. Symposium 2022 Proceedings, April 7-8, 2022. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia.
description: According to the World Health Organization and the European Environment Agency, air pollution is the biggest environmental health risk today (European Environment Agency n.d.; Neslen 2018; United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, n.d.). Although general pollutant levels have improved in the last few decades, it is only recently that certain types of highly toxic human-made pollutants have been emitted in unprecedented quantities, primarily in developing regions. Moreover, within these geographic regions, the global population is estimated to double by 2050. The climatic context in most of these predominantly unindustrialized economic territories favors natural ventilation and the seamless interaction between indoor and outdoor space. Still, these areas mainly rely on mechanical systems to homogenize atmospheric living standards. Air conditioning systems produce wasted heat that alters the microclimate of buildings’ surroundings, while creating additional air pollution exhausted by the running cycles of equipment. To disrupt this vicious cycle of energy expenditure and air pollution replenishment, this research proposes a hybrid air purification modular ceramic system for building envelopes in regions where fiscal means are limited, and natural ventilation is a viable option, to regulate both exterior and interior atmospheric pollution. The objective is to create a low-tech, high-value system, conceptualized as a combination of mechanical components, with the effectiveness and sensitivity of biological organisms. This infrastructural strategy serves as a site of inquiry towards the potential amelioration of local urban pollution airstreams in the developing world. Through an extensive analysis of air pollution bioremediative systems’ attributes and a series of research initiatives, several variables of the proposed system were substantiated. The probable impact factor of the system on the projected global population was also investigated with qualitative and quantitative work, defining the potential regions complying with the system’s hypothesis criteria. Air pollution levels and urban air velocity thresholds were further characterized for specific cities inside the boundaries of these regions. Computational Fluid Dynamics parametric experimental work investigated air velocity-related issues that would be evaluated under established air exchange rates to further streamline the design features of the core modular system’s ceramic plant host component. While with this work, the technical applicability of the proposed system is established, the intention was not only to provide an explicit technical solution, but also to suggest an encounter with cultural settings based on the premise that when people lose their relationship with the environment due to air pollution, they also lose their societal cohabitation and cohesion patterns.