Microalgae cleanse air pollution inside a “metal tree”. Five young Mexicans from Puebla developed a technology with this fact. It cleans the air like almost 400 real trees in a year. It does not replace them, but complements them.
The system is called Biourban 2.0. In a tower 4.2 meters high and 2.75 meters in diameter, the system filtrates toxic gases through microalgae developed by biologists of Biomitech, the startup that developed this invention.
“We realized that they are the microorganisms [microalgae] that have the greatest capacity to capture contaminants,” Carlos Monroy, one of the founders of Biomitech, said.
The tower has five cylinders of 100 liters each with live algae that perform the natural process of photosynthesis, as explained by Jaime Ferrer, another of the founders of Biomitech, in a television video published on the company’s Twitter account. In other words, when exposed to natural light, microalgae transform pollutants such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and suspended air particles into oxygen and biomass (organic matter that can be used as an energy source). The algae then suck the toxic components out of the air and transform it into clean air.
The air that Biourban cleans is equivalent to the respiration of 2,555 people, according to its inventors.
“The system is inspired by the tree,” Ferrer said.
“We are not looking to replace the trees, but rather to implement a system that is capable of capturing the same,” Juan González, also co-founder of the company, added.
The Biourban tower can be installed at points in cities where it is difficult to reforest, Ferrer said, according to another AFP report. They require maintenance every three to six months.
The system is already installed in the city of Puebla, in central eastern Mexico. It will be installed in the city of Monterrey, in the northeast, and in the capital, Mexico City. The environmental pollution associated with land transportation alone killed 14,288 people in 2017 in the country’s 20 largest cities, reported Animal Político. This year, in May, there was a peak of pollution in Mexico City.
According to the World Health Organization, worldwide nine out of 10 people breathe polluted air. The inefficient use of energy in homes and certain industries, agriculture, transportation and coal-fired power plants are the main causes of this atmospheric pollution that kills some seven million people a year around the planet, they estimate in the WHO: fine particles of polluted air penetrate the lungs and cardiovascular system of human and this can lead to strokes, heart diseases, lung cancer, respiratory infections such as pneumonia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, they explain.
WHO estimates that pollution in the air is responsible for 24% of all adult deaths from heart disease, 25% of deaths from strokes, 43% of deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and 29% of lung cancer.
“We realized that all cities were measuring and trying to control [the pollution problem], but not taking the initiative to reduce it,” Jaime Ferrer said in the Biomitech Twitter video.
Carlos Monroy, a 27-year-old biologist and Biomitech’s current CEO, was the one who took the seed of Biourban’s invention, Yanin Alfaro reports for Entrepeneur.com. When Monroy graduated from the University of Xalapa in Veracruz in 2015, he wanted to put into practice his research on the design of microalgae culture systems.
Three years ago, Biomitech began developing four products (smaller ones in addition to Biourban 2.0,) and 12 prototypes. Investors from Puebla trusted the project. Now there are four towers in that city.
In 2017, in the commercialization stage of Biourban, they were selected to go to MIT in Boston. “There we had a network of global contacts that have supported us with ideas, and customers also because now we have an international structure of distributors in England, China and South American countries,” Monroy told Alfaro.
In 2018 they won the Latam Edge Awards in London, England, which led them to establish a commercial alliance with an English green technology company to operate in that country. That same year, Biourban also won the Innovation Award from the Contamination Expo Series in Birmingham, also in England.
Biourban has already been commercialized to Colombia, Panama and Turkey.