Integrating New and Proposed Technologies

Designing the Bioreactors

The project utilizes algae as its fuel medium both as a source of biodiesel as well as a possible source of hydrogen. Algae has the inherent ability to absorb green house gases as part of the photosynthesis process. Furthermore, algae production or farming has the ability to capitalize on the wasted resources of heat and CO2 emissions of most industrial processes while its own waste products provide possible resources for other industries. While many proposals for algae production take the form of other typical large-scale agricultural practices, the bioreactors required alow for a flexibility in their layout and deployment.

Algae Farm Proposal

In order that the bioreactors may be deployed along the unproductive faces of existing infrastructures, a smaller scale modular unit was developed. This unit has the ability to be arrayed, stacked or hung in a variety of ways while its facets allow it to capitalize on the various sun angles presented by different applications. Thus, it literally can plug-in to the resources presented by possible sites. The use of both the modular and industrial greenhouse scales allow for the most efficient adaptability within the network.

Adapting/Integrating

The main concept of the project is the successful integration of  both new and existing industries and infrastructures into one singularly managed and therefore, efficient network. As such it can allow for a shift in paradigms that makes itself more plausible by removing the perceived threat new proposals pose to existing industry. As already mentioned, the network both proposes its own and borrows from other solutions. Here is a brief overview of the two borrowed concepts.

Hybrid Air Vehicles

These seemingly retro airships represent a type of transportation that has emerged on a variety of fronts. Half dirigible and half plane, they are a vessel that exists somewhere between the speed of current air travel and the efficiency and capacity of sea freight. Using the emerging Skycat company as a model, this type of vehicle was integrated as a plausible and adaptable future transportation mode within the system.

The hydrogen/algae proposals

by 202 Collaborative

Upon researching the possibility of also producing hydrogen using algae, we came across the project entitled Icelandic New Energy. The proposal involved the use of algae ponds to produce H2 on site within a broader urban design strategy.

The proposed infrastructure is easily integrated into our broader scheme. The capture of hydrogen serves to not only suggest a possible ability for sites to turn over from biodiesel to fuel cell hydrogen production, but also a source for the hybrid vehicles buoyancy. The system was adapted to an industrial infrastructural capacity and provides another means by which to occupy the unutilized spaces of existing industry and providing on-site fuel supplies.

Components Within the System

The various elements put into play within the network represent how various strategies, when actively integrated, can suggest their own inherent phasing. As such they can be viewed as extensions to and spur morphological developments within an existing paradigm rather than be seen as antagonists to it.