ETH researchers develop living building material as a carbon store

(CONNECT) Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich(ETH) are creating an organic material that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. According to a press release, this 3D-printable building material will help to reduce the carbon footprint of buildings and infrastructure in the future. Inside it grow photosynthetic blue-green algae, so-called cyanobacteria, which form biomass and solid carbonaceous minerals and thus bind carbon dioxide twice.

An interdisciplinary research team led by Mark Tibbitt, Professor of Macromolecular Engineering at ETH Zurich, was able to stably incorporate the photosynthetic bacteria into a printable gel. This new material can be shaped as desired using 3D printing and, in addition to CO2, only requires sunlight and artificial seawater with readily available nutrients to grow, according to the press release.

“As a building material, it could help to store CO2 directly in buildings in the future,” Tibbitt is quoted as saying in the press release. The new material absorbs much more CO2 than it binds through its growth. “This is because the material can store carbon not only in biomass, but also in the form of minerals - a special property of blue-green algae,” says Tibbitt.

The researchers' aim is to use the material as a coating for façades in future in order to bind carbon dioxide throughout the entire life cycle of a building. The team gained their first experience at the Venice Biennale and the Triennale in Milan. This was the first successful implementation of the project from a laboratory scale to an architectural format. The results were recently published in the journal “Nature Communications”. ce/eb