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Pittsburgh Airport installs an algae air purifier

forbes.com

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Re: Pittsburgh Airport installs an algae air purifier

#3

Post by dang »

pyuser583 wrote: post #2

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Re: Pittsburgh Airport installs an algae air purifier

#4

Post by ajmurmann »

This is super interesting! Sounds from the article like the main point is to remove CO2 from the air to improve air for humans. That's already really exciting. In essence it's a CO2 scrubber right? So how does this compare to devices built with the goal to remove CO2 with the goal to reduce climate change?

Edit: To answer my own question, this probably does little. They have a home use version that supposedly removes as much Co2 as twenty indoor plants. The paper linked below had three most efficient plant remove about 17% of Co2 in a cubic meter of air with optimal light conditions. So twenty of those wouldn't have much impact in a reasonably sized dwelling. That's assuming it's equivalent to the most efficient plant and great lighting. I cannot imagine the much larger installation at the airport making much of a difference either given the massive amount of air.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315968651_Effective...

Re: Pittsburgh Airport installs an algae air purifier

#6

Post by tkanarsky »

Based on the photo, it seems more of a showpiece than an actually practical way of filtering large quantities of air. Those bubble columns are at most a few liters of air per minute -- not much more than your usual aquarium pump -- when large air purifiers are in the hundreds or even thousands of cubic feet per minute. I just can't imagine passing that much air through the columns without sending greenish water all over unsuspecting passengers. Unless this treated air has a synergistic effect on the surrounding air, like negative ions or ozone, this won't make the air significantly cleaner.

It does look cool, though.

Re: Pittsburgh Airport installs an algae air purifier

#7

Post by aitchnyu »

Any power consumption figures for a room of X people? I have to bombard my aquarium with powerful lights and co2 injection to get some pearling (oxygen bubbles). I would also imagine the lights to be blue+red peak grow lights to optimize photosynthesis and the glass tubes to be thinner to minimize attenuation of light in liquid.

Re: Pittsburgh Airport installs an algae air purifier

#8

Post by graderjs »

dang wrote: post #3
pyuser583 wrote: post #2

Quoted post unavailable.

Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN. We're trying for something else here. It's particularly important not to do this when there aren't any comments yet, because threads are so sensitive to initial conditions.

Burning the midnight oil

Re: Pittsburgh Airport installs an algae air purifier

#9

Post by kolinko »

ajmurmann wrote: post #4

This is super interesting! Sounds from the article like the main point is to remove CO2 from the air to improve air for humans. That's already really exciting. In essence it's a CO2 scrubber right? So how does this compare to devices built with the goal to remove CO2 with the goal to reduce climate change? Edit: To answer my own question, this probably does little. They have a home use version that supposedly removes…

Good math.

Another way to ballpark this - the airport tank holds 500 liters of spirulina. Algae extract around 0.5kg co2 per 1000 liters ( https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/sustainability/sustainabil... ).

So this tank removes around 0.25kg of co2 per day.

By comparison, an average human exhales 1kg co2 per day. So you need four of those tanks to offset a single passenger passing by.

This does virtually nothing for the air freshness, and is possibly not even carbon negative if you were to count emissions from the device cleanup and algae storage.

Green washing at it’s finest.

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