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Entrepreneurs Fight Air Pollution With CO2-Reducing 'CityTrees' (cnn.com)
CNN is reporting on "CityTree", a unique 10-foot tall mobile installation which removes pollutants from the air." An anonymous reader quotes their report:
Berlin-based Green City Solutions claims its invention has the environmental benefit of up to 275 actual trees. But the CityTree isn't, in fact, a tree at all -- it's a moss culture. "Moss cultures have a much larger leaf surface area than any other plant. That means we can capture more pollutants," said Zhengliang Wu, co-founder of Green City Solutions.
The huge surfaces of moss installed in each tree can remove dust, nitrogen dioxide and ozone gases from the air. The installation is autonomous and requires very little maintenance: solar panels provide electricity, while rainwater is collected into a reservoir and then pumped into the soil... "We also have pollution sensors inside the installation, which help monitor the local air quality and tell us how efficient the tree is." Wu said. Its creators say that each CityTree is able to absorb around 250 grams of particulate matter a day and contributes to the capture of greenhouse gases by removing 240 metric tons of CO2 a year... Wu also argued that the CityTree is just one piece of a larger puzzle. "Our ultimate goal is to incorporate technology from the CityTree into existing buildings," he said.
So far they've installed 20 CityTrees -- each of which costs about $25,000.
The huge surfaces of moss installed in each tree can remove dust, nitrogen dioxide and ozone gases from the air. The installation is autonomous and requires very little maintenance: solar panels provide electricity, while rainwater is collected into a reservoir and then pumped into the soil... "We also have pollution sensors inside the installation, which help monitor the local air quality and tell us how efficient the tree is." Wu said. Its creators say that each CityTree is able to absorb around 250 grams of particulate matter a day and contributes to the capture of greenhouse gases by removing 240 metric tons of CO2 a year... Wu also argued that the CityTree is just one piece of a larger puzzle. "Our ultimate goal is to incorporate technology from the CityTree into existing buildings," he said.
So far they've installed 20 CityTrees -- each of which costs about $25,000.
Climate change is real and Trump supporters are douche bags.
CO2 is a global problem, not a city problem. There is no reason to locate CO2 consuming moss in any particular location, so it should be where it grows best, which is likely not downtown. This is obvious public "art" to make a statement, and not a serious attempt to mitigate AGW. Anyway, it does look cool.
By the way, surface area is irrelevant if there isn't air flow past the surface, like there would be for an actual tree.
This begs the question of whether CO2 is actually a pollutant or not.
How wonderful. Now that is something corporations can get behind.
You just know some dumbass teens will destroy it.
By claiming climate change is a hoax it spares us from innovating and leading the world with technology that we could sell for a profit
So, each "citytree" removes 240 metric ton of CO2 a year?
Right.
That's 529,109 pounds of molecular CO2, per year.
What does it do with it all?
Turn it into biomass?
Or unicorns?
If it captures 240 metric tons of CO2 a year, they better have it on a strong foundation. That is going to get really heavy.
Those 240 metric tons of CO2 per year they claim to absorb have to go somewhere, right?
1 carbon, two oxygen, the O2's emitted as a by-product which means roughly a third of that CO2's mass is converted into... biomass? They're gonna have to reinforce the sidewalks before they install these.
CO2 rates have been rising rapidly during times when global temperatures remained steady or fell slightly. So we already know Co2 has very little effect on warming at all. If you are looking for greenhouses effects there are far more powerful forces for that, like methane or water vapor...
This is what I really hate about warming alarmists, in the rush to get rd of CO2 they are spending so much money that could have been spent fighting REAL pollution.
That said, the moss trees probably do scrub some actual pollution from the air, so overall they are probably not a waste of money like other efforts have been.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just not for $25,000
Here's the thing... We need to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, the only viable way to do this is photosynthesis, then, we need some way to sequester the bulk material. If the numbers they quote are accurate, 275 trees, then this could be interesting. Also, I honestly don't see how something like this isn't less than about $500 worth of stuff.
The moss "filters" should be replaceable. Grow them, when they are done, remove them, dry and press them in to flat surface then laminate, violla! a new source of building material! Start a new colony, rinse lather repeat. The building material makes sense. It sequesters the CO2 and reduces the need to cut down trees in the first place, besides, "growing" green things need more CO2. The intricate weaving of fibrous growth in combination of the laminate will make a very strong structure.
The math is the troubling thing.Let's say the US emits 6000 million metric tons of CO2 every year, how many of these would we need? 25 million of them *just* for the US. We would need to make about 100 million of them to even start to make a difference in the world.
There used to be a lot of confusion about how the carbon cycle works but I hoped that we're over that now. In short, plants use up only as much carbon as they need to grow, the rest just goes through them. This installation will never become carbon negative.
It might help with air pollution, but for $25000 apiece planting 275 trees may still be more economical.
This structure delivers the equivalent of a large park with hundreds of trees worth of pollution control to a street corner. Think about that for a little while. A city with one or more of these in every major plaza is equivalent to building a functioning city inside of a forest with direct benefits to human health. There are few public investments more worthwhile than this for major cities.
The first 5000 customers get a 5 foot tall indoor model (use it in the bathroom!) absolutely free! Order today! Buy two and get free shipping! valid in US only
I'm scammin'
scammin' in the name of the lord
I'm scammin'...
Is that what we're moving towards? Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests to counter our ecological damage? Or are we going to go for a Centauri Preserve?
So what you are saying is it is a shit idea and no one is stupid enough, except for gov't, to pay for it.
A simpler and cheaper way is to plant ivy. Ivy covered buildings were common 200 years ago.
Does someone profit?
Is there funding? VC? and Interest?
That all means it stinks. You can't profit off of saving the environment. That very profit represents more destruction of the environment.
$25k is absurd
Said so well. What hack denialist did you crib that from?
This is a perfect example of green-washing. Let's start with their own claimed numbers. "250 grams of particulate matter a day". Let's give them perfect efficiency and say that is 100% carbon. 250 grams x 365 days = 91,250 grams. Divide that by 1000 to and we see that this art installation claims 91.25 kilograms of particulate per year. This is indeed more than the average mature tree that captures 21.7 kilograms of carbon per year.
Now let's compare that to their claim of "greenhouse gases by removing 240 metric tons of CO2 a year.". 240 metric tons = 240,000 Kilograms. We seem to be off by a several orders of magnitude. Perhaps they meant that a bunch of these 'trees' could total 240 metric tons? 240 tons divided by 91.25 kilograms = 2386.02014. Ah, assuming perfect efficiency we 'only' need 2386 moss trees at $25,000 a piece.
That equals a cost of "$59,650,000" to remove 240 metric tons of carbon. That works out to $248,541 per ton to capture CO2. (this of course assumes that have already discovered a perfect disposal plan for the carbon that has been capture. Let's compare this to the cost of something that zero sex appeal that we know actually works - sequestering carbon underground.
"But injecting huge amounts of water along with the CO2 â" 25 tons of liquid for each ton of gas â" adds to the cost. CarbFix scientists have estimated that transportation and injection could cost about $17 per ton of CO2, about twice the cost of transporting and injecting the gas alone."
# https://www.nytimes.com/2015/0...
This isn't an art project, this is a fake news con for gullible people that don't understand science or math.
They claim to capture 240 tons of CO2, which turns into 60 tons of organic carbon retained by moss growth. And then, where will it go? They cannot let the moss culture grow without limit in their "tree".
Where is all that carbon the moss is sequestering going? 240 metric tons of carbon doesn't just poof into nothingness. 240 metric tons a year is just under a ton a day. Based on the size of these things they should weigh somewhere between 4-8 metric tons. With the figures given they would be doubling in weight every 1-2 weeks from just the carbon. That doesn't sound very autonomous or low maintenance.
one of these is supposedly equal to 250 trees worth of carbon sink/air pollution scrub.
No-- equal to "up to" 275 actual trees.
What does the word "up to" mean? This is a weasel word. It means "less than or equal."
I expect "less than". I expect a lot less than.
The cost of planting a tree for example in an american city is about $100-$150, not including the cost of the space they sit on. If it is true that these installations replace approximately 275 trees, that works out to be about $90 per "tree".
And if it is true instead that each of these replace "up to" 275 actual trees (which is what was stated), that works out to "at least" $90 per "tree."
"Up to." Yeah.
The amount of CO2 the thing can grab out of the air is going to be proportional to the sun absorbing area. Which, from the pictures, is not larger than a middling to small sized tree.
The phrase "up to 275" translates to "one."
well a few years ago the other planets in the solar system were increasing in temp around the same rate as us.
No, they weren't.
Check your data sources. First, find the actual papers, and verify that in fact other planets in the solar system were not increasing in temperature at around the same rate as us (they weren't, and aren't.)
Then, figure out who told you that and don't ever believe anything they tell you.
Said so well.
Except it is total bullcrap. During the period that the denialists claim that temperatures were "stable" they were actually rising and a million square miles of arctic pack ice became open ocean.
I note that you've probably been downmodded by the new religionists/KlimateKultists and their CorrectThink Mod Patrols.
is coming.
We could call it nature. Or bogs, or peat moorlands. We've already got them so no need for installation, autonomous or otheriwse, Still needs very little maintenance, doesn't need your solar panels, rainwater is collected into an inherent reservoir so doesn't need pumping into the soil. And a lot cheaper than $25,000 a pop.
Talk about the title being a fait accompli.
There is no such thing as 'catastrophic man-made global warming', which is why they renamed it 'climate change', because the climate is always changing.
We are experiencing another cold summer in the U.K. - no hint of drought, haven't had one since 1986, and it's been raining for days, and feels like February today, in terms of temperature, and the weather (overcast sky). Where is the 'warming'? And why is 'Climatedot' continually pushing this shit day after day after day?
www.climatedepot.com
www.wattsupwiththat.com
of carbon end up?
Photosynthesis does: CO2 + Water => Sugar + O2...then the plant takes that sugar and turns it into biomass by converting it to starches and structural materials for the plant itself.
Carbon has a molecular weight of 12 and Oxygen is 16...so CO2 is 25% carbon by weight. So to absorb 240 tons of CO2 per year - it's got to be generating (at a minimum) 60 tons of extra plant material per year - and more likely (because dead/living moss isn't all carbon) it's at least twice that.
There is only just so much space in that concrete container - which means that a literal truckload of dead/living moss has to be removed from it every single week! Then, that biomass has to be disposed of in some way that doesn't simply re-release it into the atmosphere when it decays...you'd have to bury it or something.
This is a ridiculous claim - it can't possibly be true. Even 24 tons a year wouldn't be credible - and 2.4 tons a year would seem high...the entire installation would haves to double in size every year to keep up even that more modest amount.
What I'm sure happened here is that it's plausible that the moss has vastly more surface area than a tree - but moss is much more slow-growing than trees are - so the amount of CO2 it absorbs cannot possibly be as much per-unit-area as the leaves of a tree. So I'm betting that they did all of their math from surface area alone - and didn't stop to think beyond that.
This is B.S.
www.sjbaker.org
It sounds like a scam. It should then roughly gain weight equivalent to 275 trees, if it stores the same amount of carbon.
At least not in the AGW sense and not in the sense that Co2 is the culprit. 95% of warming comes from water vapor so probably should dry out the oceans first if you want to contain it.
Is this moss robust? Does it require much maintenance, or does it take care of itself fairly well, given the basics it needs? Could you cultivate it in large grid-like structures, which you also ventilate, for maximum air-renovating effects? Given a properly designed structure/framework and the basics it needs to live and grow, would it propagate itself across the structure/framework you provide for it? What I'm getting at is, building 'air recycling plants' (pun unintentional) in locations around the world, containing this moss. The scale required would probably make the idea a non-starter though.
Well, if the government says so ...
"One year later, the shade balls in the Los Angeles Reservoir have been deemed a success by the L.A. Department of Water and Power."
This statement is quite meaningless as the phrase "UP TO" clearly includes the number "NOUGHT".
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I'm reluctant to criticize new ideas right out of the gate. Experimentation and new ideas are good.
What I will say is that trees are more-or-less nature's solution to natural cover and an integral part of the Carbon Cycle. Trees are low maintenance and have lots of secondary benefits (shade, increased humidity and attractiveness among others) all of which mean that people like them and will plant & maintain them, regardless of any Carbon sequestration goals.
These CityTrees have quite a mountain to climb to top that.
Let the Trump supporters dig in their heels. Let them be douche bags. Let them have their President and get his incompetence in full measure! You own this President, and whether we call you on it or not (you Trump supporters like to call this "authentic"), you'll wear those failures to your graves.
Opponents of Trump must not stop speaking the truth. Trump is a disaster and at this stage, I really need to hear some Trump supporters start to speak the truth too.
Including, but not limited to:
- Trump has the attention span of a gnat;
- Trump has reversed himself so many times, they ought to call him The Great Hairdini;
- Trump supporters seriously, seriously, expect us to take Trump's statements seriously. Except when they do not. No one knows the difference between serious and unserious Trump statements. Throw the dice, you'll do as well that way as any other!
- Trump lies so much that he has long surpassed the one he calls Crooked Hillary. Trump supporters have yet to notice;
- Trump has a personal morality less than Nixon. Less than Bill Clinton. Less than, well any President in history. Trump supporters have yet to notice;
Don't want to be called a douche bag? Don't be a douche bag! Don't want to be called a deplorable? Don't be a deplorable! Don't want to be called a racist, a xenophobe, a sexist? Don't be a racist, a xenophobe, a sexist!
You see, there was this thing called Morality, Integrity, and Personal Responsibility. Republicans used to believe in it. But you know, it was a passing fad, tossed on to the trashbin of history. Values are like that, all trendy and such.