Healthier Earth

"Green Wall to Forest (GWF)" 

We are developing low cost, scalable green walls forest model for carbon capture and storage (CCS) using 3 most effective natural tools (Plants, Water and Soil). This approach ensures low cost of setup, low maintenance cost and zero new carbon emissions during operational lifetime.

Global CCS projects combined capture less than 0.1% of annual CO2 emissions even though billions have been invested. This confirms that existing CCS technologies cannot scale up to capture mega or giga tons of CO2 without astronomical investments and decades to make meaningful impact.

We don’t have time nor that kind of funding.

To Go Big, we must Go Small – The only viable option for scaling up CCS projects is by going “retail”. A solution which is modular, can scale up for a large manufacturing / power units and can be customized to fit a warehouse or city complex or individual homes. This will enable smaller companies and individuals invest in Carbon capture and removal. This will enable higher investments, larger scale and success in our lifetime

Problem statement – Existing carbon capture technologies are capital intensive, have CO2 separation and transportation challenges, require materials and processes which add to carbon footprint and are non-starters without significant legal and financial incentives. Many CCS projects have been shelved due to under-performance.

Our Solution –  Green wall Forest solution uses a combination of house plants to build living green walls which are stacked together in a closed structure to replicate a dense forest for capturing CO2 from air flowing through it. CO2 is stored in the form of biomass and dissolved in water which is stored underground.

The proposed solution consists of 3 parts –

1. Outer shell – Construction of outer structure which will house ‘green walls’ along with accompanying infra

2. Inner core – Stacked and connected green walls to hold vegetation and circulate water 

3. Supporting infra – External Water storage facility, Solar unit, underground dispersal dissolved CO2

Past few years have seen a significant increase in Carbon capture technologies and industries keen to deploy them. Forests by far are the largest carbon sinks available but due to agriculture and expanding human foot print, we are destroying them.

Building green wall forests with gene altered plants which can capture extra carbon is our holy grail.

Setup details – A large enclosed area (like a sunroom) which sucks in polluted air and pushes it through a maze of plants (‘green walls’). Rows of green walls stacked together, with small gaps in the end, force the air to flow as wave. Green walls (frames) are placed in close proximity to maximize interaction with polluted air.

In the gap between the frames, water is sprayed on the passing air. This hydrates and cleans the plants, improves CO2 absorption and enables CO2 dissolution in water. This system will store CO2 as biomass and dissolved in water. As the energy consumption is low, this can run on local Solar power (no additional CO2 creation).

Comparison with other Carbon capture solutions

1. Low cost of setup and operations

2. Long term sub-terrain Carbon storage once dissolved in water

3. No transportation or supply chain issues

4. Modularized – add modules to increase carbon capture capacity

Additional benefits

1. Large CO2 emitters can integrate this solution with existing infra to setup in-house carbon offsets.

2. Deploy monitoring and reporting of data on periodic basis to meet legal requirements 

Objectives for testing and validation during pilot project  

1. Deploying bio engineered (gene altered) plants for increasing CO2 absorption

2. Efficiency of sewage water in dissolving CO2 instead of fresh water

Scaling - This solution can be scaled as per the needs

1. Industrial size model – High capacity, close to CO2 source (e.g. manufacturing or Power plants)

2. City size model – Medium size, independent of the CO2 source (e.g. high traffic zones)

3. Roof top model– Small capacity (e.g. large buildings, Malls, Warehouses etc.)

Module capacity

1. One module of green wall forest is 100 ft X 25 ft X 25 ft and comes with 45 green walls (slides)

2. One side of green wall represents two average trees (think leaf cover)

3. One module with 45 slides is equivalent 45X2X2 = 180 trees

4. An average tree captures 50 lbs of CO2 per year, one module can capture 50 X 180 =  9000 lbs CO2/year

5. 9000 lbs = 4.5 Metric tons of CO2

Using the area of an average American home, we can replicate equivalent of 180 trees and capture 4.5 tons of CO2 per year. 

Next steps 

Pilot plans - need funding to deploy a pilot at any CO2 source (like manufacturing, power plants etc.) and capture data for validating all operational parameters