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Engineers manage to create brick for civil construction that is able to self-reproduce and remove CO2 from the atmosphere
Have you ever imagined a solid material, which is perfect for the construction industry, which is capable of growing on its own like coral reefs? This is basically how the bricks in the laboratory of scientist Wil Srubar, from the University of Colorado, in the United States, work: the creations of biotechnology engineers are not only alive, but in the process of reproduction.
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Known as engineered living materials (ELM), the bricks are produced by bacteria and microbes that convert sand, nutrients and other raw materials into a biocement, much in the same way corals synthesize reefs. Therefore, when one of the bricks is divided in half, in a matter of six hours, two will form.
With ELM, it is possible to build inert structural materials, such as hardened cement or wood-like substitutes, with applications for civil construction, as they can be the basis of self-constructing airport runways and living bandages.
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Ecologically made bricks are very useful for civil construction
The novelty of Srubar's biocement is that this invention manages to retain living cells, even in the final structure. This is possible because scientists control temperature and humidity, keeping these organisms alive. And when they want to stabilize growth, just turn off those controls.
Until then, bricks were usually made with clay, sand, lime and water, which were mixed, molded and heated in brick kilns to over 1000 °C, in a process that consumed a lot of energy and generated hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 emissions annually.
bioMASON engineers explore the use of bacteria in the manufacture of construction bricks
In contrast, engineers from a company in North Carolina, USA, called bioMASON, were one of the first to explore the use of bacteria in the manufacture of this material. In this case, the microbes converted nutrients into calcium carbonate, which hardens the sand and transforms it into an excellent material, for civil construction, and resistant to ambient temperature.
“Could you grow a temporary runway somewhere by seeding bacteria in sand and gelatin?” asks Sarah Glaven, a microbiologist and ELM specialist at the US Naval Research Laboratory. In June 2019, engineers at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio created a prototype like the one questioned by her, measuring 232 square meters.
The hope, explains Blake Bextine, who runs an ELM program for the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is that instead of hauling tons of materials to create expeditionary airfields, military engineers can use local sand, gravel and water and apply a few “drums” of bacteria — which produce cement — to create new runways, in a matter of days. This movement resulted in a number of groups taking this same concept forward.
