Break Brick

• Sustainability Problem:

Effects of air pollution cause 3.3 million premature deaths each year[1] and majority of household pollutants are due to domestic fire for cooking and/or heating homes. The aforementioned are acquit in developing densely populated cities – Beijing, Manila, Nairobi, Cairo, etc.  Access to air filtration systems are limited to a variety of  issues, but the most common are socio-economic and infrastcture.

Category: Clean Air, Energy Efficiency, Energy Savings, Infrastructure, Innovative, Sustainability

Solution:

• Breathe brick is a porous concrete module that forms an air-filtration façade. Pulls in air and separates heavy particles and drops them to collection bin at bottom of the façade. Filter can separate 30% of fine particles and 100% of coarse particles.
• Simple inexpensive framework, brick and coupler. Coupler are manufactured from recycled materials and can take on most structural forms.  
• Breathe brick system can operate as active (integrated into existing HVAC system) or passive as independent system.
• Breath brick is electric free.

 

Organizational Stakeholder:

• California Polytechnic State University – School of Architecture
• Homeowner (especially no access to electricity, densely populated cities developing countries, and governments interest in reducing air population)

 

Next steps for deployment:

• Waiting for patent approval
• Refining design to expand to alternative modular forms
• Regulatory approval in several development nations as sustainable and clean technology product
• Funding for production

 

 

[1] http://www.mpic.de/en/news/press-information/news/more-deaths-due-to-air-pollution.html