In a period where global carbon emission and urbanization are growing exponentially the need for creating sustainable solutions for the indoor and outdoor urban environment arise.
Following Melchiorri’s interest into natural phenomena and the recent scientific discoveries in Biology and Material science enabled him to
explore the potential for creating photosynthetic materials aiming to bring the efficiency of nature into the man-made environment.
3.5 billion years ago this planet was a hostile and desolate place. The atmosphere was toxic and contained no oxygen. Life on earth was restricted to a variety of primitive single cell aquatic organisms. Then a new type of organism emerged with an amazing new capability; it could harvest energy from sunlight and use it to fuel internal activities. This phenomenon is known as photosynthesis and is one of the most important chemical process on earth, almost all life is ultimately reliant upon it.
Photosynthesis is a chemical reaction that involves an organism taking water and CO2 and, with the help of light, turning those compounds into sugars and oxygen.
Inspired by natural mechanisms and physical phenomena, Julian Melchiorri conducted laboratory experimentation in order to explore the potential for making devices that photosynthesize and their possible applications.
Silk Leaf is the first outcome of this exploration path. It is a modular device that performs photosynthesis made of a biological material mostly composed by Silk protein and chloroplasts. Silk Leaf absorbs CO2 and produces oxygen and organic compounds thanks to the photosynthetic ability of the stabilized chloroplasts inside silk protein. Any visible light and water is needed to enable the reaction.
Having the necessity to provide water to the chloroplasts to enable the photosynthesis, another embedded technology to deliver water to the chloroplasts has been introduced, inspired to how natural leafs work.
The water will also remove chemical residues and sugars through osmosis, introducing the idea to collect it for energy generation.
The level of oxygen generation could be optimized depending on many factors, form the material composition to the quantity and efficiency of chloroplasts into silk. Recent scientific publications shows nanobionic interventions on chloroplasts increasing their photosynthetic efficiency by 49%. This and other research on genetic modification could allow a dramatic improvement of their efficiency.
Silk Leaf is a prototype to explore the potential impact that photosynthetic devices could have on our everyday life.
Due to: 1) the many benefits of Oxygen and CO2 absorption 2) the low energy consumption 3) thin surface 4) modular shape, Silk Leaf and its derivatives could be used in many applications were the level of CO2 are high or Oxygen is needed : inside ventilation systems, free form surface for interiors, together with the lighting, space exploration ...
Julian conceives biological reactive materials to be part of our indoor and urban environment to improve and stimulate our lives being socially and environmentally sustainable.