London skyscraper may be redesigned to trap and convert air pollution into biofuel

The Royal College of Arts (RCA) may see one of its students radically change London’s skyline in the future. Dezeen has reported that Chang-Yeob Lee, an architecture masters student of RCA, wants to completely redesign the look of London’s BT Tower sometime in the future by adding exterior carbon fibre and steel rigging, which will be designed to capture and convert air pollution into sustainable fuel. The tower currently is used for telecommunication, but may just see a new avatar as an eco-skyscraper if Lee has his way.

The BT tower stands at a height of 581 feet, which makes it one of the tallest buildings in the city. In that regard, the building is idle to collect soot and other fine particles as well carbon emissions. According to Lee, the rigging will contain titanium dioxide nanotubes, which has the ability to turn carbon dioxide into natural gas using sunlight and water. The system, overall, should be able to produce methanol in amounts to the tune of 100 metric tonnes per year.

London may see its skyscrapers redesigned to combat air pollution. (Image credit: Royal College of Arts)

The concept system, called Synth[e]tech[e]cology, has been designed to eventually see application across other tall buildings as well. The purpose behind this network is simple— to collectively reduce London's air pollution and give some monetary benefit as well. While talking about this, Lee told Dezeen that "Pollution could be another economy." The architecture student came up with the concept as part of his diploma project. The concept system also led to Lee winning the Sheppard Robson Student Prize for Architecture in late June this year.

There maybe a few problems with this concept system, though. The first could be the cost behind such an endeavour; installing enough carbon fibre and steel rigging on a skyscraper to make a discernable difference may set anyone funding this project back millions of pounds. And the idea of setting up a network of skyscrapers with this concept increases the cost exponentially. The rationale behind the natural gas that is collected being used to ease some of the cost cannot really be used either, because the power needs of London alone will exhaust the supply, which is collected over a year, within days. While this is not the first time a project like this is being undertaken, with Chicago and Mexico seeing smaller versions of the same model, there are definitely cheaper ways of combating pollution.