Carbon Forming, an Open Source DIY exploration into creative carbon removal with Evan Landau
Evan Landau is passionate about sustainable materials. At our most recent informal project chat, he caught us up on his current project–his work with Open Air Collective, a 100% volunteer-led, global network that’s working on carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects.
The Open Air Collective, an OSHWA certified organization, focuses on CDR research and development, as well as climate advocacy work. They recognize that CDR is not a substitute for eliminating greenhouse gases, but that it is an important part of understanding how we can survive climate change on our planet.
Through the Open Air Collective, Evan is contributing to a three phase CDR project. Phase one, Violet, involves a direct capture unit that pulls in air and removes carbon dioxide. Phase two, Cyan, turns the carbon dioxide air into calcium carbonate. And finally, phase three, carbon 3D printing — this is where Evan comes in. Evan has been using the materials created from Cyan and turning them into a filament to 3D print physical objects.
Short term, Evan and his team’s goal is relatively straightforward: to produce reliable prints. When thinking into the future, he hopes to create a suitable material for injection molding.
One of our favorite parts about this CDR project is that it’s not meant to be scaled up to a massive manufacturing process, but instead as a distributed network. With coffee filters, empty hummus containers, and Tupperware, the project could almost be mistaken for a school science project rather than a mechanism for extracting carbon.
But that’s the beauty of it.
These materials are widely available, meaning that just about anyone can replicate the process. The resulting material is built with a wide possibility of end applications in mind, so that its use isn’t limited to one area. When it comes to creating carbon based materials, the air will soon be your oyster.
If you’d like to get involved in a projects like this, the Open Air Collective has many initiatives that focus on big-picture green energy solutions.
