Sustainable Manufacturing using Bioresin for Low Carbon Vertical Farms
Challenge
Novel bio-based materials have the potential to reduce the amount of embodied carbon in construction, and also offer opportunities to explore new design concepts that aren’t feasible with high-carbon building materials. The production method for biomaterials also has the potential for local, distributed production that could further reduce supply chain carbon emissions.
The manufacture and construction of vertical farming facilities have a disproportionately high carbon footprint. High carbon embodiment steel and oil based products are widely employed, and these are shipped from a limited number of production sites around the world.
The project partners wanted to find out if proven bioresin from agrifood waste processing could be used to build vertical farm towers, potentially reducing the carbon footprint of the towers and enabling innovative design concepts.
Solution
Feasiblity funding from IBioIC enabled the project partners to work together to establish the feasibility of using bioresin to create novel building products for vertical farming towers.
The opportunity to use Cambond technology as a basis for manufacturing lower carbon insulation and structural board materials from recycled and waste materials gave the project the opportunity to reduce the embodied carbon in a vertical farm installation and reduce the amount of material require in construction. Xiaobin Zhao, CEO of Cambond Ltd led on bioresin extraction and manufacturing of sample materials, the development and evaluation of bio-based design concepts, and use case development.
Niall Skinner, Head of Advanced Systems Design at Intelligent Growth Solutions led on the development and evaluation of bio-based design concepts, and also worked on use case development and business and developmental evaluation.
Vijay Thakur and Vijai Gupta of SRUC worked on bioresin extraction and manufacturing of sample materials, use case development and business and environmental evaluation, while Peter Ball from the University of York worked on use case development and business and environmental evaluation.
The team were able to establish that it was possible to produce vertical farming equipment using the crop residues under consideration.
Outcome
The academic partners gained experience in the development of protocols for development and demonstration application of materials in a new context, and in development of concept stage LCA and business case use.
The development of bioresin technology will enable Cambond to work in the insulation materials business in Scotland and potentially build an international business. The project also enabled IGS to demonstrate environmental commitment to embodying low carbon design into vertical farm products and will be key in obtaining consents for new projects as regulations in the field of built environmental develop. In addition to regulatory compliance, successfully demonstrating these materials also offers IGS competitive advantage in reduction of costs and attractiveness to customers, many of whom have reduced environmental impact as a key objective in their operations.
