Modular Plant Wall Cassettes for VOC Purification and Humidity Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing plant walls, both passive and active, face challenges in modular construction, air filtration, water management, and aesthetics, particularly in maintaining humidity and preventing air leaks, while effectively purifying VOC gases and ensuring root growth support.
Innovation Solution
A modular active plant wall system comprising cassettes with built-in features like side and bottom supports, drainage troughs, and hydrophilic metal frames, allowing for controlled air flow, efficient irrigation, and sealing to create a sealed chamber for air purification, using rock wool substrates with sufficient bending stiffness and anchoring for stability.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Object-affected harmful factors
If air is sucked through the plant wall for active air purification, then VOC gas purification and particle filtration are improved, but the plant substrate dries out faster and requires different construction to retain humidity
Solution Approach 1:
The plant wall is divided into modular cassettes, each with its own plant substrate and irrigation system. This segmentation allows independent humidity control in each module, preventing overall drying while enabling active air flow through selected areas.
Solution Approach 2:
Different regions of the plant substrate are treated differently: the front portion allows air permeability for purification, while the rear portion is sealed to retain humidity. The irrigation system is localized to specific zones to maintain humidity where needed without interfering with air flow paths.
2Ease of manufacture
If the plant wall is built modularly for easy construction, then ease of manufacture and installation are improved, but sealing gaps between modules and preventing air leaks becomes more difficult
Solution Approach 1:
Cassettes are designed to nest within each other vertically, with upper cassettes fitting into recesses of lower cassettes. This nested arrangement creates overlapping sealing surfaces that prevent air leaks while maintaining modular assembly simplicity.
Solution Approach 2:
Sealing elements are integrated into the cassette structure using flexible materials that can adapt to manufacturing tolerances and assembly variations, ensuring reliable sealing between rigid modular components.
3Object-affected harmful factors
If the substrate is made thick and dense for root development, then plant growth and VOC purification are improved, but the substrate weight and structural support requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The substrate thickness and density are optimized to specific parameter ranges that balance purification effectiveness with weight constraints. The cassettes are designed with thickness parameters that provide sufficient substrate volume for VOC removal while keeping the overall assembly weight manageable for wall mounting.
4Ease of manufacture
If water is supplied from above in passive plant walls, then installation simplicity is improved, but water distribution becomes uncontrolled and evaporation increases
Solution Approach 1:
An active irrigation system using pumps and controlled fluid delivery is implemented to replace simple gravity-fed water supply. This hydraulic control system delivers water precisely to root zones, minimizing evaporation losses while maintaining ease of installation through standardized irrigation components.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The system achieves effective air purification, including VOC gas removal, with low pressure drop and silent operation, while maintaining humidity and preventing water accumulation, ensuring root growth and aesthetic homogeneity, and allowing for both passive and active configurations.
Implementation Method 1
air is sucked from the room through the humus the plants are planted in, wherein the air will also be filtered from particles and surprisingly, also purified from harmful VOC gases by contact with organisms cooperating with the roots
Implementation Method 2
it is desirable that the capillary force is used as a retaining feature for the humidity in the humus
Implementation Method 3
Best is some kind of hydrophilic metal plate frame basis
Data Source
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AI summary
The present invention relates to a modular system, primarily for active plant walls and means to build these. In public buildings and offices, the air often feels heavy and oxygen deficient. Bacteria and viruses are spread around through mismanaged ventilation systems. Another serious pollution in these environments is different VOC gases, such as benzene, xylene and formaldehyde, which are released from furniture, fabrics, paints and all kinds of building materials and appliances. One way to improve the air is to install active plant walls, where air is drawn from the room through the substrate material, in which the plants are planted, whereby the air moreover gets filtered from particles and, surprisingly, also purified from harmful VOC gases, by organisms which cooperate with the roots. The invention discloses a system for building modular active plant walls by means of plant modules, consisting of stable, humidity holding, cassettes which each fixates an inserted plant substrate, which is formed so that all the plant modules form a homogeneous front and no additional air slips between them and that water supplied to the modules can reach the underlying plant modules, in a leak proof way, and humidity simultaneously is transferred sideways.