Project description
Moss to fight air pollution
Almost all Europeans suffer from air pollution, which results in about 400 000 premature deaths across the continent each year. Another 6.5 million people fall sick as air pollution causes diseases such as strokes, asthma and bronchitis. The EU-funded MossTree project represents an urban green infrastructure based on a patented combination of Internet of things and biotechnology. It is building the world’s first regenerative biofilter based on moss cultures, which can attract air pollution from their surroundings and convert it into biomass without leaving any residue. Specifically, the project will install hundreds of biofilters in various traffic and pollution hotspots in Europe by 2024. Sensors will be used to monitor the air quality.
Objective
Air Pollution is the world’s worst environmental health risk. Only in the EU, more than 400,000 people die prematurely and another 6.5 million people fall sick due to air pollution every year, with associated annual costs estimated at €1,200 billion. Current strategies for improving air quality have proven to be insufficient: (1) traffic restrictions face several barriers that hinder their immediate implementation; (2) natural vegetation is unable to improve air quality and it even shows negative effects in urban canyons, and (3) other solutions such as purifying towers are very expensive to build, have high operating costs, and generate waste. Our business opportunity relies on the urgent need of providing solutions to fight air pollution in a short-term, efficient- and costly manner, and easy to uptake by city authorities. The MossTree is an urban green infrastructure based on a patented combination of IoT & biotechnology. Moss cultures are able to attract air pollution from its surroundings and convert it into biomass without leaving any residue. The sensors incorporated in our solution monitor in real-time (1) the moss status, thus supplying automatically the required nutrients and water, and (2) the air quality enabling us to quantify the impact of our solution. Thanks to our own-developed IoT, we can maximise the filtering capacity of moss and guarantee its survival in urban environment. The MossTree Phase II project consists of the installation and certification of the impact of first MossTree Network in Berlin, with several units working in group symbiosis to showcase the efficiency of our solution in improving air quality in the real environment and specifically, in highly frequented open spaces. By 2024 we expect to have 600 MossTree Networks in Europe thus increasing the quality of life and health of 2 million European citizens. That year we expect to reach revenues of up to €250 million and have offices in several EU cities as well as Hong Kong, New York and Dubai employing more than 200 people.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesinternetinternet of things
- engineering and technologycivil engineeringwater engineeringirrigation
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringair pollution engineering
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesenvironmental sciencespollution
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
15741 BESTENSEE
Germany
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.