Download The Blood of the City

April, 2013
The Blood of the City
An All in One* water infrastructure
A Visionary Infrastructure Solution for Household Energy and Water Delivery
On-site clean water
and energy
separation,
and waste disposal
(the cell
membrane)
Central energy
generation
(the lungs)
City circulatory
system smart
control centre
(the brain)
Local waste to
energy and water
transformation
points
Pipeline network
(The city circulatory system)
Self healing and
maintenance
system
(the white blood
cells, and
platelets)
possible to deliver and
collect a combination
Energy carrier
charge and
pump station
(the heart)
Blood purification
(the kidneys)
Isolated
residential areas
(body organs)
In the future, will it be
waste materials
A Future city in 2115
The city
vein
Energy carrier
production
(the liver)
Water
(the body serum)
“the blood of the city”
Vignette Vision
This study aims to expand current thinking about the future of
energy and water utility provision
by presenting a radical idea: it
suggests a combined delivery
system for household energy
and water utilities based on a bio
-inspired analogy with the human body.
It envisions a multi-functional
and environmentally friendly
household infrastructure for cities of the future.
The mechanism is modeled on
the human circulatory system, so
it is not as science fictional as it
sounds! So why should an analogous system – the city circulatory system, or “city blood” – not
be used to deliver energy and
water simultaneously in one dedicated pipeline system?
Created by Ferhat Karaca,
Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, MK43 0AL,
E: [email protected]
of water, energy, and
Energy carriers
(the red blood
cells)
together in a carrier
liquid (also known as
“city blood”) ?
An energy distribution system inspired by
the human body
This study highlights a key question
in utility infrastructure foresight:
“How different might our infrastructures look had we known all the we
know now when we began to construct them?” Furthermore, it suggests a radical conception of a
combined household energy and
water delivery infrastructure which
might be made possible by emerging technological developments
and advances that have yet to become reality.
The biggest technological challenge discussed in this study is
the distribution of a novel energy
carrier or fuel via extant water
distribution systems. Potential
fuel and energy carriers include
solid and liquid substrate hydrogen carriers, and fossil and bio
fuels. The ultimate aim of the
study is not to address or advocate for any particular feasible
solution, but to make a contribution to shaping a future infrastructure system which is environmentally friendly, sustainable,
multi-functional, manageable
and flexible. We aim to encourage scientific community to consider this radically alternative
approach.
*This study is a part of the project entitled “All in One: Feasibility Analysis of Supplying All Services through One
Utility Product”. It was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under the
reference number EP/J005592/1. For details : [email protected]
The human circulatory system, considered as an infrastructure
The cell is the basic structural unit of the biological
body; its needs are supplied by the capillaries and
blood vessels. A house is the basic functional unit of
the urban body; its needs are supplied by networks of
infrastructure. Blood is the carrier liquid which
delivers and collects water, energy, and waste
products throughout the body via the arteries and
veins of the circulatory system.
This system resembles a city circulatory system, and
was originally proposed as a potential “All-in-One”
infrastructure solution.
Of course, an analogy can only stretch so far, and
comes complete with its own pros and cons – so
while a biomimetic approach might provide a
workable solution to urban infrastructure
improvement, such a solution must be assumed to
come with inherent challenges alongside its
advantages, and we endeavour to explore both.
Water delivery
The fuel or the energy carriers, mixed into city water
and distributed through water pipeline systems (city
vessels), would be separated from the city blood and
collected at receptor sites (e.g. houses, buildings);
there, they will be utilised to generate useful energy
(e.g. in hydrogen fuel cells). One possible delivery
process involves (re)charging energy carriers and/or
fuel at a central location (much as lungs do with
oxygen in our bodies), pumping them around the
community through pipelines, mixed with water
(much as the heart does), and then processing the
carriers or fuel on-site in order to extract energy for
household energy use (much as the cells of the body
extract oxygen from oxygenated blood cells).
Energy and water separation
The other important feature of the concept is that in
every receptor site (e.g. houses, dwellings), potable
water will be separated from the city blood (a
mixture of water and energy carriers) by means of an
on-site filtration/separation system, acting like the
interface between capillaries and cell membranes.
This is made possible by recent advances in
membrane technologies, which have opened up new
possibilities water purification using biomimetic
membranes, whose advantages include high
throughput and reduced energy consumption.
One of the cost- and investment-related advantages
of the proposed system is that it makes (re)use of an
existing infrastructure – namely urban water
distribution networks – with some modifications. This
redeployment of legacy infrastructure may confer a
significant economic advantage on the proposed
system; it would reduce multiple disparate utility
delivery infrastructures – e.g. gas, electricity and
water – into one united circulatory network. In such a
Other functions
system, the carrier liquid (analogous to blood), will be
water, which can be pumped by the same methods In the human circulatory system, blood also removes
used today.
waste materials from cells and tissues. In the city
circulatory system, however, it might be a better
solution to treat black and grey water locally in each
Energy delivery
building, or at small-scale local wastewater treatment
The key scientific hurdle in this vignette is the plants, thereby avoiding the need to transport clean
distribution of energy using water as a medium. This water and wastewater together in the same pipeline
study suggests an alternative energy delivery option: system, which would lead to complex sanitation,
solid/liquid-substrate hydrogen carriers and/or bio/ operation and maintenance challenges. Thus the
fossil fuels, dissolved or suspended in water, their domestic conversion of grey water into potable water
extraction made feasible by future advances in is another assumption which we have folded into this
materials science and technology.
study.