During a stint as a teaching fellow in architecture at NC State a few years ago, Ginger Dosier came up with a rather strange idea. She decided she could harness the power of bacteria to grow bricks.
The idea was simple enough. Instead of mixing sand and clay and firing up a kiln, she thought, why not just feed bacteria the right combination of ingredients and let the microbes do the rest.
The idea works and earned Dosier the top prize in Metropolis magazine’s Next Generation competition. The magazine praised the ecological implications of the advance.
“Tossing a clay brick into a coal-powered kiln, then firing it up to 2,000 degrees, emits about 1.3 pounds of carbon dioxide,” the magazine said. “Multiply that by the 1.23 trillion bricks manufactured each year, and you’re talking about more pollution than is produced by all the airplanes in the world.”
Dosier’s project is a testament to the value of multidisciplinary collaboration. During her two years as a teaching fellow, she audited courses in materials science and worked closely with faculty mentors in microbiology and design.
Her innovative process mixes bacteria with sand, calcium chloride and urea to form a material that resembles sandstone. Small bricks take about a week to grow, fueled by a series of chemical reactions. They’re as strong kiln-fired bricks and could even be engineered to match the strength of marble.
Dosier returned to campus last summer to meet with a professor at the Animal and Poultry Waste Center. As a result, she’ll try using swine waste as a source of urea when she scales up the project.
Dosier is now at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, where she’s planning to conduct field tests in the desert with the help of local Bedouins.