Alizée Gerard, student in design, at the European Art School of Brittany (EESAB Brest), arrives for a two months internship at "La Myne / La Paillasse Saône".

She has been working since a few months on a project entitled "Élec-GREEN-City", a project of vegetated wall, integrating microbial fuel cell and producing electricity. This project was born from a collaboration between EESAB and UBO (University of Brittany) universities around a general theme: "marine bio-inspiration for the transition."

Until now, she has been working mainly on the state of the art and the concept, analysis and contextualization of the project but found herself blocked by the lack of knowledge in the fields of biology and electronics to continue the project more concretely.

So naturally she joins Johann Duraffourg, who created the project "Power Flower Pot", to combine their complementary skills. The primary objective is to develop experimental prototypes of microbial cells allowing everyone to understand the process and variables.

Élec-GREEN-City

Today, we cannot deny any longer our obvious implication regarding the unprecedented upheavals in the biosphere that we now faced. The depletion of fossil energy resources (oil, coal ...), associated with the pollution caused by their use, now poses the question of energy production, from renewable and cleaner processes.

In addition, the global trend towards urbanization and thus the concentration of the population into ever larger cities encourages people to turn to "green" solutions.

This observation leads us to think, that a rewriting of how we inhabit the earth, is inevitable, underlining the need to reconnect the Human to a living environment and achieved a coordinated evolution of species toward a sustainable development.

Based on the functioning of ecosystems, including the symbiotic relationship between coral polyps and unicellular algae (zooxanthellae), "Élec-GREEN-City is made on this context. The objective, is to develop a source of energy based on plants, with minimal human intervention.

If fuel cells with plants already exist, this project goes further. It is part of a sustainable development approach, that ultimately aims to establish a vertical system, such as a green wall. This system, installed on buildings, would be able to:

• produce energy,
• take advantage of insulating properties, heat regulation and air quality improvement that allows the green walls,
• recycle the wastewater (used for plant growth).