University of Limerick develops a self -contained greenhouse

A UNIVERSITY of Limerick-led research team has designed a self-contained greenhouse that provides its own water and could have a major impact on global food production.

The C-MINUS project brings together partners from industry and academia to address a new disruptive approach to farming – self-contained greenhouses that provide their own water and CO2 powered by sunlight.

“Not only could C-MINUS technology enable decentralised food production, it will do so with a negative carbon footprint,” according to Professor Michael Zaworotko, Bernal Chair of Crystal Engineering and Science Foundation of Ireland (SFI) Research Professor at UL’s Department of Chemical Sciences, who is leading the project.

“Our goal is to grow food anywhere in the world, at any time, regardless of the environmental conditions – in a self-contained greenhouse, where there is no need for electricity, water, or sunlight,” he added.

C-MINUS is a UL-NUIG project in partnership with Molecule RnD, an international think tank, research group and incubator fund that is located at UL.

The project has just successfully progressed to the Seed Phase of the SFI Future Innovator Prizes as part of the Zero Emissions Challenge announced last week by Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys TD.

The project is a collaboration between Professor Zaworotko, Dr David Styles, lecturer in Environmental Engineering at UL and Stellenbosch University Research Chair in Nanostructured Functional Materials, Professor Len Barbour.

“This would be highly disruptive in a positive way were it to succeed and takes advantage of advanced porous materials that have been developed partly through the molecule water project, and also partly through more basic research that was funded by the SFI,” explained Professor Zaworotko.

The C-MINUS team aims to develop low energy carbon capture devices to enable on-site carbon capture and net negative carbon technologies.

It utilises a revolutionary new crystalline material developed by Professor Zaworotko at UL that has favourable properties for absorbing and releasing water from the atmosphere.

UL lecturer David Styles said he was “excited to be involved in C-MINUS, where we will be applying life cycle assessment to benchmark the environmental footprint of food grown in urban and arid locations using revolutionary technology to harvest carbon dioxide and water from air pioneered at UL.