Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Innovative Built and Regenerative Environments for Advancing Timeless Habitability and Equity (I-BREATHE)

I-BREATHE will revolutionize the built environment to actively remove harmful gases in outdoor and indoor environments, thereby contributing to the wellbeing of occupants, the environment, and the community while enhancing the durability of the built environment. Buildings and civil infrastructure are in direct contact with the atmosphere and therefore can play a revolutionary supporting role to trees in removing particulate matter and gaseous compounds.

As people spend a significant amount of their time indoors, buildings and civil infrastructure also have the potential to serve as barriers that block air pollutants from reaching their users. This planning grant activities will help develop an impactful community-centered vision for I BREATHE followed by a well-thought-out proposal to pursue establishment of the center with NSF ERC funding and the support of partners and stakeholders.

As part of the planning grant, workshops would be set up for co-creation of new knowledge between university researchers and the community stakeholders. It would go beyond gathering information into co-creation. This helps the university researchers to gain more knowledge on the experiences and gaps faced by the community/industrial partners and similarly the community partners contribute to the knowledge generation by the university researchers.

Such planning meetings allow us to identify societal and community challenges that can be addressed as part of this proposal and further provide opportunities to work with scholars from social science disciplines (e.g., economics, management, and psychology) to further refine the scope and research activities to maximize social gains. The meeting outcomes will help develop strategies for collecting and integrating inputs while creating advocacy groups and networks around the shared vision of simultaneous solutions for air quality and a resilient built environment.

The Center will develop regenerative adsorptive materials to collect gaseous emissions and convert them into valuable products. Successful collection and conversion of gasses requires advancing the science of engineering carbon dots, mineralization, and photocatalytic materials, as well as advancing the knowledge of metal–organic frameworks and electrochemical conversion.

To bridge the gap between the collection and conversion of gases, the adsorbing surfaces need to be regenerated by activation or desorption such that noxious gases, particulates, and CO2 are removed and can be used in the conversion process. Here, we explore the role of carbon dots and photoactive materials for the active remediation process, while taking advantage of solar thermal heating and solar photovoltaics combined with enhanced heat and mass transfer within/near the adsorbents to distribute the desorbed gases to desired endpoints.

We also explore how shape and topology optimization can help increase the exposure of the built environment to the surrounding air, thereby increasing the efficiency of the adsorbents. With the help of our multifaceted plan for education and workforce development, we aim to bring the concept of breathing buildings to every household, so that every individual could benefit from the new role of the built environment in human health, environmental wellbeing, social equity, and community resilience.

The Center will further revolutionize students' experience by centering it on use-inspired research. This in turn will produce globally aware scientists that will serve as junior ambassadors of the breathing building concept.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.