Six months ago, Enviro News reported on a radical vertical farming approach to inner-city sustainability: Belgian firm Vincent Callebaut Architectures’ incredible-looking Dragonfly concept structure. Now, the same firm has put forward plans for an innovative self-sufficient, energy-producing, amphibious water-purifying platform called Physalia. Eighty metres long and almost 15 metres wide, Physalia resembles some vast sea creature in profile, and its mission will be to travel around Europe’s waterways (including the Seine, the Thames and the Danube), cleaning river water without generating emissions.

Physalia: Water Sanitiser

The Physalia water sanitiser’s name comes from the Physalia physalis – better known as the Portuguese Man o’War jellyfish. Among the technologies that it will feature are an array of rooftop photovoltaic (solar) panels, and a collection of hydro turbines on its underside – both of which will provide it with an abundance of power.

Vincent Callebaut’s rationale for the creation of – and the need for – technology like Physalia is rooted in the basic fact that over one billion of the world’s residents are not able to obtain clean drinking water. Each day, three thousand deaths occur which are related to un-sanitised water supplies.

Water Purification

With European climate change thought focused on areas like future adaptation and emission reduction, says Callebaut, Physalia represents one sustainable solution to combat several key issues. These include:

• Water Purification – Physalia will recycle both industrial and household-generated water, purify polluted water and remove salt from sea water, to name but three.
• Transportation – As a floating platform, Physalia will automatically offer a reduction in CO2 emissions compared to wholly land-based craft. According to Callebaut, the vessel will be a ‘...floating purification station, a tool of ecologic promotion with sulphur and carbon zero dedicated to sensitise the populations.’

Energy Efficient Water Pollution Reduction

• Energy Efficiency – Physalia is described as 100 per cent self-sufficient. Its design incorporates renewable-energy source based technologies which will be capable of generating energy beyond its own needs. As well as solar panels and water turbines, its shell will incorporate titanium dioxide which will reduce water pollution levels by reacting to UV rays.

Physalia will be quartered into four distinct sections – named fire, earth, water and air (four of the group of five Classical elements that also includes ‘space’).

‘It is an audacious avant-garde project that aims at mixing people around the notion of water respect, sharing in movement and dynamic balance’, Callebaut explains, adding: ‘after the Copenhagen conference, it is a project of trans-European leadership and a positive innovation of ecologic resilience.’

Physalia Image kindly provided by and copyright of Vincent Callebaut Architectures - www.vincent.callebaut.org