A revolutionary way to “grow” building bricks using bacteria and sand

Organisms like this Sporosarcina pasteurii bacterium deposit calcium carbonate to grow extremely strong natural structures

Humans are natural builders and innovators. When a new construction method comes along and starts to become the go-to material (like concrete), we can sometimes forget that more optimal alternatives may exist. Deep infrastructure gets built around the material and it becomes costly to use anything else.

Concrete is made by mixing crushed rocks, cement, and water together. Aside from using huge amount of water, cement takes an incredible amount of energy to produce. Apparently, cement manufacturing consumes more energy than any other single manufacturing industry in the USA.

Instead of consuming massive amounts of energy to fire and produce bricks, Inventors have played with the idea of GROWING bricks using a similar concept as an organisms growing coral in the sea at ambient temperatures.

First, bacteria is injected into brick-shaped molds containing a media like sand.

The bacteria binds the sand together by depositing calcium carbonate in the gaps between the grains of sand. The whole process takes about 5 days to get a complete hard brick.

Completed sand bricks bound together by bacteria at ambient temps.

This process could revolutionize the construction process as the bricks could be made ON SITE and require exponentially less energy.

Technologies like these could potentially be used to grow construction materials on other planets like Mars, where sand is abundant!