Mycelium, the root network of fungi, has the potential to revolutionize the construction industry by producing less carbon dioxide and leaving behind less harmful waste. Fungi can be used to create diverse building materials with different properties, such as biobased fungal blocks or composites fused with concrete. Fungal foams are becoming increasingly popular as sustainable packaging materials, with companies like IKEA committing to using them. Two new studies show that lightweight construction materials and fire-retardants made from fungi could be safe, sustainable alternatives to chemicals, foams, and plastics.
The concept of using mycelium as a construction material is not entirely new, as it has been used in the production of sustainable materials like mycocrete. Mycelium materials offer an exciting opportunity to upcycle agricultural waste into a low-cost, sustainable, and biodegradable material alternative. Researchers at Newcastle University have developed a unique and eco-friendly composite building material from the root network of fungi. Fungus-based construction materials could be useful in remote settings or during natural disasters.
Mycelium is a natural fungi material with industrial-level strength that has been explored in recent years as a potential building material. Growing buildings from mushrooms may sound like something out of a science fiction novel, but scientists are turning the fantasy into reality. By using the roots of fungi, we can create biodegradable and sustainable building materials that reduce the carbon footprint of the building industry.
📹 This mushroom brick could replace concrete
The world is addicted to concrete, and it’s making climate change a lot worse. But there’s a new generation of futuristic, …
Can fungi be used as a building material?
Mycelium, a fungal network, can be used as a strong, lightweight building material. It is created by combining mycelium with organic matter, forming a dense, interconnected structure. This process is used to create eco-friendly packaging, furniture, art installations, and textiles. Mycelium-based materials are increasingly being used in key components of buildings, such as residential tower cladding. While mycelium has a superior strength-to-weight ratio compared to concrete, its 30 psi compressive strength falls short of concrete’s 4000 psi.
This could lead to safer and cleaner cladding for residential towers, as well as cleaner cladding for residential towers. However, the process requires careful consideration of sand scarcity and resource constraints.
How do fungi change our world?
Fungi challenge our conventional notions of individuality and intelligence. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and play a pivotal role in various life processes. They have the capacity to alter our minds, heal our bodies, and aid in environmental remediation.
How can fungi help create a green construction industry?
Fungi can be used to create various building materials, including biobased spongy blocks and composites fused with concrete. The fungi life cycle involves spores swelling to germinate, eventually forming long, threadlike hyphae, resembling plant roots. This stage is crucial for industrial biotech as it produces a mixture of useful materials like chitin, polysaccharides like glucans, manno-proteins, chitosan, polyglucuronic acid, cellulose, and smaller quantities of proteins and glycoproteins. The fungi life cycle reveals the diverse properties of fungi and their potential applications in various industries.
How does fungi impact society?
Fungi, or about 80, 000 known species, are organisms that belong to the kingdom Fungi and lack chlorophyll and organized plant structures. They reproduce through spores or in special fruiting bodies. Fungi are found in all regions with sufficient moisture, and they cannot carry out photosynthesis due to their lack of chlorophyll. Instead, they secrete enzymes onto their growing surfaces to obtain nutrients, digesting organic matter and releasing carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus into the soil or atmosphere.
Fungi are essential to food and industrial processes, producing enzymes, organic acids, vitamins, and antibiotics. However, they can also destroy crops, cause diseases in humans, and ruin clothing and food with mildew and rot. Parasitic fungi invade living organisms, often causing disease and death, while other fungi establish symbiotic relationships with algae, plants, and certain insects. Fungi are found in all regions with sufficient moisture to grow and are essential for various food and industrial processes.
How does fungi impact the world?
Fungi play a crucial role in nutrient cycling and carbon cycling, contributing to soil carbon stock and climate regulation. They decompose plant and animal debris, increasing their availability in the soil and promoting nitrogen fixation and phosphorus mobilization. Fungi also play a significant role in the carbon cycle through the soil food web, cycling carbon from litter and dead plant material. Mycorrhizal fungi, which live in mutual symbiotic association with plant roots, provide more stable carbon stocks.
Fungi rely on photosynthetic carbon for energy production, while some species obtain it from plant root exudates. Together, plants and fungi perform soil carbon sequestration, capturing and storing carbon from the atmosphere for decades or hundreds of years. This process improves soil fertility and reduces excess carbon emissions, with biodiverse soils capturing up to 10 tons of CO2 per hectare per year.
What causes fungi in buildings?
Fungal contamination in low-energy buildings is primarily due to faulty design, installation, operation, or maintenance of highly insulated external walls and inadequate ventilation. The number of buildings experiencing humidity problems and fungal growth is increasing due to energy-saving measures and changes in construction practices and climate. Determining the cause and documenting fungal growth are complex processes involving building physics and indoor mycology.
New detection and identification methods have been introduced, and new fungal species have been added to the list of building-related fungi. However, the lack of standardized procedures and general knowledge hampers efforts to resolve these problems and advocate for effective renovation plans. This review provides a framework for building inspections on current sampling methods and detection techniques for building-related fungi, and tables with fungal species identified on commonly used building materials in Europe and North America.
The most reported building-associated fungi across all materials are Penicillium chrysogenum and Aspergillus versicolor. Indoor mold has been associated with adverse health effects, and some indoor fungal species are responsible for exacerbating asthma.
How can fungi be used in materials production?
Filamentous fungi are being explored for their potential in producing enzymes, small molecule compounds like antibiotics and organic acids, and for sustainable materials like plastics. They are also being used in the production of AI training and text and data mining. Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B. V., its licensors, and contributors. All rights reserved, including those for text and data mining and AI training.
How would the world be different without fungi?
Fungi play a crucial role in shaping and transforming environments, underpinning the wellbeing of terrestrial ecosystems. They decompose matter and recycle nutrients, building healthy soils for plant and animal growth. Fungi are the interface between death and life, supporting the health of most organisms. They form intimate partnerships with all forms of life, supporting the production of various products like beer, wine, chocolate, bread, penicillin, and detergent.
A potent group, known as psychedelics, contains psychoactive compounds that can initiate transformative experiences of love, creativity, and connection. Fungi, such as reishi, enoki, and wood ear, are often treated as both food and medicine in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practices. Fungi are nature’s alchemists, offering untold answers for our future on Earth. Without fungi, the world as we know it would not exist.
What would happen if fungi didn’t exist?
Fungi play a crucial role in shaping and transforming environments, underpinning the wellbeing of terrestrial ecosystems. They decompose matter and recycle nutrients, building healthy soils for plant and animal growth. Fungi are the interface between death and life, supporting the health of most organisms. They form intimate partnerships with all forms of life, supporting the production of various products like beer, wine, chocolate, bread, penicillin, and detergent.
A potent group, known as psychedelics, contains psychoactive compounds that can initiate transformative experiences of love, creativity, and connection. Fungi, such as reishi, enoki, and wood ear, are often treated as both food and medicine in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practices. Fungi are nature’s alchemists, offering untold answers for our future on Earth. Without fungi, the world as we know it would not exist.
How do fungi function in the recycling of life materials?
Fungi are crucial decomposers and recyclers in nature, aiding species survival by providing essential nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus from decaying matter. Their mode of nutrition, digestion before ingestion, allows them to degrade large and insoluble molecules that would otherwise remain trapped in a habitat. Fungi play a vital role in releasing scarce elements from decaying matter, ensuring the survival of various species in their diverse habitats.
What material is made from fungi?
Mycelium, a wonder material, has been gaining attention as a potential replacement for leather, plastic packaging, and meat. Its vast networks of filaments can live for centuries and stretch over kilometres, potentially aiding tree communication. Engineers are working on mycelium materials that could regrow and repair themselves, potentially leading to self-healing leather or building structures. Over the past two decades, scientists have experimented with growing mycelia, the hair-like threads that sustain all fungi, to create new materials.
With startups securing millions in funding for their low-carbon, biodegradable products, scientists and engineers are now turning to mycelia to help shape the buildings around us. Mycelium’s potential in the built environment extends beyond insulation to its role in living construction.
📹 These Mushroom Bricks Are Up to Twice as Strong as Concrete
Fungi are some of the most ancient organisms around. But could they also be the future of construction and building materials?
For using mushrooms to become a viable building material, we should look at cost of the material, speed, durability, elasticity, and water/fire/heat/wind/cold-resistance of the material. When everything is good there is another problem and that is the transportation and the local production. If the material is harder to produce than concrete or locally sourced material, less developed countries will not try to use the new material.
I think this has a lot of potential to replace packaging such as styrophoam, and maybe be a good replacement to glass wool and acoustic foam, but I think it might be a waste of time to look at it like a building material, it’s biodegradable and not very strong, I think they will be better of investing their time on these other uses .
I really love bricks and brick bonds and all that. That being said, good old fashion terracotta bricks ARE sustainable and they can bear loads. They’re made of dirt, the most readily available material on the planet. With that considered, I don’t know what niche mushroom bricks are really trying to fill, from what I’ve seen. I think you would really have to utilize the fact that they grow to be useful. An idea I had was the fact that mycelium naturally bonds to wood, which is another building material. If you are really able to establish concrete level of strength, that could be a great natural combo.
Have seen another Mycelium Brick information on youtube, and this article explaining from beginning step until ready to use Brick. I just noticed there was a step need to heat the brick to stop process of the mycelim fungi, formerly I have an idea to use agricutural waste / debris and mold it into big size wall (not as small size brick), however, seems the idea not possible to be made into reality as a result of need to heating to make mycelium dead/not active any longer. need to find further information/another way. TQ
I know this a joke Realistically mushroom bricks are extremely difficult and expensive to produce. The brick in the flame test caught on fire very quickly under low heat, it started cracking before the test. That “compression” test had only max 150lb where as bricks can sustain thousands of pounds under compression. There was no tension testing nor shear test. Imagine the mushroom brick under cold weather where water can break down the brick as soon as it rained or snowed. This is horrible for the environment trying to find mushrooms to create the brick. How do you recycle the mushroom brick?
Not mushrooms. Moss can easily form on it, even mold. Simply breathing the rotten corpse of a mushroom can be poisonous. That all depends on the mushroom thought. They better figure out a way to prevent those things otherwise we will continue to use clay. I like the idea, i just don’t know how it’d work (maybe the article explains it but I’m too lazy to watch it)
This is all great really, just like that proposition of using throwaway lobster shells to create organic plastic, but all these multi billion/trillion industries use their current material because it’s more cost effective and they don’t have to wait long for the building material. But so far that’s what I’ve learned and what I know and I honestly don’t think something like this will be adopted anytime soon on a mass scale.
It would of been a better story to cover how David Benjamin produced so many bricks, his experimentation on the structural properties, and the challenges he faced. That would of been more informative and convincing then someone’s backyard experiments. As others have said, reproducibility, cost, and structural properties will need to be matured severely to be a competitor for bricks alone (forget about poured concrete). I’m sure there are researchers looking at ways to produce greener concrete so that would erode further interest in this area.
I’ve seen cordyceps growing in my college’s lab. It seems like a very delicate mushroom to isolate and grow in a lab, but in the nature it grows so easily. It’s the biggest problem with trying to grow fungi in an isolated environment, it seems so frail and prone to contamination, while in nature it grows seemingly effortless.
Interesting, but issues such as durability problems over long time will arise once it gets used in a building. The original species of fungi used is growing on a tree and consuming wood from that tree to reach such sturdiness, which is why wood is used as a building material. Mixing wood pieces and this fungi might make for an interesting combination in addition to some rock mixed in.
Title should be concrete brick not concrete itself. Mechanical properties data given here is too lacking for any engineer to make a conclusion. Though there’s probably a more in-depth study/paper exist in the internet already. But based on the limited results here, it still have a long way to go before it’s people start using this over other alternative.
It is unfortunate that the person being interviewed scoffs and giggles about the topic. Also, she seems disbelieving of this idea based on the fact that it takes 4 weeks to make the brick? Obviously she doesn’t understand scale or the fact that growing a tree for lumber takes far longer to make a 2×4. This is an idea worth exploring. I wish Verge Science had done a better job with this aspect of the article. It makes the viewer think that it is a junk idea, which it is not.
“Could replace concrete”? Maybe the title itself that could be replaced. If the mushroom brick is suppose to replace clay brick or wood/timber structure, then it would be feasible. When you talk about concrete and its environmental impact, you have to consider first why concrete is still in use right now. Its flexibility, strength, robustness, durability, availability, etc. We have to find more sustainable building material indeed, but we still have a long way, to make sure that everything exactly as it “seems”.
Materials science is fun; so, we’ll watch. But none of this kind of stuff ever makes it to market anywhere let alone replaces something that’s probably 10,000 times cheaper. So, we’ll shelve these ideas until the new reformation after the apocalypse where concrete can’t be made anymore because we ran out of sand.
we can reduce carbon in atmosphere if the world stop eating fish for 10 years. seems absurd like? the indiscriminated fishing is uncontrollable, if we eat all the fish the fish cannot fertilize fitoplancton and fitoplancton cannot absorbe the 85% of carbon dioxide in atmosphere. now isn’t so absurd. meanwhile there is not more concrete, we can recycle them of course, but with some carbon emission but with msuhroom bricks the problem of fish remain. is a fact told what u want
Mycelium bricks are not practical and likely never will be. Even if you could reduce the time to make a brick down to one week, it’s still far more labor and time intensive than using concrete. And your end product is significantly weaker than concrete. In order to create a substitute for concrete, you need to either make the material stronger, more economical, or in some way better than what it is replacing. Mycelium bricks do none of these things. Maybe it’s more environmentally friendly, but I think it’s pretty clear that being eco friendly alone is not enough to push a product into the mainstream. Especially when it takes weeks to produce each brick.
There is just no way you could grow enough mushrooms to offset the concrete industry…just seems impossible in my mind. First you going to need wood or some kind of substrate to grow the mushrooms. The right growing temp/humidity/and the right microbiome. Then you going to need to increase your scale immensely…..this is just dumb. Seems to me it would be better to try and use trash to make bricks…something we have plenty of.
Someone should introduce her to a civil engineering structural materials testing department at a local university like Oregon State University where they do actual scientific testing to add some seriousness to this. Sad, this seemed like it was going to be more serious than it ended up looking like with the so called testing at the end. I wish someone would do a real story about real engineering on this subject instead of this Eco-entertainment and big promises about sustainability. Where’s the math? Or the how to DIY instructions? Temperature, time, amounts of materials?
Mushroom bricks are stronger then concrete but they have to be cultivated because they are an organism. Also it depends on the substrate used, using hemp for example will only serve to strengthen the bond due to the hemp fibers usefulness in absorbing oxygen and calcifying over time. Im sorry but i think a mycologist would have been better suited, i know you think its “avant garde” to have a millenial to come and perform this experiment and a reporter but the truth is, this is science, and science can be viewed through many different lenses before the truth is seen in its full capacity.
they went to someone that knew a “lot” about mushrooms but they did not go to a mycologist, Why? because they would have told them the basic fact: mushrooms are not plants, mushrooms breathe oxygen and produce co2. not to demean the skilled mushroom hunter that can know a lot more then a mycologist.
I have a few questions about using less fossil fuel. To bake the brick how much temperature and time does it needs in BTU or any mesure per month lets say? What is your heat source at a large scale? What about the energy used by the facilities or farming machinery to grow and transportation? Can you tell how much of a difference would there be in CO2 emissions compared to concrete bricks?
What I’d be most concerned with is if mold or other fungal material would grow on it in even slightly humid environments. Also does it decay over the span of decades when exposed to harsh sunlight, heat, cold, and rain. Plus, would ants, hornets, or beetles make themselves at home in the blocks? Just some things to consider
I’m calling BS on this. Mr Maurer said the bricks are 2x stronger than concrete and he gives 26 MPa (3,771 psi) as their strongest formula. The minimum compression strength for concrete is 2,500 psi. Do the math. And the sledgehammer test is a joke, look at the blocks! The concrete block has large voids, the mushroom block has no voids. Of course the cost is too high, and until those bricks are waterproof and affordable no one will want to buy them. This kind of story is only good for one thing: to prove how bad our media really is.