Evaluating the Cleansing Efficiency of an Extended Living Façade Draped With Vernonia Elaeagnifolia

Abstract

Nature has its own astonishing capability to naturally cleanse the environment. Living green drapes on buildings look elegant and can provide sustainable solutions in congested cities. The Vellore Institute of Technology in India promotes green values within the country. Although the campus is lush and verdant, its ever growing student population precipitated an increase in public thoroughfare causing air pollution. To partially alleviate this problem, walls of a subway connecting the main academic campus and the hostel premises are draped with Vernonia elaegnifolia creeper; this is aesthetically elegant and was found to be efficient in capturing much of the vehicular pollution within the subway. An experimental investigation clubbed with an Ecotect analysis helped ascertain the optimal duration of the temperature drop across the subway. The analysis also predicts an annual savings of 36000 USD per hostel block. A detailed Scanning Electron Microscopic analyses coupled with Spectrophotometry established the deposition pattern of sulphates and nitrates. It is expected that the results of this analysis will promote the use of green facades in this sun drenched country.

Airborne Acoustic Transmission and Terrain Topography at SAINTGITS Amphitheatre: An Analysis of Outdoor Auditory Perception and Comparison of Contour Plots

“…The campus encourages sustainable research initiatives that address one of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the United Nations, the SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities. A few of the research activities at SAINTGITS include the energy analyses of in-house built structures, quantification of the environmental benefits of Green Facades and the atmospheric cleansing capability of Green retrofits [22][23][24][25].…”

Influence of evaporative cooling by urban forests on cooling demand in cities

“…E t 56 associated with trees results in the release of water vapour from leaves into the air (Kozlowski and 57 Pallardy, 1997) that reduces the surrounding ambient air temperature through an evaporative cooling 58 process (Akbari, 2002). Trees and vegetation growing on or in close proximity to buildings also provide 59 multiple other benefits (Davies et al, 2017), including supporting biodiversity and reducing air pollutant 60 loading (Varghese et al, 2015). However, while urban forests (herein defined as "all the trees in the 61 urban realm" Davies et al, 2017) in temperate climates can produce a net cooling benefit by E t , not all 62 trees offer the same level of cooling: canopy size and leaf amount are important determinants of species 63 and cultivar differences in water use (Stratópoulos et al, 2018), trees with high leaf area and 64 transpiration rate are the most effective in reducing air temperatures (Gillner et al, 2015; Rahman et al, Fick's law of diffusion, after Rahman et al (2011), and converted to units of g/m 2 /s.…”