Discovering fresh approaches to tackling pollution with fascinating experiments

These interesting experiments Green Promotion Institute A public research center in Venice, Italy that explores new ways to restore the environment and generate energy. The lab's unusual combination of scientists, engineers, and psychologists create prototypes that harness natural organisms to do useful work, often taking on a sculptural aspect as a side effect that fascinates the resident artist.

“Despite being the object of science, it has beauty,” says photographer Luigi Avantaggiato. He spent time cataloging a device that uses bacteria called Purple-B (pictured above). Rhodopsdomonas palustris, commonly found in Venice's lagoons, converts human waste into useful hydrogen. The experiment is being funded by the European Space Agency because it could provide a way to process astronaut waste in orbit to create usable fuel, but could also be used on Earth's surface. There is a possibility that it can be done.

The bright green contents of several tanks in the lab (pictured above) are known as liquid forests, which in this project are home to tiny algae such as: chlorella, to capture the carbon dioxide that is warming the planet. Each tank contains 250 liters and can accommodate approximately 1 billion algae per cubic centimeter.

Another shot (pictured above) shows the geodesic dome, where environmental engineers at a startup called 9-Tech are working on a new way to recover silicon from used solar panels.

The entire lab site was created by veritashandles waste and water supplies for Venice and Treviso's approximately 1 million residents and 50 million tourists.