Epiphyte is a miniature, stand-alone, open source direct air capture machine that was designed by a small group of OpenAir members, located all over North America, in 2023. The design drew significant inspiration from an original prototype developed by a team young engineers at Octavia Carbon in Nairobi Kenya. Epiphyte is led by a team of volunteers with decades of combined professional electrical, mechanical and chemical engineering and design experience.
Whose’s involved?
This first iteration of Epiphyte will be built in Aug-Sep '23 by a Philadelphia-based team of OpenAir volunteers with work space at the University of Pennsylvania. Every 2 months, a new version of the design will be built at a new team at a different location, focusing on a specific optimization or augmentation to improve one or more aspects of the current design, or demonstrate a specific novel use case.
Why Epiphyte?
The OpenAir Collective encourages the development of open-source designs that can be built and iterated quickly by multiple teams working in distributed locations. This route encourages creativity and may lead to quicker innovations than those coming from large companies with large capital expenses and proprietary technology. In accordance with this philosophy, the first iteration of Epiphyte will be built in stages with relatively simple technology and low costs. Progress and design details will be openly available, and the location on a university campus will spur interest in involvement from students.