Its true that earthships really only work in the desert. But I think that there are analogous processes that work at the city scale that are much more adaptable. Also I think the general ethos of feeding the waste products or side effects from one process into the inputs of another is applicable to a wide range of things. For instance:
Earth ships use thermal mass to even out the desert fluctuations between hot day and cold night, keeping the house at a comfortable medium temperature. Because of the square cube law if you build your thermal mass storage at the city scale it is actually possible to store thermal energy across summer / winter fluctuations without much loss. Such thermal stores can be connected to buildings through a city thermal grid. A system like this is already being built already being built in Vantaa Finland, and while to my knowledge this hasn’t been done before I see no reason you couldn’t have a cold store on the other side of the city for cooling in the summer. Of course these systems aren’t totally passive like the Earth ship, but they have coefficient of performance of around 30 (that is for every 1 kWh of electricity you spend pumping glycol solution through pipes you transfer 30 kWh of thermal energy between seasons). Compare that to the CoP of 3 to 6 for heat pumps.
An earth ship uses a greenhouse to enhance its solar thermal capture and grow food for its inhabitants at the same time. In certain places like Spain, China, and the Netherlands they are beginning to use greenhouses for farming on a large scale, enclosing square miles of land within an envelope. Experiments have been done with using seasonal thermal energy storage to heat greenhouses, so I think you could potentially tie such greenhouses into a thermal grid as described above. If they were double walled and soap bubble insulated you might be able to keep them warm all year around or even have them act as net positive solar thermal collectors.
An earthship uses gray water to water the plants in its greenhouse. There is a sewage treatment process called supercritical water oxidation that produces, as its outputs, mineral water, CO2, and heat. The process destroys parasites, bacteria and viruses, drug metabolites, and even “forever chemicals”, as its akin to incineration. The mineral water doesn’t contain nitrates, but it does have dissolved phosphorus and potassium compounds, making it a sort of fertilizer. CO2 can be added to greenhouses to increase plant’s photosynthetic efficiency and raise their yield. Finally, the heat can of course be used to help heat the greenhouse.
The earth ship gathers water from its roof. This can be done in an urban context too. Additional, in the summer the thermal exchangers that pull heat from the aforementioned greenhouses would have water condense on them (from the evapotranspiration of the plants that were watered with mineral water). In the winter I think there would instead be condensation on the greenhouse roof. In either case the water could be captured and reused for drinking.
Of course to make things like the thermal grid practicable you’d want to have a fairly dense urban area (to decrease the length of piping needed to serve each person).
Its true that earthships really only work in the desert. But I think that there are analogous processes that work at the city scale that are much more adaptable. Also I think the general ethos of feeding the waste products or side effects from one process into the inputs of another is applicable to a wide range of things. For instance:
Earth ships use thermal mass to even out the desert fluctuations between hot day and cold night, keeping the house at a comfortable medium temperature. Because of the square cube law if you build your thermal mass storage at the city scale it is actually possible to store thermal energy across summer / winter fluctuations without much loss. Such thermal stores can be connected to buildings through a city thermal grid. A system like this is already being built already being built in Vantaa Finland, and while to my knowledge this hasn’t been done before I see no reason you couldn’t have a cold store on the other side of the city for cooling in the summer. Of course these systems aren’t totally passive like the Earth ship, but they have coefficient of performance of around 30 (that is for every 1 kWh of electricity you spend pumping glycol solution through pipes you transfer 30 kWh of thermal energy between seasons). Compare that to the CoP of 3 to 6 for heat pumps.
An earth ship uses a greenhouse to enhance its solar thermal capture and grow food for its inhabitants at the same time. In certain places like Spain, China, and the Netherlands they are beginning to use greenhouses for farming on a large scale, enclosing square miles of land within an envelope. Experiments have been done with using seasonal thermal energy storage to heat greenhouses, so I think you could potentially tie such greenhouses into a thermal grid as described above. If they were double walled and soap bubble insulated you might be able to keep them warm all year around or even have them act as net positive solar thermal collectors.
An earthship uses gray water to water the plants in its greenhouse. There is a sewage treatment process called supercritical water oxidation that produces, as its outputs, mineral water, CO2, and heat. The process destroys parasites, bacteria and viruses, drug metabolites, and even “forever chemicals”, as its akin to incineration. The mineral water doesn’t contain nitrates, but it does have dissolved phosphorus and potassium compounds, making it a sort of fertilizer. CO2 can be added to greenhouses to increase plant’s photosynthetic efficiency and raise their yield. Finally, the heat can of course be used to help heat the greenhouse.
The earth ship gathers water from its roof. This can be done in an urban context too. Additional, in the summer the thermal exchangers that pull heat from the aforementioned greenhouses would have water condense on them (from the evapotranspiration of the plants that were watered with mineral water). In the winter I think there would instead be condensation on the greenhouse roof. In either case the water could be captured and reused for drinking.
Of course to make things like the thermal grid practicable you’d want to have a fairly dense urban area (to decrease the length of piping needed to serve each person).