Green Friendly – Page 10

Agriculture, Big Problems, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

Radical desalination approach may disrupt the water industry

May 9, 2019

Illustration describing fresh water production from hypersaline brines by temperature swing solvent extraction.

Hypersaline brines—water that contains high concentrations of dissolved salts and whose saline levels are higher than ocean water—are a growing environmental concern around the world. Very challenging and costly to treat, they result from water produced during oil and gas production, inland desalination concentrate, landfill leachate (a major problem for municipal solid waste landfills), flue gas desulfurization wastewater from fossil-fuel power plants, and effluent from industrial processes.

If hypersaline brines are improperly managed, they can pollute both surface and groundwater resources. But if there were a simple, inexpensive way to desalinate the brines, vast quantities of water would be available for all kinds of uses, from agriculture to industrial applications, and possibly even for human consumption.

Continue reading… “Radical desalination approach may disrupt the water industry”

Batteries, Battery, Energy, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News, Solar Power

Battery storage is the fastest-growing industry sector on the planet (which could save the planet)

May 3, 2019

Billions of dollars are being invested worldwide in the developing battery boom, involving research into storage techniques to use the growing surpluses of cheap renewable energy now becoming available. Recent developments in batteries are set to sweep aside the old arguments about renewables being intermittent, dismissing any need to continue building nuclear power plants and burning fossil fuels to act as a back-up when the wind does not blow, or the sun does not shine.

Batteries as large as the average family house and controlled by digital technology are being positioned across electricity networks. They are being charged when electricity is in surplus and therefore cheap, and the power they store is resold to the grid at a higher price during peak periods.

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Great New Product, Green Friendly, Inventions, Science & Technology News

Just 10% of U.S. plastic gets recycled. A new kind of plastic could change that

April 28, 2019

Most plastics have a chemical history that makes starting a new life a challenge. The dyes and flame retardants that make them perfect for say, a couch cushion or a bottle of detergent, make them tough to transform into a desirable end product—one of the reasons just 10% of plastic in the United States gets recycled. Now, researchers have created a plastic with a special chemical bond that helps it separate out from those additives, turning it back into a pure, valuable product that can be reused again and again.

To make the new material, researchers tweaked a type of vitrimer, a glasslike plastic developed in 2011, by adding molecules that change the chemical bonds holding it together. These new bonds, called dynamic covalent diketoenamine bonds, require less energy to break than those in traditional plastics.

Continue reading… “Just 10% of U.S. plastic gets recycled. A new kind of plastic could change that”

Electric Vehicles, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News, Transportation

Sweden is building a road that recharges electric buses that drive over it

April 26, 2019

One of the biggest hassles for electric car owners is having to charge them. To get around the problem of needing to provide myriad electric charging stations, the Swedish transport administration is exploring the idea of having special roads which charge vehicles’ batteries as they drive over them.

To showcase the concept, the Smart Road Gotland consortium will be building an initial 1 mile stretch of road between the town of Visby and the airport on Gotland Island in Sweden. The road will be used to charge an electric truck and bus, using technology developed by the company Electreon, which will be carrying out construction. The majority of the $12.5 million project is funded by the Swedish government.

Continue reading… “Sweden is building a road that recharges electric buses that drive over it”

Energy, government, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

Germany to close all 84 of its coal-fired power plants, will rely primarily on renewable energy

April 26, 2019

Germany to close all 84 of its coal-fired power plants, will rely primarily on renewable energy

Germany, one of the world’s biggest consumers of coal, will shut down all 84 of its coal-fired power plants over the next 19 years to meet its international commitments in the fight against climate change, a government commission said Saturday.

The announcement marked a significant shift for Europe’s largest country — a nation that had long been a leader on cutting CO2 emissions before turning into a laggard in recent years and badly missing its reduction targets. Coal plants account for 40% of Germany’s electricity, itself a reduction from recent years when coal dominated power production.

“This is an historic accomplishment,” said Ronald Pofalla, chairman of the 28-member government commission, at a news conference in Berlin following a marathon 21-hour negotiating session that concluded at 6 a.m. Saturday. The breakthrough ended seven months of wrangling. “It was anything but a sure thing. But we did it,” Pofalla said. “There won’t be any more coal-burning plants in Germany by 2038.”

Continue reading… “Germany to close all 84 of its coal-fired power plants, will rely primarily on renewable energy”

Energy, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News, Solar Power

‘Coal is on the way out’: study finds fossil fuel now pricier than solar or wind

April 2, 2019

Around 75% of coal production is more expensive than renewables, with industry out-competed on cost by 2025

‘We’ve seen we are at the ‘coal crossover’ point in many parts of the country.’

Around three-quarters of US coal production is now more expensive than solar and wind energy in providing electricity to American households, according to a new study.

“Even without major policy shift we will continue to see coal retire pretty rapidly,” said Mike O’Boyle, the co-author of the report for Energy Innovation, a renewables analysis firm. “Our analysis shows that we can move a lot faster to replace coal with wind and solar. The fact that so much coal could be retired right now shows we are off the pace.”

The study’s authors used public financial filings and data from the Energy Information Agency (EIA) to work out the cost of energy from coal plants compared with wind and solar options within a 35-mile radius. They found that 211 gigawatts of current US coal capacity, 74% of the coal fleet, is providing electricity that’s more expensive than wind or solar.

Continue reading… “‘Coal is on the way out’: study finds fossil fuel now pricier than solar or wind”

Big Problems, Green Friendly, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Becoming stardust : The future cemetery

April 2, 2019

Imagine strolling through a cemetery at night, the wooded path softly illuminated by a canopy of glowing pods filled with human remains suspended overhead and transforming decomposition into electricity until the body is finally gone. The cycle of life complete, the light then dims to dark, the pod taken down and replaced by a bright new body shining down upon the path from its star-like grave.

While this may sound like the stuff of science fiction, in reality it’s a reimagined cemetery of the future called the Sylvan Constellation, a system where microbial fuel cells facilitate the body’s decomposition and transform it into light. More than a ghostly fantasy, this project from DeathLAB — a Columbia University–based interdisciplinary research and design initiative rethinking how we live with death in the metropolis — is a potential solution to one of the biggest problems cities are facing: We’re running out of space to store the dead, and the way we do it now is environmentally disastrous.

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Breakthrough Thinking, Energy, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

Scientists just found a new way to make fuel from seawater

March 27, 2019

Could this help reignite hydrogen as a renewable fuel?

Though hydrogen fuel eliminates tailpipe pollution, most hydrogen fuel is made from natural gas, a fossil fuel. It is possible to make it from a cleaner source: water. With electrodes in water, electricity can split the hydrogen from oxygen, giving you pure hydrogen. But until now, the processes have relied on purified freshwater, which is expensive. For the use of hydrogen fuel to scale up, we need a different source, one that’s cheaper and doesn’t use up water we could be drinking instead.

Now new research from Stanford scientists demonstrates a new method for making hydrogen fuel directly from ocean water. “Right now, the need for hydrogen is still relatively limited because the so-called hydrogen economy hasn’t taken off yet, although it’s in its early growing stage,” says Hongjie Dai, a chemistry professor at Stanford and coauthor of a new paper about the research. “You could imagine there would be more demand for hydrogen.”

Continue reading… “Scientists just found a new way to make fuel from seawater”

Ecological Products, Green Friendly, Inventions, Science & Technology News

Solar-powered moisture harvester collects and cleans water from air

March 22, 2019

Access to clean water remains one of the biggest challenges facing humankind. A breakthrough by engineers at The University of Texas at Austin may offer a new solution through solar-powered technology that absorbs moisture from the air and returns it as clean, usable water.

The breakthrough, described in a recent issue of the journal Advanced Materials, could be used in disaster situations, water crises or poverty-stricken areas and developing countries. The technology relies on hydrogels, gel-polymer hybrid materials designed to be “super sponges” that can retain large amounts of water.

A research team led by Guihua Yu in UT Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering combined hydrogels that are both highly water absorbent and can release water upon heating. This unique combination has been successfully proved to work in humid and dry weather conditions and is crucial to enabling the production of clean, safe drinking water from the air.

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Breakthrough Thinking, Energy, Engineering, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

Refrigerants not required: Flexible metal cooling prototype demonstrates extreme efficiency

March 20, 2019

The prototype heating/cooling system uses the remarkable properties of shape-memory nitinol metals for environmentally friendly cooling and heating

A German research team has prototyped an extraordinary heating/cooling system that stresses and unloads nickel-titanium “muscle wires” to create heated and cooled air at twice the efficiency of a heat pump or three times the efficiency of an air conditioner. Crucially, the device also uses no refrigerant gases, meaning it’s a much more environmentally friendly way to heat or cool a space.

The device is based on a peculiar property of certain shape-memory metal alloys that spring back into shape after being deformed. In some cases – particularly with nickel-titanium, also known as nitinol – these metals absorb significant amounts of heat when they’re bent out of shape, and then release that heat when they’re allowed to revert to their normal shape. The difference between the loaded wire and the released wire can be as much as 20° C (36° F).

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Food, Great New Product, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

OGarden Smart grows fresh veggies year-round in your house

March 5, 2019

This curious rotating garden boasts automatic watering and space for up to 90 plants at any given time.

If you like the idea of growing your own vegetables indoors all year round, then you should check out the new and improved OGarden Smart. It’s a rotating Ferris wheel of sorts that can hold up to 60 plants at various stages of growth. The wheel turns steadily, dipping the roots into water at the bottom and exposing the plants steadily to a 120 watt LED in the center.

Seedlings are started in handy seed cups filled with organic soil and fertilizer, 30 of which can fit into the incubator located below the rotating upper part. These are also automatically watered, and all you have to do is ensure the water reservoir stays full. (It can go up to 10 days and a warning will pop up if you forget.)

Once they sprout, the cups go into the wheel and grow until they’re ready to be harvested. The entire process takes 30-40 days, after which the seed cups and plant roots can be composted, and the gap in the wheel filled with a new seedling.

Continue reading… “OGarden Smart grows fresh veggies year-round in your house”

Artificial Intelligence, Energy, Google, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

Google’s DeepMind can predict wind patterns a day in advance

March 3, 2019

DeepMind knows which way the wind blows

Wind power has become increasingly popular, but its success is limited by the fact that wind comes and goes as it pleases, making it hard for power grids to count on the renewable energy and less likely to fully embrace it. While we can’t control the wind, Google has an idea for the next best thing: using machine learning to predict it.

Google and DeepMind have started testing machine learning on Google’s own wind turbines, which are part of the company’s renewable energy projects. Beginning last year, they fed weather forecasts and existing turbine data into DeepMind’s machine learning platform, which churned out wind power predictions 36 hours ahead of actual power generation. Google could then make supply commitments to power grids a full day before delivery. That predictability makes it easier and more appealing for energy grids to depend on wind power, and as a result, it boosted the value of Google’s wind energy by roughly 20 percent.

Continue reading… “Google’s DeepMind can predict wind patterns a day in advance”