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Category: sustainability – Page 106

Revolutionizing Renewable Energy: Innovative Salt Battery Efficiently Harvests Osmotic Power

A new semipermeable membrane doubles the osmotic energy output in estuaries, showing potential for sustainable power generation.

Estuaries — where freshwater rivers meet the salty sea — are great locations for birdwatching and kayaking. In these areas, waters containing different salt concentrations mix and may be sources of sustainable, “blue” osmotic energy. In the journal ACS Energy Letters, researchers report creating a semipermeable membrane that harvests osmotic energy from salt gradients and converts it to electricity.

The new design had an output power density more than two times higher than commercial membranes in lab demonstrations.

MIT’s new 3D printer can create its own parameters so that users don’t have to

A team of scientists have developed a new FDM 3D printer that can automatically create parameters for unknown materials.

Material presets for mass-manufactured polymers can be found on most 3D printers. However, the 3D printing parameters for sustainable and recycled materials need to be manually adjusted. This trial and error process can be frustrating and time-consuming, limiting the adoption of environmentally friendly filaments.

Experts from MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA), the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and Greece’s National Center for Scientific Research (Demokritos) are working to change this.

Scientists discover hidden oasis of life underneath world’s driest desert

POTSDAM, Germany — One of the most lifeless places on Earth is actually hiding an underground biosphere teeming with microscopic life! Researchers have unearthed this amazing oasis under Chile’s Atacama Desert. The findings not only change our view of life on Earth, but they might prove that there is still life under the soil of dead alien worlds like Mars!

Despite being renowned as the driest desert on Earth, with some regions going decades or even centuries without a drop of rain, researchers from Germany discovered hardy communities of microorganisms that have managed to carve out habitats deep below the desert floor. Down here, totally isolated from the surface world, microscopic life finds a way to eke out an existence against all odds.

Study author Dirk Wagner and the team from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences explain that they detected signs of potentially viable microbial ecosystems as far as 13 feet underground. This remarkable discovery is upending our understanding of desert biodiversity, demonstrating that life can persist in even the most extreme subterranean environments on Earth.

Meet Apollo, the real-life robot who wants to give you more free time | Hard Reset

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About the video: Will robots replace us? Apptronik, creator of the general purpose robot Apollo, has crafted a product that would only take the undesirable tasks away from humans.

Up next, Could this tiny magnetic sponge solve our ocean contamination crisis? ► • Scientists invented an oil spill mag…

Forget everything that sci-fi movies told you about robots. Introducing: Adaptable, general purpose robots who can work side-by-side with us on almost any task and in any environment. In other words, friend, not foe.

Named Apollo, this mobile robot is being built by Apptronik to capably complete thousands of tasks, and step into emergency situations that may be too dangerous for humans.

So while robots likely won’t be replacing you, Apollo has been crafted to help make your life easier, and give you more time to focus on what’s really important.

Continue reading “Meet Apollo, the real-life robot who wants to give you more free time | Hard Reset” | >

City to install massive underground thermal energy storage facility: ‘The world is undergoing a huge energy transition’

Now that we can generate clean, renewable energy from the wind and sun, one of the most pressing questions facing the clean energy transition is how to effectively store that energy for future use. For one city in Finland, the answer is a giant underground cavern.

Vantaan Energia has announced that it will construct a massive underground seasonal thermal energy storage facility for the city of Vantaa, the country’s fourth-most-populous municipality. The facility will be twice the size of Madison Square Garden, New Atlas reported.

“The world is undergoing a huge energy transition,” Vantaan Energia CEO Jukka Toivonen said. “Wind and solar power have become vital technologies in the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. The biggest challenge of the energy transition so far has been the inability to store these intermittent forms of energy for later use. Unfortunately, small-scale storage solutions, such as batteries or accumulators, are not sufficient; large, industrial-scale storage solutions are needed.”