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Category: sustainability – Page 11

UK lab promises air-con revolution without polluting gases

The soft, waxy “solid refrigerant” being investigated in a UK laboratory may not look very exciting, but its unusual properties promise an air-conditioning revolution that could eliminate the need for greenhouse gases.

The substance’s temperature can vary by more than 50 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit) under pressure, and unlike the gases currently used in appliances solid refrigerants, it does not leak.

“They don’t contribute to , but also they are potentially more energy efficient,” Xavier Moya, a professor of materials physics at the University of Cambridge, told AFP.

Scientists hail new ‘industrially viable technology’ that can squeeze hydrogen from seawater

Researchers from the University of Sharjah claim to have developed a novel technology capable of producing clean hydrogen fuel directly from seawater, and at an industrial scale.

In a study published in the journal Small, the researchers report that they extracted without the need to remove the mineral salts dissolved in seawater or add any chemicals.

According to the authors, the technology enables hydrogen extraction from seawater without relying on , which require massive investments totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.

To save nature, AI needs our help

AI is a computing tool. It can process and interrogate huge amounts of data, expand human creativity, generate new insights faster and help guide important decisions. It’s trained on human expertise, and in conservation that’s informed by interactions with local communities or governments—people whose needs must be taken into account in the solutions. How do we ensure this happens?

Last year, Reynolds joined 26 other conservation scientists and AI experts in an “Horizon Scan”—an approach pioneered by Professor Bill Sutherland in the Department of Zoology—to think about the ways AI could revolutionize the success of global biodiversity conservation. The international panel agreed on the top 21 ideas, chosen from a longlist of 104, which are published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

Some of the ideas extrapolate from AI tools many of us are familiar with, like phone apps that identify plants from photos, or birds from sound recordings. Being able to identify all the species in an ecosystem in real time, over long timescales, would enable a huge advance in understanding ecosystems and species distributions.

New Research Challenges 160-Year-Old Long-Standing Origin of Life Theory

A discovery by scientists at Scripps Research and the Georgia Institute of Technology could shed light on the evolution of life on Earth and pave the way for more efficient biofuel production. Early Earth was a volatile and inhospitable place, marked by extreme temperatures, widespread volcanic a

Improving the performance of Cu₂SrSnS₄ solar cells with inorganic hole transport layers

Thin film solar cells such as CdTe and CIGSe have gained significant attention due to their low production cost and excellent power conversion efficiencies (PCE). Nevertheless, toxicity and scarcity of constituent elements restrict their widespread usage.

Recently, Cu2SrSnS4 semiconductor has emerged as a potential substitute due to its remarkable absorber characteristics, including non-toxicity, Earth abundance, tunable bandgap, etc. But still, it’s in the emerging stage with a low PCE of 0.6%, revealing that it requires remarkable enhancement to compete with traditional solar cells.

The large open circuit voltage (VOC) loss constricts its performance, which primarily originates from improper band alignment with the transport layers. Discovering the ideal device configuration is the best solution to enhance its PCE.

Urine-powered electrolysis systems offer energy-efficient green hydrogen production

Researchers have developed two unique energy-efficient and cost-effective systems that use urea found in urine and wastewater to generate hydrogen.

The unique systems reveal pathways to economically generate “green” hydrogen, a sustainable and renewable energy source, and the potential to remediate nitrogenous waste in aquatic environments.

Typically, we generate hydrogen through the electrolysis of water where water is split into oxygen and hydrogen. It is a promising technology to help solve the global energy crisis, but the process is energy intensive, which renders it cost-prohibitive when compared to extracting hydrogen from fossil fuels (gray hydrogen), itself an undesirable process because of the it generates.

Scientists develop next-gen energy storage technologies that enable high power and capacity simultaneously

A research team has developed a high-performance supercapacitor that is expected to become the next generation of energy storage devices. With details published in the journal Composites Part B: Engineering, the technology developed by the researchers overcomes the limitations of existing supercapacitors by utilizing an innovative fiber structure composed of single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and the conductive polymer polyaniline (PANI).

Compared to conventional batteries, supercapacitors offer faster charging and higher power density, with less degradation over tens of thousands of charge and discharge cycles. However, their relatively low energy density limits their use over long periods of time, which has limited their use in practical applications such as and drones.

Researchers led by Dr. Bon-Cheol Ku and Dr. Seo Gyun Kim of the Carbon Composite Materials Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and Professor Yuanzhe Piao of Seoul National University (SNU), uniformly chemically bonded single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs), which are highly conductive, with polyaniline (PANI), which is processable and inexpensive, at the nanoscale.

Bacterium produces ‘organic dishwashing liquid’ to degrade oil

The marine bacterium Alcanivorax borkumensis feeds on oil, multiplying rapidly in the wake of oil spills, and thereby accelerating the elimination of pollution, in many cases. It does this by producing an “organic dishwashing liquid” which it uses to attach itself to oil droplets.

Researchers from the University of Bonn, RWTH Aachen University, Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf and research center Forschungszentrum Julich have now discovered the mechanism by which this organic liquid is synthesized.

Published in Nature Chemical Biology, the research findings could allow the breeding of more efficient strains of oil-degrading bacteria.

Natural enzyme capable of cleaving cellulose could transform biofuel production

The deconstruction of cellulose is essential for the conversion of biomass into fuels and chemicals. But cellulose, the most abundant renewable polymer on the planet, is extremely recalcitrant to biological depolymerization. Although composed entirely of glucose units, its crystalline microfibrillar structure and association with lignin and hemicelluloses in plant cell walls make it highly resistant to degradation.

As a result, its degradation in nature is slow and requires complex enzymatic systems. The deconstruction of cellulose, which could, among other things, significantly increase the production of ethanol from sugarcane, has been a major technological challenge for decades.

Researchers from the Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM), in partnership with colleagues from other institutions in Brazil and abroad, have just obtained an enzyme that could revolutionize the process of deconstructing cellulose, allowing, among other technological applications, the large-scale production of so-called second-generation ethanol, derived from agro-industrial waste such as sugarcane bagasse and corn straw. The study was published in the journal Nature.