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Category: food – Page 199

Desalination Breakthrough Could Lead to Cheaper Water Filtration

AUSTIN, Texas — Producing clean water at a lower cost could be on the horizon after researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and Penn State solved a complex problem that had baffled scientists for decades, until now.

Desalination membranes remove salt and other chemicals from water, a process critical to the health of society, cleaning billions of gallons of water for agriculture, energy production and drinking. The idea seems simple — push salty water through and clean water comes out the other side — but it contains complex intricacies that scientists are still trying to understand.

The research team, in partnership with DuPont Water Solutions, solved an important aspect of this mystery, opening the door to reduce costs of clean water production. The researchers determined desalination membranes are inconsistent in density and mass distribution, which can hold back their performance. Uniform density at the nanoscale is the key to increasing how much clean water these membranes can create.

Controlling the nanoscale structure of membranes is key for clean water, researchers find

A desalination membrane acts as a filter for salty water: push the water through the membrane, get clean water suitable for agriculture, energy production and even drinking. The process seems simple enough, but it contains complex intricacies that have baffled scientists for decades—until now.

Researchers from Penn State, The University of Texas at Austin, Iowa State University, Dow Chemical Company and DuPont Water Solutions published a key finding in understanding how membranes actually filter minerals from water, online today (Dec. 31) in Science. The article will be featured on the print edition’s cover, to be issued tomorrow (Jan. 1).

“Despite their use for many years, there is much we don’t know about how water filtration membranes work,” said Enrique Gomez, professor of chemical engineering and materials science and engineering at Penn State, who led the research. “We found that how you control the density distribution of the membrane itself at the nanoscale is really important for water-production performance.”

China Floats Covid-19 Theories That Point to Foreign Origins, Frozen Food

HONG KONG—China is aggressively advancing alternative theories about the source of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, muddying the waters as the World Health Organization prepares to launch a long-awaited investigation into the origins of the pandemic. In recent weeks, Chinese state media, often suggesting the virus came from outside China, have seized on a series of recent studies that show it was spreading outside the country earlier than first assumed. Government officials have also pushed the theory that the virus could have hitched a ride into the central Chinese city of Wuhan on frozen-food imports. After outbreaks in multiple Chinese cities in recent months including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and elsewhere, authorities pointed to frozen-food packaging as the potential origin. https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-pushes-alternative-theori…1607445463

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Solar panels made from food waste win inaugural James Dyson Sustainability Award

Engineering student Carvey Ehren Maigue has been named the James Dyson Awards first-ever global sustainability winner for his AuReus system, in which waste crops are turned into cladding that can generate clean energy from ultraviolet light.

Unlike traditional solar panels, which only work in clear conditions and must face the sun directly because they rely on visible light, the translucent AuReus material is able to harvest power from invisible UV rays that pass through clouds.

As a result, it is able to produce energy close to 50 per cent of the time according to preliminary testing, compared to 15 to 22 per cent in standard solar panels.

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins harvests radishes grown in space

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins harvested fresh radishes grown in space, opening new doors for producing food in microgravity to sustain future longer-term missions to the moon and Mars.

The radishes were grown in the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) aboard the International Space Station. NASA shared a time-lapse video of the radishes as they grew inside the APH over the course of 27 days.

World’s first robotic kitchen goes on sale

The world’s first robotic kitchen is officially launched this month. The Moley Kitchen, created by British technology company, Moley Robotics, is a fully automated unit that prepares freshly cooked meals at the touch of a button. It consists of cabinets, robotic arms, a motion capture system, a connected graphical user interface with access to a library of recipes, and a full set of kitchen appliances and equipment, optimised for both robot and human use.

The Moley Kitchen – first revealed publicly in April 2015 – is the product of six years of research and development by an international team of 100 engineers, product and luxury interior designers and three award-winning chefs.

At the heart of this new technology are two robotic arms featuring fully articulated ‘hands’, developed in collaboration with world-leading German robotics company SCHUNK. Following 11 exhaustive development cycles, they can now reliably reproduce the movements of human hands. This means the robot can retrieve ingredients from the smart fridge, adjust hob temperature, use the sink to fill pans and pour, mix and plate up just as a human cook would. The robot even cleans up after itself.

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