When asked if Tesla is a threat to the oil and gas industry, he said he didn’t really think so. Then he paused, thought a bit, and added “Yet.”
Category: sustainability – Page 382
Safe and readily available water is important for public health, whether it is used for drinking, domestic use, food production, or recreational purposes. Despite the vast quantity of water on Earth, just 2.5% of it is freshwater, and an estimated 785 million people lack a clean source of drinking water. Desalination of seawater could be a vital technology to meet the world’s drinking water needs.
Now, Korean engineers have developed a new desalination technique that takes just minutes to make seawater drinkable. They used a new nanofiber membrane distillation process that could desalinate water with 99.99% efficiency. Engineers believe that commercializing such technology could help humankind cope with the shortage of fresh drinking water in the future.
Amongst the most challenging issues in membrane distillation is membrane wetting that causes the pollution of permeate, reduction in vapor production, and finally, reduction in the performance of the membrane. If a membrane exhibits wetting during membrane distillation operation, the membrane must be replaced.
Eviation, which has been described as the “Tesla of aircraft” for working on the first compelling long-range electric aircraft, has unveiled the production version of its Alice aircraft.
It has a shorter range than previously announced.
After Eviation unveiled the prototype of its Alice aircraft back in 2017, the company attracted a lot of attention and comparison with Tesla because the aircraft was amongst the first all-electric plane that was viable for actual commercial use.
UC Santa Cruz is investigating this method as a possible generator of solar energy that would allow for the saving of 63.5 billion gallons of water from evaporation annually, a massive windfall for a state that sometimes rations water and which regularly suffers from droughts.
If mounted above irrigation canals, the shade of solar panels would reduce evaporation by 63 billion gallons, while generating clean energy.
Physics World
A device that can generate electricity while desalinating seawater has been developed by researchers in Saudi Arabia and China, who claim that their new system is highly efficient at performing both tasks. The device uses waste heat from the solar cell for desalination, thereby cooling the solar cell. It also produces no concentrated brine as waste, cutting its potential environmental impact.
In many parts of the world, climate change and population growth are putting huge demands on freshwater supplies. In some coastal regions, desalination – removing the salt from brackish water or seawater to turn it into fresh water – is increasingly being used to meet demand. Indeed, there are now around 16000 desalination plants around the world producing about 95 million cubic metres of freshwater every day.
However, current desalination systems can be expensive and energy hungry, producing significant carbon emissions. The process can also produce highly concentrated salt water, or brine, as well as freshwater. This brine can also contain toxic chemicals introduced during the desalination process and if not disposed of properly, it can have negative environmental impacts.
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have been feuding publicly for years, but the Tesla chief recently came out in praise of the Amazon boss.
3D-printed devices made from a biodegradable paper-like material could power the Internet of Things in a more sustainable way.
The researchers were inspired by bone and cartilage when designing the new membrane.
You’ve likely heard of solar energy, but what is osmotic energy?