Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: sustainability – Page 44

Microplastics are an environmental hazard found nearly everywhere on Earth, released by the breakdown of tires, clothing, and plastic packaging. Another significant source of microplastics is tiny beads that are added to some cleansers, cosmetics, and other beauty products.

In an effort to cut off some of these microplastics at their source, MIT researchers have developed a class of biodegradable materials that could replace the plastic beads now used in beauty products. These polymers break down into harmless sugars and amino acids.

MIT researchers developed biodegradable materials that could replace the plastic microbeads now used in beauty products. The materials could also be used to encapsulate nutrients for food fortification.

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It was 1,229 CE in the monastery of St Sabas, near Jerusalem, and a monk named Johannes Myronas was in need of some parchment. He had evidently been tasked with creating a copy of the Euchologion – an important book of prayer and worship directions for Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches.

The problem was, parchment was expensive and hard to come by. Recycling was the name of the game, and Johannes had just the thing: a 200-year-old manuscript filled with old math notes that nobody was all that interested in anymore. Compared with the Holy Word, there was no contest: he pulled it apart, scraped the old text off, and used the pages for the new book – a technique known as palimpsesting.

You probably know where this is going. In creating his Euchologion, Johannes had – presumably unwittingly – destroyed one of the most valuable relics of Archimedes’s work. Not just some notebook or single treatise, even: the manuscript now known as “Codex C” contained multiple works from the ancient polymath, some of which now exist nowhere else in the world.

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In the fast-paced world of electric vehicles (EVs), a major breakthrough in battery technology is set to significantly enhance energy storage capacity. This development arrives at a crucial moment, as the EV industry is experiencing rapid growth, making it an ideal time for such a transformative advancement.

Researchers at Pohang University of Science & Technology (POSTECH) have introduced a revolutionary technique that can amplify the energy storage capacity of batteries by an astonishing tenfold. This leap forward not only propels battery technology to new heights but also has the potential to reshape the entire landscape of electric vehicles.

The key to understanding battery function lies in the anode, the component responsible for storing power during charging and then releasing it when the battery is in use. In most modern lithium batteries, graphite is the predominant material used for anodes.

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The larger challenge for hydrogen is sourcing it from green suppliers. Electrolyzers are used to harvest green hydrogen by splitting water into its component atoms. For the hydrogen to be green it has to either come from natural-occurring sources which are rare or from producing it using renewable energy generated by hydro, solar, onshore, and offshore wind turbines. Building an electrolyzer infrastructure would be key to creating hydrogen-powered vehicles for long-distance travel with quick refuelling turnarounds. The trucking industry is likely the best candidate for the use of this fuel and technology.

Making ICE-Powered Vehicles More Efficient.

About 99% of global transportation today runs on ICE with 95% of the energy coming from liquid fuels made from petroleum. Experts at Yanmar Replacements Parts, a diesel engine aftermarket supplier, state that, “while hydrogen-powered and electric vehicles will be on the rise, ICEs will continue to remain the norm and will be for the foreseeable future.” That’s why companies are reluctant to abandon ICE to make the technology more compatible to lower carbon emissions. By choosing different materials during manufacturing, automotive companies believe that production emissions can be abated by 66%.

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The world’s first urban wind turbine designed by AI has been unveiled in the UK.

Called the Birmingham Blade, the turbine is jointly developed by AI design specialists EvoPhase and precision metal fabricators KwikFab. The turbine is also tailored to the unique wind conditions of a specific geographic area.

EvoPhase claimed that it used its AI-driven design process to generate and test designs for their efficiency at wind speeds found in Birmingham, which, at 3.6 meters/second are substantially lower than the 10 meters/second rating for most turbines.

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An international team of scientists using observations from NASA-German satellites found evidence that Earth’s total amount of freshwater dropped abruptly starting in May 2014 and has remained low ever since. Reporting in Surveys in Geophysics, the researchers suggested the shift could indicate Earth’s continents have entered a persistently drier phase.

From 2015 through 2023, satellite measurements showed that the average amount of freshwater stored on land—that includes liquid surface water like lakes and rivers, plus water in aquifers underground—was 290 cubic miles (1,200 cubic km) lower than the average levels from 2002 through 2014, said Matthew Rodell, one of the study authors and a hydrologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “That’s two and a half times the volume of Lake Erie lost.”

During times of drought, along with the modern expansion of irrigated agriculture, farms and cities must rely more heavily on groundwater, which can lead to a cycle of declining underground water supplies: freshwater supplies become depleted, rain and snow fail to replenish them, and more groundwater is pumped.

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Envision a settlement where the sunlight that beams across Australia buoy on its vast outback powers millions of homes and industries across Southeast Asia. This is how the Australia-Asia PowerLink (AAPowerLink) is being realized: the longest sub-sea cable in the world, linking northern Australia to Singapore, presently is one of the all-time break-through renewable energy developments. By virtue of this mammoth solar farm with its advanced energy transmission technology, this ambitious vision will shape the future energy systems around the world while addressing some critical climate issues.

Taking enormous advantage from its plentiful sunlight, northern Australia houses the world’s biggest Solar Precinct in its Northern Territory gathering between 17–20 GW peak electricity, a size surpassing that of Australia’s largest coal-fired power station.

The project incorporates advanced storage of 36–42 GWh, supplying 800 MW to Darwin and 1.75 GW to Singapore. In addition to reducing emissions and electricity prices for the Darwin region, it creates a renewable energy export marketplace for the region and demonstrates the use of the solar-rich area to meet 15 percent of Singapore’s electricity demand.

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Batteries made from waste and methane offer lower CO2 emissions than current technologies.

It’s also being claimed that the technology has the potential to improve fast-charging speed by up to 50%, making EV ownership even more convenient. Lithium-sulfur batteries are expected to cost less than half the price per kWh of current lithium-ion batteries, according to Stellantis.

The batteries will be produced using waste materials and methane, with significantly lower CO2 emissions than any existing battery technology. Zeta Energy battery technology is intended to be manufacturable within existing gigafactory technology and would leverage a short, entirely domestic supply chain in Europe or North America, according to a press release.

Ned Curic, Stellantis’s Chief Engineering and Technology Officer, stated that the collaboration with Zeta Energy is another step in helping advance the company’s electrification strategy as they work to deliver clean, safe, and affordable vehicles.

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