Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: sustainability

Water recycling, reuse could dramatically slash cities’ need for fresh water resources, research shows

Using Houston as a model, researchers at Rice’s Brown School of Engineering have developed a plan that could reduce the need for surface water (from rivers, reservoirs or wells) by 28% by recycling wastewater to make it drinkable once again.

While the cost of energy needed for future advanced purification systems would be significant, they say the savings realized by supplementing fresh water shipped from a distance with the “direct potable reuse” of municipal wastewater would more than make up for the expense.

And the water would be better to boot.

A New Bionic Eye Could Give Robots and the Blind 20/20 Vision

Good news.

In a paper published last week in Nature, though, researchers from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology devised a way to build photosensors directly into a hemispherical artificial retina. This enabled them to create a device that can mimic the wide field of view, responsiveness, and resolution of the human eye.

“The structural mimicry of Gu and colleagues’ artificial eye is certainly impressive, but what makes it truly stand out from previously reported devices is that many of its sensory capabilities compare favorably with those of its natural counterpart,” writes Hongrui Jiang, an engineer at the University of Wisconsin Madison, in a perspective in Nature.

Key to the breakthrough was an ingenious way of implanting photosensors into a dome-shaped artificial retina. The team created a hemisphere of aluminum oxide peppered with densely-packed nanoscale pores. They then used vapor deposition to grow nanowires inside these pores made from perovskite, a type of photosensitive compound used in solar cells.

Membrane nanopore transport gets picky

Trying to determine how negatively charged ions squeeze through a carbon nanotube 20,000 times smaller than a human hair is no easy feat.

Not only did Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists do that but they found that those ions are unexpectedly picky depending on the (a negatively charged ion). The research appears in ACS Nano.

Inner pores of carbon nanotubes combine extremely fast water transport and ion selectivity that could potentially be useful for high-performance water desalination and separation applications. Determining which anions are permeable to the nanotube pore can be critical to many separation processes, including desalination, which turns seawater into fresh water by removing the salt ions.

Implantable biosensor that operates without batteries

Researchers from the University of Surrey have revealed their new biodegradable motion sensor—paving the way for implanted nanotechnology that could help future sports professionals better monitor their movements to aid rapid improvements, or help caregivers remotely monitor people living with dementia.

Solar Technology Breakthrough: World Record Quantum Dot Solar Cell Efficiency

The development of next-generation solar power technology that has potential to be used as a flexible ‘skin’ over hard surfaces has moved a step closer, thanks to a significant breakthrough at The University of Queensland.

UQ researchers set a world record for the conversion of solar energy to electricity via the use of tiny nanoparticles called ‘quantum dots’, which pass electrons between one another and generate electrical current when exposed to solar energy in a solar cell device.

The development represents a significant step towards making the technology commercially-viable and supporting global renewable energy targets.

Next-generation perovskite solar cells pass strict international tests

Australian scientists have for the first time produced a new generation of experimental solar energy cells that pass strict International Electrotechnical Commission testing standards for heat and humidity.

The research findings, an important step towards commercial viability of perovskite solar , are published today in the journal Science.

Solar systems are now widespread in both industry and domestic housing. Most current systems rely on silicon to convert sunlight into useful energy.

Flodesign’s Jet Engine-Inspired Wind Turbine Could Revolutionize Wind Power Technology

https://youtube.com/watch?v=WB5CawKfE2M

We read about different innovations in clean technology almost on a daily basis. A small Massachusetts-based start-up, FloDesign Wind Turbine, has created a wind turbine design based on jet engine technology. This revolutionary wind turbine can generate much more electricity at half the cost than today’s traditional wind turbines. It has also won two clean-energy competitions for its amazing innovation.

A traditional wind turbine can extract just 50% of the available wind energy in the given area it occupies. However, the Wind Jet by FloDesign uses blades covered in shrouds to direct the air through the turbine blades. This results in increased flow of air. As the airflow through the blades increases, the higher the speed of the turbines and ultimately the more power that is generated. The energy generated by this new wind turbine matches that of a traditional turbine with blades that are half the size.

FloDesign boasts that its turbines are 3–4 times more efficient than traditional open-fan turbines and they can be placed much closer together than conventional wind turbines while aligning themselves with the wind like a kite on a string. Not only that, FloDesign wind turbines require much smaller blades which occupy less space, are much easier to manufacture, and easier to ship.