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Category: sustainability

New 4D-printing method creates lighter, faster-spinning wind turbine blades

A new manufacturing technique developed by Concordia researchers could make small wind turbines lighter, less expensive and easier to produce. Using a process known as 4D printing of composites, Ph.D. candidate Emad Fakhimi and Suong Van Hoa, a professor at the Concordia Center for Composites, created curved blades for vertical-axis wind turbines from flat carbon-fiber composite panels. The study is published in the journal Polymer Composites.

Vertical-axis wind turbines are increasingly used on buildings and in urban settings, but their curved blades are typically made using specialized forming processes that require complex molds. These molds add cost, manufacturing time and weight to the final product.

To address this problem, the researchers developed a new, first-of-its-kind “inverse” design procedure. Rather than starting with a particular layup—the arrangement and orientation of carbon-fiber layers—and observing the resulting shape, they began with the desired blade geometry and worked backward to determine how the layers should be arranged and oriented to produce it.

Team uses 3D printing to develop zinc-ion hybrid battery with seven times more energy

Storing solar and wind energy to meet the increasing power needs of the electrical grid calls for devices that can deliver power quickly, recharge quickly and last for decades at low cost. A new study led by UCLA has uncovered a technology that could meet all these criteria: a zinc-ion hybrid battery with a 3D-printed electrode that stores more than seven times the charge of similar hybrids.

Energy storage based on zinc instead of lithium would be cheaper and more sustainable because zinc is 100 times more abundant, easier to mine and easier to recycle.

“The future of energy storage won’t be defined by a single technology,” said co-corresponding author Maher El-Kady, an assistant researcher in UCLA College’s chemistry and biochemistry department. “At some point, we will need to look for something to complement the current options for grid-scale energy storage. What we’ve done in this study essentially gives us zinc-ion hybrid devices that can store nearly one order of magnitude higher capacity.”

Common nanostructures may explain shared photoproperties in two widespread dark materials

A newly developed framework for understanding the photoproperties of both natural organic matter and eumelanin, a natural pigment responsible for dark colors in organisms, may inspire advanced sustainable technologies, scientists say.

Although they are some of the most widespread substances on Earth, not much is known about eumelanin or natural organic matter (NOM)—a dark-colored substance formed by the decomposition of biological material. In humans, eumelanin is a vital pigment in skin and other tissues that protects cells from damage caused by ultraviolet radiation. In nature, NOM gives rivers and soils their color and affects light-driven reactions like photosynthesis.

Although these compounds have been studied individually for decades, researchers in a new study, by scrutinizing them alongside each other, have shown that eumelanin and NOM have common properties beyond their dark colors.

How giant tropical trees transport water 70 meters to stay as drought-resilient as smaller trees

The giant trees of tropical forests are important allies in the fight against climate change because of their ability to store carbon, yet they are still poorly understood by science. However, a study published in the journal Science reveals a crucial survival mechanism: These trees, which exceed 70 meters (230 feet) in height, have no difficulty transporting water to their tops and are no more vulnerable than smaller trees.

They have developed internal adaptations that compensate for the challenges of transporting water to the highest branches. Furthermore, tests conducted during severe droughts showed that they did not experience a more pronounced decline in growth than smaller trees. This contradicts the hypothesis that very tall trees would be more susceptible to water stress.

Spontaneous current loops in a kagome metal point to hidden quantum order

Quantum materials, materials exhibiting physical behavior governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, have proved promising for the development of numerous advanced technologies, including quantum technologies, memory devices and solar panels. In some of these materials, electrons can collectively arrange themselves in unusual patterns, giving rise to states that cannot be explained by classical physics theories.

For more than two decades, theoretical physicists have predicted the existence of a loop current order in some quantum materials. This is a state characterized by tiny electrical currents circulating around microscopic loops inside a crystal, which would produce no measurable electric current flowing through a material.

These current loops were predicted to emerge when electrons spontaneously organize themselves into a less symmetrical pattern than the crystal itself, even if atoms remain in similar positions. While this phenomenon was widely studied and described by theorists in the past, it has so far proved difficult to observe experimentally.

Cyborg Luddite Steve Mann: Technology That Masters Nature Isn’t Sustainable

14 years ago, Steve Mann told me that technology that masters nature is not sustainable.

At the time, that sounded like the poetic caution of a man the media had nicknamed “the cyborg Luddite.” Today it reads like a weather report.

Steve is the person the IEEE named the father of wearable computing. He built the EyeTap decades before Google Glass, invented HDR imaging now sitting in the phone in your pocket, and was called the world’s first cyborg. So when he argues for using less, for choosing which technologies to embrace and which to walk away from, he is not speaking from fear of the machine. He is speaking from a deeper intimacy with it than almost anyone alive.

His core move was to refuse the framing everyone else accepted.

Not more technology. Not less technology. Appropriate technology. Balanced with nature instead of replacing it.

And here is the line that has aged into something close to prophecy:

Continue reading “Cyborg Luddite Steve Mann: Technology That Masters Nature Isn’t Sustainable” | >

Tandem solar cell sets 25.5% efficiency record with CIGS-perovskite design

A Berlin-based team from HZB and Center for the Science of Materials Berlin (CSMB) at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin has set a new record for a tandem solar cell. Using a combination of a CIGS semiconductor layer and perovskite, along with several optimized intermediate layers, the team converted 25.5% of sunlight into electrical energy. The previous record for this combination of materials and this size cell had stood at 24.6%.

The new record has been certified and is visible in the Solar Cell Efficiency Tables (the “Green Tables”) published in the journal Joule, which serve as the definitive ledger for the global photovoltaic community. To be included in this special “record table,” not only is high efficiency required, but also an area of more than 1 cm2. The well-known NLR table (formerly NREL), by contrast, lists only the maximum efficiency per technology, even if the cell has an area of 0.001 cm2.

Electrochemical research takes major strides towards harvesting a vital battery material

The supply of lithium—the battery material that keeps digital devices humming, EVs racing and renewable energy on the grid— will not meet even half the expected demand by 2040.

Ramping up production using old methods will create new problems, including environmental damage, pollution, cost and water scarcity. Unconventional ways must be found to fill this lithium gap.

One promising solution is electrochemical intercalation. Common in the world of batteries and supercapacitors, it’s when researchers apply electricity to insert ions between the layers of a different material.

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