New Florence. New Renaissance.

Ocean bed mining for EV batteries

Vast areas of the abyssal (13,000 to 20,000 feet deep) seafloor, like the 1.8 million square-mile Clarion-Clipperton Zone between Hawaii and Baja California, are covered in potato-sized polymetallic nodules. These form over millennia as water-soluble manganese from sediment pore water on the seafloor causes insoluble manganese hydroxide to precipitate on pieces of fish bones or teeth. These hydroxide materials then scavenge soluble copper, cobalt, and nickel from these same mineral-rich waters.

Each nodule is a BEV starter kit composed of 29.2 percent manganese, 1.3 percent nickel, 1.1 percent copper, and 0.2 percent cobalt. The rest is ammonium sulphate (fertilizer). It's easier and cleaner to isolate the metals from nodules than from land-based ores.

Motor Trend

While EVs could solve some environmental issues, deep sea mining could open up new ones. The video below explores the challenges.

Recycling Redux

If you must use a disposable container, check the label for instructions on how to recycle it. Containers made of one material are best, and among those, paper, aluminum and steel cans, and No. 1 (soft drink and water bottles, cooking oil containers) and No. 2 plastic (milk jugs, laundry detergent bottles) are most likely to be bought up by manufacturers. Look up recycling programs that collect hazardous waste like batteries and electronics. Many recycling programs will tell you to rinse out condiment or peanut butter containers — but it’s likely that they still won’t be resold, so stick with glass containers whenever possible. Thin plastic containers like yogurt cups or clamshell containers are often made of No. 5 plastic, which doesn’t usually have value after it’s used.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to know whether that iced coffee cup you recycled will ever see the light of day again. The best way to make sure it doesn’t end up in the ocean or incinerated abroad? Don’t use one in the first place.

Discover

Here are some simple, clever ideas to re-purpose a bunch of stuff we throw away

 

Airplanes and global warming

But when Stettler and his team analyzed flight data they obtained of Japan airspace, they found that most contrail warming was caused by just 2 percent of flights. And most of those flights originated in the late afternoon—because as the sun goes down, cooling can no longer offset the warming.

“And the warming effect persists throughout the evening, into the night.”

But what if the contrails that contribute the most to warming could be eliminated? Such a change could be achieved if aircraft avoided flying in the thin layers of humidity where contrails form.

“By changing the altitude only by a couple of thousand feet, either up or down, it would no longer form a contrail. And so what we found in this study was that by changing the altitude of less than 2 percent of flights, we could actually get rid of just under 60 percent of the warming effect due to contrails.”

Scientific American

Image credit

 

Space solar power

In October, the Air Force Research Lab announced a $100 million program to develop hardware for a solar power satellite. It’s an important first step toward the first demonstration of space solar power in orbit, and Mankins says it could help solve what he sees as space solar power’s biggest problem: public perception. The technology has always seemed like a pie-in-the-sky idea, and the cost of setting up a solar array on Earth is plummeting. But space solar power has unique benefits, chief among them the availability of solar energy around the clock regardless of the weather or time of day.

It can also provide renewable energy to remote locations, such as forward operating bases for the military. And at a time when wildfires have forced the utility PG&E to kill power for thousands of California residents on multiple occasions, having a way to provide renewable energy through the clouds and smoke doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

Wired

watch this hour long presentation starting around 3.30 on the concept.

 

 

 

Alice, the electric plane

Developed by Israeli firm Eviation, the plane will be able to carry nine passengers for up to 1,046 km.

The aircraft has one main pusher-propeller on the tail and one on each wing. Eviation says the shift to electric could significantly reduce operating costs, while eliminating greenhouse gas emissions.

WEForum

 

 

High-tech reforestation

One of the technologies driving this process is light detection and ranging (LiDAR) mounted on aircraft or drones. LiDAR tech is getting to the point where it can penetrate tropical forest canopies and give an accurate, 3-D snapshot of the forest.

Satellite imagery is also useful in determining the density of the forest and surrounding areas.

“We are working on a project in Brazil, its 70,000 hectares, you can’t monitor that in person,” Saez Gil said.

That remote-sensing data is then fed into AI technologies which crunch the data into a reliable figure of how much carbon is being sequestered.

Forbes

 

 

De-carbonizing heavy industry?

Essentially, Heliogen created a solar oven — one capable of reaching temperatures that are roughly a quarter of what you'd find on the surface of the sun.

The breakthrough means that, for the first time, concentrated solar energy can be used to create the extreme heat required to make cement, steel, glass and other industrial processes. In other words, carbon-free sunlight can replace fossil fuels in a heavy carbon-emitting corner of the economy that has been untouched by the clean energy revolution.

CNN Business

Thanks to Alan Alper for pointer

 

 

 

Ikea's design lab for a changing environment

In the past, Space10 has tackled problems such as creating sustainable and affordable homes in densely populated urban centers, prototyping a solar-powered neighborhood, and developing autonomous vehicles to serve as moving co-working spaces, cafés, grocery stores, and healthcare centers.

This is the first time that Space10 has come to India. The Delhi lab will be unlike previous pop-ups, partly because it will be open for significantly longer, allowing the local mix of artists, designers, and technologists to spend more time developing solutions to problems. Delhi is a fast-growing city that’s experiencing a web of issues, many of which are accelerated by the detrimental effects of climate change.

FastCompany

 

 

 

 

Patagonia's ReCrafted line

The line takes worn-out, damaged goods and transforms them into entirely new, one-of-a-kind products at a workshop in Los Angeles. Each item in the ReCrafted collection is made up of between three and six pieces of used clothing.

“The ReCrafted line was an answer to a question,” says Kourtney Morgan, Patagonia’s senior designer, in a video to launch the line. “And the question was: What are we doing with all the products we are taking back that isn’t recyclable, that isn’t resale-able, and that isn’t repairable?”

FastCompany

 

Innovations in energy storage

From MIT Technology Review

"Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the Bill Gates–backed fund, has made long-duration storage one of its highest priorities. In addition to Form, it has backed Quidnet and Malta, another thermal startup that relies on molten salt as the storage medium (see “Alphabet is in talks to spin out its molten-salt storage play”).

Meanwhile, Japanese conglomerate SoftBank recently invested $110 million in the Swiss mechanical storage startup Energy Vault, which uses cranes and wires to stack up concrete blocks when renewables are generating excess electricity. It then drops those blocks back to the ground on those same wires, using their momentum to turn motors in the cranes in reverse and pump out electricity."

This vid provides another perspective