New Florence. New Renaissance.

PVs for electricity - and water

Previous methods – which use, for example, salinity gradient and thermoelectrical conversions – reduced the efficiency of producing electricity, says Peng Wang from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.

To address this, he and colleagues developed a three-stage device that captures and recycles the heat generated by photovoltaic (PV) solar panels to produce clean water using multi-stage membrane distillation.

Cosmos

 

The vid below shows solar technology which goes even further - turns thin air into water

 

 

Carbon hungry trees

While each acre of most tree species can capture and store 1.1 to 9.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, an acre of empress trees can absorb 103. “The tree has a very Jack and the Beanstalk energy to it,” says Wendy Burton, whose 17-year-old Mesa, Ariz.-based timber company, World Tree, has planted more than 1,000 acres of empress.

Farmers are using non-invasive varieties of the tree, which is otherwise known as a pest in some parts of the world. Once the trees reach maturity, farmers harvest their wood for use in houses or musical instruments. World Tree investors share in the profits. The trees can regrow easily from the stumps after they’ve been harvested. Says Cathy Key, the company’s chief operating officer: “It’s a tree that grows like grass.”

Bloomberg

Here is another, Bill Gates backed carbon capture concept

 

The earth has become greener - thanks to China and India

Satellite data show increasing leaf area of vegetation due to direct factors (human land-use management) and indirect factors (such as climate change, CO2 fertilization, nitrogen deposition and recovery from natural disturbances). Among these, climate change and CO2 fertilization effects seem to be the dominant drivers. However, recent satellite data (2000–2017) reveal a greening pattern that is strikingly prominent in China and India and overlaps with croplands world-wide. China alone accounts for 25% of the global net increase in leaf area with only 6.6% of global vegetated area. The greening in China is from forests (42%) and croplands (32%), but in India is mostly from croplands (82%) with minor contribution from forests (4.4%). China is engineering ambitious programmes to conserve and expand forests with the goal of mitigating land degradation, air pollution and climate change. Food production in China and India has increased by over 35% since 2000 mostly owing to an increase in harvested area through multiple cropping facilitated by fertilizer use and surface- and/or groundwater irrigation. Our results indicate that the direct factor is a key driver of the ‘Greening Earth’, accounting for over a third, and probably more, of the observed net increase in green leaf area. They highlight the need for a realistic representation of human land-use practices in Earth system models.

Nature.com

Click on image to enlarge

 

 

Kites for wind energy

The wind blows more strongly at higher altitudes. That is why wind turbines have grown ever taller. The blade tips of today’s biggest now reach up a dizzying 260 metres, the height of the Transamerica building in San Francisco. Many dream of capturing stronger winds even higher up than that, but building taller turbine masts and constructing blades able to withstand the terrifying stresses involved in high-altitude wind gathering are costly. A number of firms are therefore developing a different and, they hope, ultimately cheaper approach to generating electricity at great heights. Their idea is to skip the mast altogether. Instead they propose to fly kites.

The Economist

 

 

 

Plastic Eaters

That’s because plastics aren’t just happening to Johnson. He’s happening to them. Johnson is a research scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and this past year, he and his colleagues created a biological enzyme that can chew efficiently through throwaway plastics like those that make water bottles and soap containers. The team is optimistic they can engineer a world where humans keep using this overabundant material—without winding up literally or figuratively overwhelmed by it. In that world, as part of a broader, robust recycling system, microorganisms will digest polymers into their chemical components so they can turn a profit as new and better products.

Popular Science

 

 

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQa6as8fhoo&feature=youtu.be

Green Concrete

Making cement–the mineral compound that constitutes the most crucial ingredient of concrete–is an extremely carbon-intensive process. It’s produced in factories with massive kilns where raw materials, like limestone, clay, and shale, are heated to temperatures up to 1550 degrees Celsius, then ground into a powder. Heating the cement minerals to such high temperatures poses a sustainability concern, says Kemal Celik, professor of civil engineering at New York University in Abu Dhabi and the director of the Advanced Materials and Building Efficiency Research (AMBER) Laboratory. Producing cement accounts for around 7% of global CO2 emissions.

This fact, Celik says, got him interested in finding a better way to make the material. He and his team already knew that magnesium oxide, a mineral found in salt deposits like lakes and salt flats, could be converted into a type of cement. In the United Arab Emirates, where Celik and his team work, they realized they could tap the over 70 operating desalination plants for access to brine left over from the process of purifying seawater, which would otherwise just be dumped back into the Gulf. Synthesizing the magnesium oxide in brine into a cement-like substance requires much less heat than making ordinary cement. And, Celik says, as magnesium oxide cement hardens over its lifetime, it absorbs carbon dioxide over time to gain strength, potentially making it a carbon-negative building material.

FastCompany

 

 

Polywood

Those milk jugs sparked an idea in Rassi—namely, to create a "lumber" that would be durable and sustainable. "Because of my entrepreneurial experience with vinyl fencing, I had a deep understanding of alternative material that [could] replace products made of wood in outdoor applications," he tells the Connection. When he saw his first Adirondack chair on a trip to Boston, he knew he’d found the perfect match, so he went to work creating an Adirondack chair out of plastic bottle waste (think milk and detergent bottles) and other high-density polyethylene material. Rassi made the first chairs himself out of what was named POLYWOOD, and the duo sold them in Phillabaum’s store in Syracuse, Indiana.

Costco Connection

 

Gates annual letter

In this year’s annual letter, we’re highlighting nine more things that have surprised us along this journey. Some worry us. Others inspire us. All of them are prodding us to action. We hope they do the same for you, because that’s how the world gets better.

Gates Notes         

a video where they summarize their findings

Zero-waste platform

In the not-too-distant future–as soon as this spring, if you live in or near New York City or Paris–you’ll be able to buy ice cream or shampoo in a reusable container. When you’re done eating a tub of Haagen-Dazs, you’ll toss the sleek stainless steel package in your personal reuse bin instead of your trash can. Then it will be picked up for delivery back to a cleaning and sterilization facility so that it can be refilled with more ice cream for another customer.

Loop, a new zero-waste platform from a coalition of major consumer product companies, will launch its first pilots this year.

FastCompany

 

Plan B for the environment?

Y Combinator has chosen four “frontier technologies” it would be “excited to fund.” They are:

• Ocean phytoplankton: Using genetically engineered microbes that can supercharge their natural ability to absorb sunlight and carbon dioxide to grow.
• Electro-geochemistry: Using electricity to enhance the natural rate at which certain types of minerals absorb carbon dioxide.
• Cell-free systems: Modifying naturally existing enzymes outside living cells to capture carbon dioxide.
• Desert flooding: Adding huge amounts of water to deserts to convert into small lakes with phytoplankton and perhaps into cultivable land.

Quartz

Video below on views of Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator

 

Y Combinator has chosen four “frontier technologies” it would be “excited to fund.” They are:

• Ocean phytoplankton: Using genetically engineered microbes that can supercharge their natural ability to absorb sunlight and carbon dioxide to grow.
• Electro-geochemistry: Using electricity to enhance the natural rate at which certain types of minerals absorb carbon dioxide.
• Cell-free systems: Modifying naturally existing enzymes outside living cells to capture carbon dioxide.
• Desert flooding: Adding huge amounts of water to deserts to convert into small lakes with phytoplankton and perhaps into cultivable land.

Quartz

Video below on views of Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator

 

Y Combinator has chosen four “frontier technologies” it would be “excited to fund.” They are:

• Ocean phytoplankton: Using genetically engineered microbes that can supercharge their natural ability to absorb sunlight and carbon dioxide to grow.
• Electro-geochemistry: Using electricity to enhance the natural rate at which certain types of minerals absorb carbon dioxide.
• Cell-free systems: Modifying naturally existing enzymes outside living cells to capture carbon dioxide.
• Desert flooding: Adding huge amounts of water to deserts to convert into small lakes with phytoplankton and perhaps into cultivable land.

Quartz

Video below on views of Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator