Discovery News: Sustainable

Solar Power Brings Out the Big Guns

Lockheed Martin is getting into the solar game. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported today that the mega-defense-contractor-technology-company will start construction on a giant solar test facility tomorrow in Moorestown, Pennsylvania. There, Lockheed plans to test a variety of ways to produce solar arrays.

The test facility will mean that when eco-conscious government leaders ask Lockheed to construct a utility-scale solar power plant, they'll be able to deliver one. Lockheed and its solar partner on the project, Starwood Energy Group Global, estimate that the solar power industry will be worth around $30 billion in the next few years. Seems small, especially compared to the economic bailout, but it's brighter than $30 million with an "M." Plus, the sun seems to be providing one of the few constant commodities during this rollercoaster of a recession.

Image: Working on a large scale, Lockheed's airdock in Akron, Ohio. Credit: Flickr users Larry & Linda.

Gobbling Up Fewer Resources

This has been a wild year, and I'm not just saying that because there's a wild turkey in the photo. In the midst of the madness, there have been some super innovations. On Thanksgiving--my favorite holiday--here's a shortlist of eco-tech news that I'm thankful for:

Bacteria that eats plastic. Both kids and adults made inroads using Pseudomonas, my new favorite bacteria. We're at the point where we either have to find something to digest plastic or press it into fake lumber.

Kid inventors. High schoolers going for more than extra credit are coming up with environmental inventions, from solar generators to fish escalators to affordable water filtration systems. Maybe there is hope that I can retire one day.

Mobile answers to sustainability questions. Whether you're faced with a seafood menu or standing agape in the cold medicine aisle, it's possible to find out what's really in there and where it came from faster than you can say "I don't need a plastic bag, thanks."

Trash-to-energy production. We throw things away every day but "away" is somewhere. New methane power plants are finally putting our trash to good use for us.

Now it's time to switch on some CFLs, fill a glass with tap water, and get the Energy Star rated dishwasher ready. Happy Thanksgiving!

Image Credit: JMP Photography LLC.

Kicking Cancer With Fewer Toxins

Cancer is tough enough, but then there are all the poisons involved in treatments. Even the most cutting-edge techniques utilize heavy metals. Recently researchers at Penn State figured out a way to deliver targeted cancer drugs using nontoxic nanoparticles.

An interdisciplinary group of scientists with expertise in chemistry, materials science, pharmacology, bioengineering, and physics experimented with calcium phosphate. This naturally-occurring mineral is already in our body--our teeth enamel is mostly made of it. The scientists took nano-sized bits of the mineral and coated a common chemotherapy agent with them.

Chemotherapy can destroy healthy cells as well as cancerous ones, so encapsulating the drug protects the body and enables doctors to target the cancer more effectively. Once the chemo arrives at its destination, the coating dissolves to release it. In the lab, Penn State's scientific crew found that chemo molecules coated in nontoxic nanoparticles reduced cancer cell growth in muscle tissue by 80 percent. When chemotherapy drugs are coated, fewer of them are needed, which has the potential to reduce costs. Take that cancer!

Image: Nontoxic nanoparticles dissolving after delivering cancer drugs. Credit: Penn State Materials Research Institute.

Students Roll Out Water-Smart Inventions

Financial news got you down? This should cheer you up: the next generation is busy coming up with inventions to solve big problems. And you know how much I love that. Recently the Lemelson-MIT program picked 16 high school InvenTeams that will get grants so they can create prototypes of their inventions. The 2009 teams include eco-inventors looking at water conservation and treatment:

Whitewater High School in Fayetteville, Georgia, is working on a solar dehydrator and dehumidifier for developing countries. In arid places, water extraction can be difficult, so this team (photo, right) will be inventing a combination system that dehydrates algae. The dry algae cakes can be sold to companies for use as biodiesel while the water extracted can be filtered for drinking and other uses.

Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Illinois, is coming up with an affordable and durable water filtration system. Their two-stage system involves a pottery disk fitted into plastic tubing for the first phase and a sealed conical filter for the second filtration phase.

Brentwood High School in Brentwood, New York, is developing a biofilm membrane for oil remediation. This nearly all-female team will work on a solution for filtering contaminated water using special membranes. Current technologies in use don't remove organic pollutants, which is something the students will try to address using inexpensive polymers. Go grrl power!

Images: (Top) Whitewater High School works on their solar dehydrator. (Bottom) Brentwood High School is developing a biofilm for oil contaminated water remediation. Credits: Whitewater High School and Brentwood High School.

Oman, Want Our Carbon?

Geological scientists have found something akin to a hidden trash chute for the massive excessive carbon dioxide we've been emitting: CO2-absorbent rocks. Geologist Peter Kelemen and fellow scientists from the Earth Institute at Columbia University went to Oman and discovered that a special kind of rock called peridotite has the potential to suck up billions of pounds of CO2.

Peridotite is usually found below the Earth's crust but has been pushed to the surface in Oman through tectonic activity. The rock reacts with CO2 and creates minerals, such as limestone. 

In an article for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (subscription required), the researchers report that a Massachusetts-sized chunk of rock in Oman naturally absorbs 10,000 to 100,000 tons of CO2 annually. But they estimate that it has the potential to absorb billions of tons yearly if heated water containing CO2 is injected deep down through bored holes.

Transporting the rock apparently doesn't work, so I don't know how feasible this is or how the U.S. would manage to get carbon over there--the scientists don't say. Plus, the injection process will cause many small but minor earthquakes, which is worrisome. Despite these giant question marks, it's a compelling approach to deal with our zillion pounds of excess greenhouse gases. At the very least, perhaps this discovery will lead to new carbon-absorbing products. That would truly rock.

Images: (Top) cliff-hanging a.k.a. scientific sampling. (Bottom) deserts in Oman are covered in minerals. Credit: The Earth Institute.

Nano-Coating Spells End for Rotating Solar Panels

Solar energy is a busy field these days, so innovations that use fewer resources to make it work gets my vote. Well, it's my lucky day: Scientists at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) just announced that they've had success with a new nano-coating for solar panels.

Physics professor Shawn-Yu Lin and his fellow researchers are taking aim at a major dilemma with solar panels: they usually reflect away a third of the sunlight that hits them. To resolve this, many panels rotate in order to absorb the maximum amount of energy, but that process requires additional electricity.

Lin and his team spent a year engineering a coating from seven layers of silicon dioxide and titanium dioxide nanorods. The coating, which goes on photovoltaic materials, is antireflective, allowing nearly 100% of the sunlight hitting the panel to be used for energy. If you'd like to read the technical details, here's the abstract in Optical Letters (the whole article is only available to lucky OL subscribers). Meanwhile, it looks like the outlook is partially cloudy with a 96% chance of energy absorption.

Image: New nanotech coatings promise to make mechanized solar panels a thing of the past. Credit: RPI/Shawn-Yu Lin.

A Clean Water Initiative That's Ironclad

What if you could take scrap iron and use it to clean wastewater? Wei-xian Zhang, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Lehigh University, completed a pilot project this fall and accomplished just that.

While Zhang's project got a little bit of recognition when Lehigh announced it earlier this fall, the details are worth reporting here--mainly because the concept is so promising. Zhang spent five years working on the project, which was tested in Shanghai. He and several colleagues at Tongji University took two million pounds of unoxidized scrap iron, which they got from local metal processing shops at bargain prices, and used them as part of the filtration process for toxic industrial wastewater.

Lehigh's report on the project says that while biofilms and bacteria (our friends!) can treat municipal wastewater, they aren't as successful in treating the synthetic gunk in industrial wastewater. That's where the iron comes in. Zhang and his team found that when they added iron to the process, they could remove significantly higher amounts of dyes, nitrogen, phosphorous, and other nasties than just biofilms and bacteria. Only 25% of the wastewater in China is currently treated, according to BusinessWeek. The unwanted iron has another advantage: it's much cheaper to put into place than nanotechnology, which makes it more feasible for developing areas. For real--no scrap.

Image: Iron waste? Not so fast... Credit: Jesse Bikman

Home Sweet Connected Home

The house of the future promises to be sustainably built, connected to other homes, equipped with effective sensing technology...and Italian. Recently MIT's Mobile Experience Lab began a three-year partnership with the Italian Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) that will culminate in the creation of a prototype for such a house.

MIT's Mobile Lab specializes in designing connections between people and FBK is a foundation with research expertise in information technology, materials science. The MIT lab currently has an ongoing partnership with the picturesque Italian province Trento, where the house will ultimately be constructed.

It's early days yet, but if the conceptual images are any indication, this is going to be one heck of a house. Think Star Trek meets The Biosphere. Researchers will be testing out different energy sources (windmills, solar panels, etc.), materials, and information technology--presumably you won't have to wonder what's going on with the hot water heater or the electricity usage because the house will tell you. Once the full-scale working prototype is completed, researchers will examine the social and cultural factors at play in the house. No word yet on the kitchen, but I'm betting it will be magnifico.

Images: (Top) conceptual design of a house with special plastic tubes to gather sunlight. (Bottom) The project's architects are designing energy-harvesting walls. Credits: MIT Mobile Experience Laboratory.

A Cheap X-Ray? Just Stick With Me

This week's issue of Nature brought a bizarre story to light: peel sticky tape in a vacuum and voila, an X-ray. While this apparently isn't anything new to Russian scientists who noticed a similar effect decades ago, it was quite a surprise to a group of UCLA researchers.

You might be wondering how this is sustainable technology, and whether you should wear more protective clothing around desk drawers. Well, tape is disposable, which isn't eco-friendly, but the discovery has the potential to form the basis for cheaper X-ray equipment in developing areas since the tape works without requiring much energy. One of the graduate students who took part in the research told the AP that the method could theoretically be used with hand-crank devices. Also, since the X-ray was produced in a vacuum, there's no need to don a protective shield in the office...unless you're asking for a raise.

Here's a 30-second video showing the tape in action:

 

Photo: A Scotch tape X-ray. Credit: AP/UCLA Laboratory of Low Temperatures and Acoustics, Carlos Camara, Juan V. Escobar and Seth J. Putterman via Yahoo News.

Oh Soy, What a Sweet Ride

Walking in New York over the weekend, I noticed a giant floating rock in the river. Wait, that's no rock. That's a giant ball of foam! Plus there's a funky smell in the air. So it was with welcome relief that several initiatives came to my attention, all of which make sweet rides even sweeter with alternatives to polluting materials and toxic finishes.

Country Feeling Surfboards has been in the news quite a bit this year for their eco-friendly surfboards. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the company uses soy- and sugar-based blanks in addition to plant-based resins and cloth made from hemp, silk, and bamboo. These green boards are going to cost a little more than the usual foam and fiberglass dealies, but isn't clear water worth it?

Forbes reports that Ford and GM are looking into manufacturing car seats from any combination of soybean, corn, sugarcane, sunflower, and rapeseed products instead of petroleum. They're also considering replacing heavy glass with prairie grass, coconut, and wheat straw for reinforcement parts. Sounds like an entirely different "new car smell" in the works.

Comet Skateboards, a company based in Ithaca, New York, uses sustainable materials such as bamboo, as well as water-based paints and soy-based resin for their boards. As they say on their site, "We at Comet can name lots of ways to get a head rush, sniffing our freshly opened boards is not one of them. We use all water-based low-VOC coatings." Check out the Good Magazine video below detailing Comet's approach and its rad community work:

Image Credit: Country Feeling Surfboards, Inc.