A new bioplastic metafilm reflects 99 percent of sunlight, cools surfaces passively, and could transform how cities tackle rising heat.
Category: sustainability
Dyson engineers boost strawberry yields by 250% in technology breakthrough
Dyson Farming’s 26-acre glasshouse in Lincolnshire is already home to 1,225,000 strawberry plants, which are grown all year round, to produce over 1,250 tonnes of high-quality British strawberries.
Dyson is always looking to maximise efficiency of the farms and the quality of their produce. The most recent development in the glasshouse is Dyson’s Hybrid Vertical Growing System, the trial of which has just finished. It exceeded all expectations, boosting yields by 250% whilst optimising the quality of the fruit.
Artificial photosynthesis system surpasses key efficiency benchmark for direct solar-to-hydrogen conversion
A research team affiliated with UNIST has introduced a cutting-edge modular artificial leaf that simultaneously meets high efficiency, long-term stability, and scalability requirements—marking a major step forward in green hydrogen production technology essential for achieving carbon neutrality.
Jointly led by Professors Jae Sung Lee, Sang Il Seok, and Ji-Wook Jang from the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, this innovative system mimics natural leaves by producing hydrogen solely from sunlight and water, without requiring external power sources or emitting carbon dioxide during the process—a clean hydrogen production method. The study is published in Nature Communications.
Unlike conventional photovoltaic-electrochemical (PV-EC) systems, which generate electricity before producing hydrogen, this direct solar-to-chemical conversion approach reduces losses associated with electrical resistance and minimizes installation footprint. However, prior challenges related to low efficiency, durability, and scalability hindered commercial deployment.
Simulating Shade: Researchers Model Tree Impact on Vegas Heat
How can trees provide relief from extreme heat in urban climates? This is what a recent study published in Environmental Research Climate hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated using urban street trees to provide shade relief from extreme temperatures, which continue to increase due to climate change. This study has the potential to help researchers, climate scientists, legislators, city planners, and the public better understand the benefits of trees for cooling urban spaces in the face of the increasing threat of climate change.
For the study, the researchers used a series of computer models between July and August 2022 to simulate how street tree planting in Las Vegas could provide relief from extreme heat and heat exposure. The goal of the study was to ascertain the overall effectiveness of planting non-native trees in an urban setting while estimating the amount of water they would need to survive and provide shade relief from extreme heat. In the end, the researchers found that desert environments are too hot for trees to adequately provide shade relief, primarily due to the trees’ water conservation efforts.
“Urban trees are not a silver bullet for cooling our cities, particularly for desert cities like Las Vegas,” said Dr. Juan Henao, who is a postdoctoral researcher at the Desert Research Institute and lead author of the study. “But they provide significant shade and of course other benefits. I know that I prefer to see trees, and they can help store carbon. We just need to remember that in order to cool the air, they need to release water vapor, and we need to give them enough water to do that. Any hot, dry city will need to consider these tradeoffs and really do their research to identify the right species for planting efforts.”
Living Planet Symposium opens in Vienna
ESA’s Living Planet Symposium, one of the world’s leading Earth observation conferences, opened today in Vienna.
More than 6,500 participants from almost 120 countries signed up to attend the event. With more than 4,200 scientific presentations and posters, the symposium provides a forum and meeting point for scientists, academics and space industry representatives, as well as students and citizens.
The event takes place every three years and this year the focus is ‘from observation to climate action and sustainability for Earth’
New passivation strategy improves scalability and efficiency of perovskite solar cells
Solar cells, devices that can convert sunlight into electrical energy, are becoming increasingly widespread, with many households and industries worldwide now relying on them as a source of electricity. While crystalline silicon-based photovoltaics and other widely available solar cells perform relatively well, manufacturing them can be expensive, and they do not perform well in low-light or other unfavorable conditions.
Enzyme-based plastics recycling at an industrial scale could be cost-effective, analysis finds
A successful collaboration involving a trio of research institutions has yielded a roadmap toward an economically viable process for using enzymes to recycle plastics.
The researchers, from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and the University of Portsmouth in England, previously partnered on the biological engineering of improved PETase enzymes that can break down polyethylene terephthalate (PET). With its low manufacturing cost and excellent material properties, PET is used extensively in single-use packaging, soda bottles, and textiles.
The new study, published in Nature Chemical Engineering, combines previous fundamental research with advanced chemical engineering, process development, and techno-economic analysis to lay the blueprints for enzyme-based PET recycling at an industrial scale.
Two-step system makes plastic from carbon dioxide, water and electricity
What if a machine could suck up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, run it through a series of chemical reactions, and essentially spit out industrially useful plastic?
“I think that is something that we, as a society, would be interested in. After all, in addition to being a greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide is an abundant and inexpensive feedstock,” says Theo Agapie, Ph.D., the John Stauffer Professor of Chemistry and the executive officer for chemistry at Caltech. “With our new work, we have taken a significant step in that direction.”
Reporting in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Agapie and a team of Caltech chemists have developed a system that uses electricity from sustainable sources to carry out the chemical conversion of carbon dioxide (CO2) into molecules, such as ethylene and carbon monoxide, that are useful for making more complex compounds.
Modified perovskite solar cells harvest energy from indoor fluorescent lighting
When you think of solar panels, you usually picture giant cells mounted to face the sun. But what if “solar” cells could be charged using fluorescent lights?
Perovskite solar cells (PeSCs) have emerged as a lower-cost, higher-efficiency alternative to traditional silicon solar cells due to their material structure and physical flexibility. Their large power conversion efficiency rate (PCE), which is the amount of energy created from the amount of energy hitting the cell, makes PeSCs well suited to converting lower light sources into energy.
In APL Energy, researchers from National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taiwan created perovskite solar cells that effectively convert indoor lighting into electrical power.
