Environment

There are many subjects more interesting than concrete. But the substance is key to structures all over the world. Present concrete recycling methods yield degraded – and inefficient – results. A group of German researchers have taken it upon themselves to dramatically improve on those methods, and the secret to their approach is truly electric.  Read More

According to many people, meat and leather are an ethical and environmental nightmare, causing misery to billions of animals and wreaking havoc on the planet’s ecosystems. While mankind may not turn entirely vegan in the next generation, a more humane and cleaner type of leather could become available in the near future (and meat a few years later) thanks to the development of an in-vitro version of the material being developed by Modern Meadow.  Read More

As the Deepwater Horizon disaster showed us, we need to develop better ways of cleaning up oil spills. While many ideas have been put forth, scientists from Pennsylvania State University have come up with something that particularly shows promise – a polymer that soaks up 40 times its weight in oil.  Read More

Danish wind turbine specialist Vestas was already looking to claim the title of the world’s largest offshore wind turbine with its proposed V164 that boasts a diameter of 164 m (538 ft). The company claims the V164 was developed with the potential of increasing its turbine size and now it has done just that, upping the capacity from seven to eight megawatts. So not only is the V164 set to boast the largest swept area of any single wind turbine, it will also claim the title for the world’s largest capacity wind turbine.  Read More

A laundry additive created by researchers from the University of Sheffield and the London College of Fashion turns clothing into a photocatalytic material that can help remove nitrogen oxides (NOx) from the air. One of the most prominent air pollutants, nitrogen oxides are emitted from the exhausts of ICE-powered vehicles and aggravate asthma and other respiratory diseases. The researchers claim one person getting around town in clothing treated with the additive for a day would be able to remove roughly the same amount of nitrogen oxides produced by the average family car each day.  Read More

The controversial debate over the sustainability of biofuels has been reignited by new research from Swiss-based research institute Empa. While the study maintains that biofuels can be sustainable depending on certain conditions and the technology involved, the findings suggest that only a few are more environmentally friendly than gasoline.  Read More

For the vast majority of those looking to harvest energy from the sun to satisfy domestic or business electricity needs, the photovoltaic world is a static and flat one. Even many large scale solar farms feature row upon row of rigid panels, although there may at least be some movement as the panels follow the path of the sun as it moves across the sky. V3Solar's Spin Cell is a little different. It's claimed to be capable of generating over 20 times more electricity than a flat panel with the same area of PV cells thanks to a combination of concentrating lenses, dynamic spin, conical shape, and advanced electronics.  Read More

Tell someone that you’ve invented a car that runs on water and they're liable to report you for fraud. That hasn’t stopped scientists and engineers at the U.S.. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) who want to run warships on seawater - or at least, to turn seawater into jet fuel. This may sound like they’ve been standing too close to the ether again, but the idea is to extract carbon dioxide and hydrogen from seawater and then convert these into jet fuel by a gas-to-liquids process. If this proves practical, American naval vessels could refuel themselves at sea.  Read More

Royal College of Art graduates Amos Field Reid and Lasse Oiva have put a new twist on the humble street vendor tricycle with Velopresso – a prototype mobile coffee making machine that uses pedal-power to grind the beans as well as turn the wheels.  Read More