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Electricity from chicken feathers

December 4, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The food industry generates enormous amounts of waste and by-products. Each year, 40 million tons of chicken feathers are incinerated, causing adverse environmental effects. Not only does it release large amounts of carbon dioxide but also produces toxic gases such as sulfur dioxide.

Researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have developed a way to put chicken feathers to good use by using them to make fuel cells more cost-effective and sustainable.

Using a simple and environmentally friendly process, they extract the keratin from the feathers. Keratin is the protein that helps form hair, nails, the outer layer of skin, and feathers. The extracted keratin is then converted into ultra-fine fibers known as amyloid fibrils. The keratin fibrils are used in the membrane of a fuel cell.

Fuel cells generate clean energy from hydrogen and oxygen with only heat and water as byproducts. At the heart of every fuel cell is a semipermeable membrane that allows protons to pass through but blocks electrons, thereby producing an electric current. Fuel cells are the primary way hydrogen is used to directly generate electricity. Hydrogen cars run on fuel cells.

Conventional fuel cells typically use membranes made from highly toxic chemicals. The new ETH membranes essentially replace these toxic substances with biological keratin.

The researchers are investigating how stable and durable their keratin membrane is and to improve it if necessary. The team has already applied for a joint patent and is looking for partners and investors to further develop the technology and bring it to market.

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Generating clean electricity with chicken feathers

Photo, posted July 10, 2016, courtesy of Matthew Bellemare via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Saving The Sumatran Rhino | Earth Wise

January 2, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Sumatran rhinoceros is the smallest and most ancient rhino species and is the only surviving species with hair. It is critically endangered. Because of poaching and habitat destruction, there are fewer than 50 of them left in the wild and those are scattered in the rainforests of Sumatra and the Indonesian part of Borneo. Mating encounters between surviving males and females are increasingly rare.

The last male Sumatran rhino in Malaysia died in 2019 but cell samples from that individual are the basis of an ambitious effort in bioengineering.

Researchers from the Max Delbruck Center in Germany are taking skin cells from the deceased rhino and turning them into stem cells. The hope is to use these stem cells to derive egg and sperm cells to be the basis of assisted reproduction. Fertilization would take place in a petri dish. The resultant embryos would then be carried to term by surrogate rhino mothers.

The researchers have reported success generating induced pluripotent stem cells or IPS cells from the rhino skin samples. IPS cells are able to divide indefinitely and can transform into any cell type in the body.

The next step is to try to cultivate primordial germ cells – the precursors of eggs and sperm.

This work is going on because it is increasingly difficult to preserve the Sumatran rhino population by gathering together remaining individuals in wildlife Reserves. Females that have not been pregnant for a long time often become infertile because of cyst growth on their reproductive organs, and some are just too old to bear young.

It may take extraordinary efforts like these to save these animals from extinction.

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A second chance for the Sumatran rhino

Photo, posted April 30, 2008, courtesy of Willem V. Strien via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Improving Solar Cells With Human Hair | Earth Wise

June 1, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia have been able to improve the performance of perovskite solar cells using material made from human hair.

Perovskite solar cells are an up-and-coming technology that offers the possibility of making solar cells less expensive, more efficient, and flexible so that there could be solar-powered clothing, backpacks, or even tents for camping. While the technology has been shown to be as effective in converting sunlight to electricity as currently available silicon technology, it faces problems with stability and durability.

The Australian research centered on the use of carbon nanodots to improve perovskite solar cell performance. The nanodots were created in a rather unique way. The carbon came from hair scraps from a Brisbane barbershop that were first broken down and then burned at nearly 500 degrees Fahrenheit.

By adding a solution of the carbon nanodots into the process of making the perovskites, the dots formed a wave-like layer in which the perovskite crystals in the cells are surrounded by the carbon dots. It serves as a protective layer, essentially a kind of armor, for the active portions of the material.

The result was solar cells with a higher power conversion efficiency and greater stability. The researchers did not explain why they chose human hair as the source of carbon, but it does make for an interesting sidelight to the promising research.

Perovskite solar cells could be very important for spacecraft applications where reducing weight is paramount. But in order to be able to use them for this purpose, perovskite solar cells will need to be able to cope with the extreme radiation and temperature variations in space.

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Carbon dots from human hair boost solar cells

Photo, posted October 3, 2009, courtesy of Arktoi via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Trading Rhino Horn And Tiger Bone

November 21, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Historically, rhino horn and tiger bone were used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat various illnesses, despite the lack of any evidence of their effectiveness. In fact, rhino horn is simply keratin, a protein that is found in human fingernails and hair. Rhino horn is used to treat everything from cancer to gout in traditional Chinese medicine. Similarly, a paste made from crushed tiger bone is thought to treat a variety of ailments, including rheumatism and back pain.