manufacturing

Wildfires And Superfund Sites | Earth Wise

January 14, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Thousands of contaminated sites exist nationally due to hazardous waste being dumped, left out in the open, or otherwise improperly managed. These sites include manufacturing facilities, processing plants, landfills, and mining sites. A Congressional act in 1980 established authority by the EPA to ultimately clean up these “Superfund” sites.

According to a government survey last year, 945 Superfund sites are vulnerable to hurricanes, flooding, sea level rise, increased precipitation, or wildfires, all of which are intensifying as the climate warms. In particular, there are 245 sites vulnerable to wildfires and 68 of them have recently seen wildfires approach.

A comprehensive investigation by Inside Climate News, NBC News, and the Texas Observer has found that the threat presented by wildfires is exceeding authorities’ ability to adequately prepare and respond. Fires at Superfund sites could release toxins ranging from acid mine drainage to radioactive smoke.

There have already been a number of close calls. The 2013 Patch Springs Fire near Salt Lake City came within 10 miles of the Tooele Army Depot, a Superfund site with 902 ammunition bunkers along with soil and groundwater contaminated with hazardous chemicals.

The 2018 Carr Fire in Northern California over swept the Iron Mountain Mine Superfund site and threatened to release corrosive chemicals into the watershed.

For sites where no polluter can be made to pay and the EPA lacks cleanup funds, the agency will need to design protections that shield the sites from wildfires as long as the contamination remains.

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Fueled by Climate Change, Wildfires Threaten Toxic Superfund Sites

Photo, posted July 26, 2018, courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management California via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Recyclable Wind Turbines | Earth Wise

January 1, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The blades of modern wind turbines can be longer than the wing of a Boeing 747. Their useful lifetime is perhaps 20 years and after that, they can’t just be hauled away. They end up being cut up with special industrial saws to create pieces small enough to be strapped to a tractor-trailer. Then, they end up in landfills. There are thousands of blades being removed each year and those numbers are growing.

Wind turbine blades are currently manufactured using thermoset resin, which cannot be recycled. It is also energy-intensive and manpower-intensive to produce.

Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in partnership with Arkema Inc of Pennsylvania have demonstrated the feasibility of using thermoplastic resin instead to make wind turbine blades. That material can be recycled and can also enable longer, lighter-weight, and lower-cost blades. Using thermoplastic could also allow manufacturers to build blades on site, alleviating the problems of transporting ever larger turbine blades.

Current blades are made primarily of composite materials like fiberglass infused with thermoset resin. The manufacturing process requires additional heat to cure the resin, which adds cost and time. Thermoplastic resin cures at room temperature and requires less labor. With regard to recycling, thermoplastic resin, when heated above a certain temperature, melts into its original liquid resin and can be reused.

NREL has demonstrated the feasibility of the thermoplastic resin system by manufacturing nearly identical blades using both the standard materials and the thermoplastics. NREL has also developed a technoeconomic model to evaluate the cost benefits of using thermoplastic resin.

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News Release: NREL Advanced Manufacturing Research Moves Wind Turbine Blades Toward Recyclability

Photo, posted June 28, 2008, courtesy of Patrick Finnegan via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Replacing Plastic Tableware | Earth Wise

December 30, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Plastics have been described as the “ubiquitous workhorse material of the modern economy.” But their versatility, pliability, and durability comes at a heavy price to the environment. Plastic pollution is quite literally everywhere. Plastic debris and microplastic particles can be found in every corner of the globe, including the Arctic and Antarctic.

The scourge of plastic pollution is driving scientists to create ecologically-friendly alternatives. According to a paper recently published in the journal Matter, scientists have developed “green” tableware made from sugarcane and bamboo that doesn’t sacrifice on convenience or functionality. This eco-friendly tableware could serve as a permanent replacement for plastic cups and other disposable plastic containers.

Traditional plastic polymers, a product of petroleum, can take as long as 1,000 years to decompose in landfills. The new material only takes 60 days to break down.

To create this material, scientists used bamboo and bagasse, also known as sugarcane pulp. Bagasse is one of the largest food-industry waste products. The researchers wound the fibers together to form a mechanically stable and biodegradable material. They added an alkyl ketene dimer, an eco-friendly chemical, to increase the oil and water resistance of the material. The green material is durable enough to hold liquids like hot coffee and hot greasy foods like pizza.

There’s another advantage: the green material’s manufacturing process emits 97% less CO2 than the process to make commercial plastic containers. The next step is to lower the manufacturing cost. While the cost of cups made from the green material is $2,333 per ton, traditional cups made from plastic are still slightly cheaper at $2,177 per ton.

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This tableware made from sugarcane and bamboo breaks down in 60 days

Photo, posted May 19, 2013, courtesy of Henry Burrows via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Palm Oil Replacement | Earth Wise

December 15, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In the 1990s, cardiovascular health issues associated with partially hydrogenated oils containing harmful trans fats became a focus of great concern. As a result, food companies looked for substitutes and the alternative they identified was palm oil. Its ability to remain solid at room temperature made it well suited for many food applications. Unfortunately, that property stems from its high saturated fat content, which means it also increases the risk of coronary heart disease.

The widespread use of palm oil has also caused significant environmental problems. Palm oil plantations have replaced millions of acres of tropical forests, destroying the habitat for numerous species and threatening biodiversity.

Other potential replacements for partially hydrogenated oils such as coconut oil tend to be more costly, limited in supply, and also high in saturated fats.

Food scientists at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, recently demonstrated the use of enzymatic glycerolysis (EG) to turn liquid vegetable oils into solid fats. Their process is able to produce solid fats with the textural and structural properties desired by consumers.

The process is fairly simple, relatively easy to scale up, and is amenable to smaller food production or even local production. Using it would enable food producers to use all sorts of readily available vegetable oils that can be produced in parts of the world that are not necessarily tropical regions.

Palm oil use is not going to go away, but this work may point a way to help slow down the destruction of ecosystems and animal habitats as well lead to more sustainable and healthy food sources.

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U of G Food Scientists Find Palm Oil Alternative That’s Good for Human, Planet Health

Photo, posted February 21, 2010, courtesy of Craig Morey via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Green Hydrogen | Earth Wise

December 11, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Saudi Arabia is a country built around oil, but it is now placing a big bet on green hydrogen as the next big thing in its energy future. The country is constructing a $500 billion futuristic city called Neom in the desert along the Red Sea. The brand-new city will be home to a million people, and it will be powered by green hydrogen.

The U.S. company Air Products & Chemicals has been building a green hydrogen plant there for the last four years. The giant plant will be powered by 4 gigawatts of wind and solar projects.

Green hydrogen is hydrogen produced without carbon emissions. Most hydrogen produced commercially is made from natural gas, which results in CO₂ emissions. Green hydrogen is made by using electricity to split water into its component elements using renewable energy to power the process.

Saudi Arabia is an ideal place for a giant green hydrogen plant. The Middle East has the world’s cheapest wind and solar power. The sun reliably shines there almost every day and the wind blows almost every night.

While some proponents argue that hydrogen should fuel the entire energy system, other experts see it as a more targeted solution. The view is that wind and solar power can provide the electricity we need to power homes and electric cars. However, green hydrogen could be ideal to power energy-intensive industries like concrete and steel manufacturing, as well as parts of the transportation sector that are more difficult to electrify.

While green hydrogen is barely on the radar in the US, around the world a green hydrogen rush is underway, developing it as an energy source that could help end the reign of fossil fuels.

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Green Hydrogen: Could It Be Key to a Carbon-Free Economy?

Photo, posted November 6, 2020, courtesy of RSM Chrystie via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Fuel From Lignin | Earth Wise

November 26, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Lignin is an organic polymer that provides the rigid structure of plants and is what gives wood and bark their characteristic properties. Lignin typically comprises between 20 and 35% of the mass of wood. The two major substances extracted from trees, grasses, and other biomass materials are cellulose and lignin. Cellulose is used to make paper, bioethanol, and other products, but lignin is largely unused because it is difficult to break down into useful substances such as feedstocks for fuels. As a result, lignin is largely wasted. Worldwide, some 50 million tons of lignin are produced from paper and bioethanol manufacturing each year and almost all of that is simply burned to generate heat.

Lignin can be broken down using pyrolysis techniques at high temperatures to create bio-oils, but those oils lack sufficient hydrogen and contain too much oxygen to be useful as fuels. There is a process called hydrodeoxygenation that adds hydrogen and removes oxygen, but it requires high temperatures and very high pressures as well as producing char and tar that reduces the efficiency of the process.

Researchers at Georgia Tech recently published work describing a new process for turning lignin into useful products. They developed a dual catalyst system of super-acid and platinum particles that adds hydrogen and removes oxygen from lignin bio-oil and makes it useful as a fuel and source of chemical feedstocks.

The new process could help meet the growing demand for bio-based oils as well as helping the forest product, paper, and bioethanol industries by providing an additional revenue stream from what previously was a waste product.

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New Process Boosts Lignin Bio-oil as a Next-Generation Fuel

Photo, posted August 16, 2017, courtesy of evcabartakova via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Sustainable Flip-Flops | Earth Wise

September 9, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Flip-flops are the world’s most popular shoe. They are lightweight, comfortable, affordable, and durable. In fact, the global market for flip-flops is expected to reach a whopping $23.8 billion by the year 2025.

But the popularity comes with a price. Flip-flops account for a troubling percentage of plastic waste that ends up in our landfills and oceans. As a result, demand for alternatives is compelling researchers to develop more sustainable versions of the popular footwear.

Scientists at the University of California San Diego have spent years working on this issue, and recently announced a breakthrough. According to a study recently published in Bioresource Technology Reports, the research team has formulated polyurethane foams – made from algae oil – to meet commercial specifications for mid-sole shoes and the foot-bed of flip-flops. In other words, the scientists have created sustainable, biodegradable, and consumer-ready materials that could replace plastics in some footwear.

The UC San Diego scientists collaborated with Algenesis Materials – a technology startup – on the research. Together, they worked to not only create the shoes, but to degrade them as well. The team tested their customized foams by immersing them in traditional compost and soil. The algae-based materials degraded after just 16 weeks.

The life of any material should be proportionate to the life of the product. The researchers point out that it doesn’t make sense to create a product that will last 500 years if it’ll only be used for a year or two.

The research team is currently working on production details with its manufacturing partners. The creation of biodegradable flip-flops that meet commercial footwear standards could eliminate tons of plastic waste from the environment.

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New science behind algae-based flip-flops

Flip Flops Market Size Worth $23.8 Billion by 2025

Photo, posted December 12, 2019, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Fabric To Keep You Cool | Earth Wise

September 1, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

About 10% of all electricity consumption in the U.S. is devoted to keeping us cool with air conditioning and other methods. Researchers at two universities in Shanghai, China have developed a new material that can be made into clothing that cools the wearer without using any electricity.

The new fabric transfers heat, allows moisture to evaporate from the skin, and repels water. Cooling off a person’s body is much more efficient than cooling off an entire room or a building. There have been textiles and types of clothing designed to perform the cooling function, but most of those have disadvantages. These include some combination of poor cooling capacity, high energy consumption, complex and time-consuming manufacturing, and high cost.

The researchers wanted to develop a personal cooling fabric that can efficiently transfer heat away from the body while at the same time being breathable, water resistant and easy to make.

The new fabric is made by electrospinning an ordinary polyurethane polymer with a water-repelling fluorinated version of polyurethane polymer along with a thermally conductive filler composed of boron nitride nanosheets. The resultant material is a nanofibrous membrane that repels water from the outside but has large enough pores to allow sweat to evaporate from the skin and air to circulate.

Tests of the membrane demonstrated higher thermal conductivity than other conventional or high-tech fabrics. Used in clothing, the material would be more effective than previous fabrics in conducting heat away from the body. It may be possible to beat the heat without turning on the AC. These membranes could also be useful for solar energy collection, seawater desalination, and thermal management of electronic devices.

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New fabric could help keep you cool in the summer, even without A/C

Photo courtesy of the American Chemical Society on Youtube.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

New Jersey And Offshore Wind | Earth Wise

July 28, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

New Jersey intends to become a major hub for offshore wind in the United States. The state recently announced a plan to build a 30-acre port along the Delaware River for assembling and deploying wind turbines, as well as an additional 25 acres for manufacturing facilities. The new port is expected to cost as much as $400 million and create 1,500 jobs in southern New Jersey.

The port will be located on an artificial island that was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers early in the 20th century. The island is already home to three nuclear reactors. No bridges exist between the island and the Atlantic Ocean, so turbines that are built at the staging facility could be hoisted upright and towed out to sea without obstruction. Some components are as tall as 500 feet and when fully constructed on the ocean, the turbines selected for New Jersey’s first offshore wind project will be more than 850 feet tall.

A second phase of the program would add over 150 acres to accommodate extensive manufacturing facilities for turbine components like blades and nacelles.

Construction on the port is expected to start next year. New Jersey has pledged to produce 7,500 megawatts of offshore wind energy by 2035 and to generate 100% of its electricity from renewables by 2050. Apart from deploying offshore wind, New Jersey wants to have a significant piece of the supply chain for what is likely to be a growing industry along the northeast coast. The state views offshore wind as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to not only protect the environment but also greatly expand its economy in a way that has immediate impacts and long-term growth.

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New Jersey Announces $400 Million Offshore Wind Port

Photo, posted September 18, 2010, courtesy of Vattenfall Nederland via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Safe And Simple Hydrogen Peroxide

November 29, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

We don’t think about hydrogen peroxide very often. Perhaps we have a bottle of it under our bathroom sink that we haven’t touched in a few years. But it is an important product manufactured in the millions of tons each year and the basis of a $6 billion global business.

Hydrogen peroxide is widely used as an antiseptic, a detergent, in cosmetics, as a bleaching agent, in water purification, and in many other applications. It is produced in industrial concentrations of up to 60% in solution with water in order to maximize the economics of transportation. This makes transportation hazardous and costly because the concentrated form is unstable. Most applications use a far more diluted form.

Researchers at Rice University have developed a new method for producing hydrogen peroxide that is much simpler and safer than the current technology, which actually dates back to the 1930s. The Rice technique requires only air, water and electricity to produce the chemical. The electrosynthesis process, which is detailed in the journal Science, uses an oxidized carbon nanoparticle-based catalyst.

The process could enable point-of-use production of pure hydrogen peroxide solutions, which would eliminate the need to transport the hazardous concentrated chemical. The use of a solid electrolyte instead of the traditional liquid electrolyte eliminates the need for product separation or purification that is part of the current technology.

In the future, instead of storing containers of hydrogen peroxide, hospitals that use it as a disinfectant could turn on a spigot and get, for example a 3% solution on demand. Instead of storing chemicals to disinfect swimming pool water, future homeowners could flick a switch and turn on their peroxide reactor to clean their pools.

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Water + air + electricity = hydrogen peroxide

Photo, posted April 19, 2009, courtesy of Robert Taylor via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Emissions-Free Cement

October 29, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The production of cement – which is the world’s leading construction material – is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for about 8% of global man-made emissions.

Cement production produces carbon dioxide in two ways: from a key chemical process and from burning fuel to produce the cement. The process of making “clinker” – the key constituent of cement – emits the largest amount of CO2. Raw materials, mainly limestone and clay – are fed into huge kilns and heated to over 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, requiring lots of fossil fuel. This calcination process splits the material into calcium oxide and CO2. The so-called clinker is then mixed with gypsum and limestone to produce cement.

A team of researchers at MIT has come up with a new way of manufacturing cement that greatly reduces the carbon emissions. The new process makes use of an electrolyzer, where a battery is hooked up to two electrodes in water producing oxygen at one electrode and hydrogen at the other. The oxygen-evolving electrode produces acid and the hydrogen-evolving electrode produces a base. In the new process, pulverized limestone is dissolved in the acid at one electrode and calcium hydroxide precipitates out as a solid at the other.

High-purity carbon dioxide is released at the acid electrode, but it can be easily captured for further use such as the production of liquid fuels or even in carbonated beverages and dry ice. The new approach could eliminate the use of fossil fuels in the heating process, substituting electricity generated from renewable sources.

The process looks to be scalable and represents a possible approach to greatly reducing one of the perhaps lesser known but nevertheless very significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

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New approach suggests path to emissions-free cement

Photo, posted March 26, 2014, courtesy of Michael Coghlan via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Return Of An Old Threat

July 3, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The 1987 signing of the Montreal Protocol was one of the biggest victories for global environmental stewardship. The 197 signatory nations banded together to address a planetary emergency: the depletion of the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere resulting from the use of chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs.

Over the years, there were celebratory headlines like “The Earth’s Ozone Hole is Shrinking” and “Without the Ozone Treaty, You’d Get Sunburned in 5 Minutes”. And indeed, the hole in the ozone layer has shrunk over time.

However, the presence of CFCs in the atmosphere is continually monitored and studies in recent years reported new emissions of about 13,000 tons of CFC-11 a year from somewhere in eastern Asia starting in 2012. That was two years after the 2010 date for ending all CFC production under the terms of the Montreal Protocol.

A new study published in Nature has pinned down the source of more than half of the new CFC emissions to the provinces of Shandong and Hebei on the northeastern coast of China. The bulk of these emissions are believed to come from small factories using the chemical to manufacture foam insulation used in refrigerators and buildings.

The Chinese government has already shut down two manufacturing locations, but undercover agents have found that 18 out of 21 manufacturers in the region are using the banned substance. They appear to be quite adept at circumventing enforcement.

The new emissions aren’t large enough so far to be catastrophic, but the Chinese government needs to crack down on this illegal activity. It is difficult to stop because these are small companies operating in meth lab-like facilities. Saving the earth’s atmosphere from ourselves is a tricky business.

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How an Illicit Chemical Is Jeopardizing Recovery of the Ozone Layer

Photo, posted July 28, 2012, courtesy of Beth Scupham via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Antibiotics In The Environment

June 6, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Antibiotics make their way into the environment in many ways. Sources of antibiotic pollution include the waste from large-scale animal farms and the wastewater from hospitals, municipalities, and antibiotic manufacturing.

A new study has discovered concentrations of antibiotics in some of the world’s rivers exceed safe levels by up to 300 times. In the project, researchers looked for 14 commonly used antibiotics in rivers in 72 countries across six continents. They found antibiotics at 65% of all the sites they examined.

The antibiotic ciproflaxacin was the compound that most frequently exceeded safe levels, surpassing that threshold in 51 places. The antibiotic metronidazole exceeded safe levels by the biggest margin. Concentrations of this antibiotic at one site in Bangladesh was 300 times greater than the safe level. The most prevalent antibiotic was trimethoprim. It was detected at 307 of the 711 sites.

Some of the world’s most iconic rivers were sampled as a part of this study, including the Danube, Mekong, Seine, Thames, Tiber and Tigris.

The project, which was led by the University of York, found that high-risk sites were often located near wastewater treatment systems, waste or sewage dumps, and in some areas of political unrest.

Safe levels for antibiotics, which were recently established by the AMR Industry Alliance, range from 20,000 to 32,000 nanograms per liter depending on the compound.

According to the research team, solutions to the problem of antibiotic contamination should include infrastructure investment, tighter regulation, and the remediation of already contaminated sites.

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Antibiotics found in some of the world’s rivers exceed ‘safe’ levels, global study finds

Photo, posted October 7, 2013, courtesy of Nicola via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Another Way To Make Solar Cells

March 21, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Millions of rooftops now contain solar panels and the majority of the solar cells that make up those panels today are made from silicon. Silicon solar cells require expensive, multi-step processing conducted at very high temperatures in special clean room facilities. Despite these complications, the price of solar panels has continued to drop dramatically over the years.

But even as the price of solar cells gets lower and lower, there are still widespread efforts to find even better ways to make them. One of those ways is with perovskite solar cells. Perovskites are materials with a characteristic crystal structure and are quite common in nature. Perovskites can be formed with a wide range of elements and can exhibit a variety of properties.

They were first used to make solar cells about 10 years ago and those first cells were unimpressive in most respects. However, there has been steady progress since that time. The potential advantages of perovskite solar cells are that they can be made from low-cost materials and can be manufactured using liquid chemistry, a far cheaper process than what is used to make silicon cells.

Researchers at MIT and several other institutions have recently published the results of research on how to tailor the composition of perovskite solar cells to optimize their properties. What used to be a trial-and-error process can now become much more engineered and should lead to perovskite solar cells with performance that could exceed that of silicon cells.

Silicon solar panels are a huge, worldwide industry and displacing them in favor of an alternative technology is a tall order. But if perovskite cells can be optimized for large-scale manufacturability, efficiency and durability, they could definitely give silicon a run for its money.

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