materialsscienceandengineering: Novel new packaging products...

materialsscienceandengineering:

Novel new packaging products for a circular economy

The EU DIBBIOPACK project has developed a series of multifunctional packaging products that are bio-based, compostable and biodegradable, and will contribute to the growth of a truly circular economy.

The project has created its innovative packaging from polymers with three sectors in mind – pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and the food industry. These polymers are labelled as ‘smart’ due to bioplastic materials presenting new characteristics that turn them into real actors for product preservation. They do this by increasing product durability, maintaining quality, and reporting to the consumer on content preservation conditions.

Solutions for a circular economy

The materials used to create the packaging products are environmentally-friendly and produced from renewable sources. They are sustainable and contribute to the creation of a circular economy, which is currently a major European ambition following an ambitious package put forward by the European Commission in December 2015.

Currently an average of 200 plastic bags per person per year are used in Europe. The majority of these bags fall under the category of lighter plastic, thus being the least reused and the most difficult to recycle. The same can be said of thousands of bottles and packaging units, of any kind, made from petroleum products. Half of these will be dumped and will take centuries to degrade.

Read more.

Reusing materials. I like.

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thebeakerblog: Should aircraft emissions be more tightly...

thebeakerblog:

Should aircraft emissions be more tightly regulated? 

A recent editorial in Nature seems to think so, saying that while airplanes are a “relatively slight (although growing) contribution to the global-warming problem,” both governments and the industry need to do more to tamp down emissions. 

Most international frameworks to tackle carbon emissions struggle to include aviation. When the European Union tried to encompass emissions from international aviation in its emissions-trading scheme in 2012, it met with widespread protest from the industry and governments.

Read the full editorial in Nature:  “Green Sky Thinking: Environmental agencies must go much further in regulating aircraft emissions if they want to make a real difference.”

(Image Credit: Creative Commons, farhanamoor)

I don’t think there’s any reason that we shouldn’t more tightly regulate airplane emissions.

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thebeakerblog: skunkbear: Morocco just switched on a massive...

thebeakerblog:

skunkbear:

Morocco just switched on a massive solar power plant in the middle of the Sahara Desert. It’s called Noor I. When Noor II and Noor III are built next door, it will be the largest solar power production facility in the world.

Full story here.

Image credits: Fadel Senna/AFP/Getty Images, NASA

Fascinating! -Patrick

Why isn’t the US focusing more of our desert space on solar energy production?

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npr: skunkbear: On April 26, 1986, a power surge caused an...

npr:

skunkbear:

On April 26, 1986, a power surge caused an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat, Ukraine. A large quantity of radioactive material was released.

On May 2, 1986, the Soviet government established a “Zone of Alienation” or “Exclusion Zone” around Chernobyl – a thousand square miles of “radioactive wasteland.” All humans were evacuated. The town of Pripyat was completely abandoned.

But the animals didn’t leave. And a new study, published this month in Current Biology, suggests they are doing fine. “None of our three hypotheses postulating radiation damage to large mammal populations at Chernobyl were supported by the empirical evidence,” says Jim Beasley, one of the researchers.

In fact, some of the populations have grown. These photos (mostly taken by Valeriy Yurko) come from the Belarusian side of the Exclusion Zone, and area called the Polessye State Radioecological Reserve. Kingfisher, elk, boar, baby spotted eagles, wild ponies, moose, rabbits, and wolves all make their home in the park. In some ways, human presence is worse for wildlife than a nuclear disaster.

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Image credits:

• 1986 Chernobyl - ZUFAROV/AFP/Getty Images
  
• Wildlife photos - Valeriy Yurko/Polessye State Radioecological Reserve
  
• Ponies in winter - SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images
  

An interesting look at how wildlife has returned to a place humans have abandoned. -Emily

This is really cool. When humans go extinct, the other animals will take over and thrive.

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materialsscienceandengineering: Organic Photovoltaic Material...

materialsscienceandengineering:

Organic Photovoltaic Material Offers Great Promise for Solar Energy

Scientists at MIT believe modeling electron excitation in organic photovoltaic material could change the future of solar energy.

The semi-conducting plastic is lightweight, flexible, relatively inexpensive, and easy to make. The problem is that, unlike inorganic photovoltaic material, it is not very efficient or stable. But work by Adam Willard, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at MIT, has the potential to change that.

Willard is a theoretical chemist who uses modeling and simulation to study molecular systems. The goal of his research group is to explore and understand the fundamentals and consequences of molecular disorder — which lies at the heart of the challenge posed by organic photovoltaic material.

While organic photovoltaic films may appear smooth and homogeneous to the naked eye, they are extremely disordered at the molecular scale, where they appear as a giant tangle of unaligned molecules. That tangle makes it difficult to understand how electrons, when excited by photons, could more easily travel through the structure and reach an external electrode. Even understanding the behavior of a single electron is a challenge.

Read more.

Hopefully this can get into the market sooner rather than later.

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npr: mashable: You can now 3D print with your used coffee...

randdmag: Authored by Greg Watry, www.rdmag.com Though capable...

randdmag:

Authored by Greg Watry, www.rdmag.com

Though capable in laboratory settings of achieving 25% efficiency, commercially produced silicon solar cells typically reach levels between 13% and 14%.

Challar V. Kumar, of the Univ. of Connecticut’s Dept. of Chemistry, unveiled an edible and digestible light antenna capable of increasing the efficiency of commercial solar panels. He presented his findings at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

Simply put, the process uses an edible protein (bovine serum albumin) and mixes it with a fatty acid from coconut oil. When warmed, the combination forms a gel, made up of around 95% water. The gel is mixed with four dye molecules, allowing the substance to absorb the blue, green and yellow regions of the solar spectrum and emit in the red region. Thus, low-energy photons can successfully be used for electrical currents.

Read more: http://bit.ly/1FgocGx

I mean, this is cool, but I feel like this is a solution to a problem that we don’t really have… People aren’t skipping solar because it’s “not efficient.”

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