Science has been calling it for much longer: climate change and destruction of our ecosystem are one of the biggest problems of our time. Something needs to be done to protect our planet. Fortunately, more and more green initiatives are emerging. In the past year, too, a number of extraordinary technical innovations were devised to make our world a little greener. We have listed some of them.
A 3D printer for recycled plastic
Dutch boys Nout and Sam built a 3D printer for recycled plastic earlier this year. With it, they can make new products. Because the printer has a large nozzle, it doesn't matter if the plastic has small contaminants.
Reactor to extract energy from poopy nappies
One of the latest initiatives when it comes to circular economy is recycling used nappies. Waste processing company ARN in Weurt has developed a special reactor for it that has been tested on a small scale. From the end of this year, nappies will be recycled on a large scale.
Cleaning city air
One of the most recent developments we wrote about on Maakindustrie.nl is an initiative by the municipality of Eindhoven to clean city air. Over the next three months, a trial will take place in which fine dust and soot will be cleaned from city air via car park ventilation and clean air will be blown into the city. This could substantially improve the city's air quality.
Solar paint
Solar paint definitely experienced a commercial breakthrough in 2017. This solar-powered paint can be applied to the exterior walls of a house and draws energy from water vapour. RMIT University, among others, came up with a form of solar paint that contains a new material: synthetic molybdenum sulphide. This material absorbs moisture. The system works wherever there is water vapour in the air.
A paint was also developed that allows buildings to be cooled by the sun. The paint is based on the principles of laser cooling.
Automated kitchen composting
There are more and more innovations on the market that deal with the self-processing of leftover kitchen waste, think food scraps. For instance, Whirlpool came up with an integrated system that allows you to process food scraps into compost. The Zera system works on airflow, high heat, internal mechanical action and a package of coconut husks to finely grind the food and turn it into fertiliser. A group of environmental enthusiasts raised nearly half a million dollars via Kickstarter for their HomeBiogas 2.0 system. This is kind of inflatable tank into which you can throw food. These are then converted into gas or water.
Edible water bubbles
The startup Skipping Rocks Lab focuses on sustainable packaging. Among other things, they came up with the Ooho: an 'edible' water ball. These break open in your mouth and should thus be an eco-friendly replacement for plastic bottles. The spherical, flexible packaging can also be used for other liquids, including soft drinks, spirits and cosmetics. The material used for Ooho is cheaper than plastic, according to its makers.
Special factory against global warming
In Switzerland this year, the first commercial plant was commissioned that extracts CO2 from the air and passes it on to businesses and consumers. The company behind the plant, Climeworks, aims to capture 1 per cent of global CO2 emissions by 2025. Although the amount of CO2 is only a small fraction of what companies and climate activists hope to capture in large fossil fuel plants, Climeworks argues that its iniative is a first step in the goal of capturing 1 per cent of global CO2 emissions with similar technology. To do that, there would need to be 250,000 plants of the same kind.
Storing renewable energy
Alphabet X, the former Google X and a branch of Google's parent company, went to work on a system to store energy produced from renewable sources. With the Malta project, scientists from the company are looking for a cost-effective technology to store renewable energy so that demand for electricity can be met when it is available. Tesla is also working on such a storage system.
By: Kelly Bakker
Source: Maakindustrie.nl, Brandpunt, Interesting Engineering.
