Photo: taylar, Creative Commons, Flickr
This month’s best and worst ideas run the gamut from nanopaper to fake meat, with a brief stop for microwave energy and a quick peek at the newest LED technology.
First is nanopaper, a new way to soak up oil spills. This paper, made of nanowires coated with a polymer, soaks up oil spills like an industrial-strength version of Bounty (or what Bounty would be if it lived up to its billing). Since the most current technology for cleaning up oil spills calls for either surfactants – like those found in dish soap, which are toxic to animals, ecosystems and humans – or biological agents like GM-engineered bacteria that eat oil (and can cross genotypes via conjugation, leading to truly virulent bacteria), this nanopaper seems like a really good environmental solution to the ever-present oil spills that plague our modern world.
Best of all, once the paper has done its work, it can be collected and boiled to extract the oil, and then reused. Created by MIT, this nanopaper is expected to arrive in the marketplace sometime toward the end of 2009, and will sell for an estimated $2 per pound. It sounds kind of pricey, until you consider the fact that it soaks up almost 20 times its weight.
Next on the list is cold-pack asphalt, widely used in Europe but seldom found on the approximately 4 million miles of paved road in the United States. The brainchild of Hussain Bahia of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, cold-pack asphalt promises to increase asphalt’s recyclability while reducing its energy consumption.
In the U.S., asphalt is typically made from a byproduct of oil refining, and has to be heated to about 300 degrees (F.) to make it thin enough to spread. As a result, it uses seven times as much energy as its cold-pack cousin, but so far road builders in the U.S. have found cold-pack failing to meet engineering standards. Bahia wants to change that by adding polymers to make cold pack both more durable and quieter, which will result in standards road builders can get behind.
As oil approaches $140 a barrel, and states scale back their road repair projects, Bahia is likely to get the opportunity to put his ideas to the test, since cold-pack asphalt readily incorporates ingredients like cement, rubber and glass that bring its overall cost more in line with state budgets. Add to that the savings from not having to heat it, and the inoffensive smell, and cold pack is likely to be the next road revolution.
Third on the list of best ideas is a superconducting wire from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Superpower of Schenectady, N.Y. This wire, which transmitted a remarkable 158,950 amps-per-meter of current in tests, will go into making transmission cables for energy transmission (and also into transformers, coils and motors). The current standard is about 100,000 amps per meter, and at least 10 percent of that power is lost in transmission due to Joule heating – a loss that decreases at higher voltages and increases over distance. Cooling with liquid nitrogen is expected to further increase the rate of transmission.
Then, of course, there’s my personal favorite, LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, which up to now have failed to find favor with consumers because of their rather dim and indirect light. LEDs are more environmentally friendly than the currently popular CFLs, or compact fluorescent bulbs, because CFLs contain mercury, which is toxic to living organisms and difficult to dispose of. LEDs are made from semiconducting compounds (think gallium, nitrogen or even silicon) but no mercury.
These second-generation LEDs provide directional lighting at phenomenal energy savings – even greater than CFLs – and now provide an evenly distributed field of light as well, which was one of the chief drawbacks to commercialization, thanks to novel new lenses. Expect to see them in stores within a year, hopefully at a price which makes them competitive with CFLs.
Microwave ovens have been around for a long time, but a new use of microwave technology – killing plants and animals that hide in ship’s ballast waters – provides environmental remediation for a problem that is already critically impacting the Great Lakes, namely invasive species. These invaders – from the infamous zebra mussel that has almost obliterated native mussels and contributed to the spread of avian botulism, to the mud byfnia which is killing off the lesser scaup – are wreaking havoc in aquatic habitats from New York to Minnesota. This technology makes the Ballast Water Management Act (2007) and the proposed Great Lakes Collaboration Implementation Act that much more effective at preserving the Great Lakes, which represent the greatest mass of fresh water in North America and a potential lifesaver in the face of global warming.
Further down on the list of ways to save the planet is harnessing the ocean to provide energy. Variously known as wave power, or tidal power, these proposals intend to harness the force of moving water to provide electricity to the 44 percent of the world’s population that lives within 100 miles of a coast. These proposals face the same drawbacks presented by hydropower; namely impacting aquatic populations with artificial constructs like underwater dams, or linked turbines. With the ocean’s species already facing difficulties from global warming and ocean acidification – and with much of the world’s population dependent on diminishing fish supplies – I think this might be a bad, if inevitable, proposal.
The EU is currently testing ocean power off the Orkney Islands on the northern coast of Scotland, famous for its wild waves and chilling water. In the U.S., a pilot program under the aegis of the FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) off the coast of Washington state is still waiting on environmental approval. Given the condition of salmon stocks, the citizens of Washington are not likely to vote yes.
Last on the list is in vitro meat, or test-tube Porterhouse, a technology which proposes to raise beef, not on the hoof, but in a laboratory.
Not only is the idea offensive from an ethical (or vegetarian) point of view, but the resultant product is likely to taste like cardboard. There is a reason cows walk around and eat grass, folks, and it ain’t just about cardiovascular health. It’s about cellular development evolved over thousands of years into a viable, if unnecessary, source of protein. Like Lisa Lange, the head of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), I think I would rather consume roadkill. The idea of meat from a test tube is somehow creepier than that scene from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where the dog wears a human head. But maybe that’s just me.
Let me know what you think, and add your own comments on revolutionary technologies that just might save the only habitable planet in the solar system.