Fortified with iron: It’s not just for breakfast cereal anymore. University of Illinois researchers have demonstrated a simpler method of adding iron to tiny carbon spheres to create catalytic materials that have the potential to remove contaminants from gas or liquid. Civil and environmental engineering professor Mark Rood, graduate student John Atkinson and their team described their technique in the journal Carbon.

Carbon structures can be a support base for catalysts, such as iron and other metals. Iron is a readily available, low-cost catalyst with possible catalytic applications for fuel cells and environmental applications for adsorbing harmful chemicals, such as arsenic or carbon monoxide. Researchers produce a carbon matrix that has many pores or tunnels, like a sponge. The large surface area created by the pores provides sites to disperse tiny iron particles throughout the matrix.

A common source of carbon is coal. Typically, scientists modify coal-based materials into highly porous activated carbon and then add a catalyst. The multi-step process takes time and enormous amounts of energy. In addition, materials made with coal are plagued by ash, which can contain traces of other metals that interfere with the reactivity of the carbon-based catalyst. The Illinois team’s ash-free, inexpensive process takes its carbon from sugar rather than coal.

In one continuous process, it produces tiny, micrometer-sized spheres of porous, spongy carbon embedded with iron nanoparticles — all in the span of a few seconds.

“That’s what really sets this apart from other techniques. Some people have carbonized and impregnated with iron, but they have no surface area. Other people have surface area but weren’t able to load it with iron,” Atkinson said. “Our technique provides both the carbon surface and the iron nanoparticles.”

The researchers built upon a technique called ultrasonic spray pyrolysis (USP), developed in U. of I. chemistry professor Kenneth Suslick’s lab in 2005. Suslick used a household humidifier to make fine mist from a carbon-rich solution, then directed the mist through an extremely hot furnace, which evaporated the water from each droplet and left tiny, highly porous carbon spheres.

Atkinson used USP to make his carbon spheres, but added an iron-containing salt to a carbon-rich sugar solution. When the mist is piped into the furnace, the heat stimulates a chemical reaction between the solution ingredients that creates carbon spheres with iron particles dispersed throughout.

“We were able to take advantage of Dr. Suslick’s USP technique, and we are building upon it by simultaneously impregnating the porous carbons with metal nanoparticles,” Atkinson said. “It’s simple because it’s continuous. We can isolate the carbon, add pores, and impregnate iron into the carbon spheres in a single step.”

Another advantage of the USP technique is the ability to create materials to address particular needs. By fabricating the material from scratch, rather than trying to modify off-the-shelf products, scientists and engineers can develop materials for specific problem-solving scenarios.

“Right now, you take coal out of the ground and modify it. It’s difficult to tailor it to solve a particular air quality problem,” Rood said. “We can readily change this new material by how it’s activated to tailor its surface area and the amount of impregnated iron. This method is simple, flexible and tailorable.”

Next, the researchers will explore applications for the material. Rood and Atkinson have received two grants from the National Science Foundation to develop the carbon-iron spheres to remove nitric oxide, mercury, and dioxin from gas streams — bioaccumulating pollutants that have caused concern as emissions from combustion sources.

Currently, the three pollutants can be dealt with separately by carbon-based adsorbents and catalysts, but the Illinois team and collaborators in Taiwan hope to harness carbon’s adsorption properties and iron’s reactivity to remove all three pollutants from gas streams simultaneously.

“We’re looking at taking advantage of their porosity and, ideally, their catalytic applications as well,” Atkinson said. “Carbon is a very versatile material. What’s in my mind is a multi-pollutant control where you can use the porosity and the catalyst to tackle two problems at once.”

EPRI, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Air and Waste Management Association, and the University of Illinois supported this work. Co-authors included Suslick, graduate student Maria Fortunato, and researchers from the Illinois State Geological Survey.

Microbes could soon be used to convert metallic wastes into high-value catalysts for generating clean energy, say scientists writing in the September issue of Microbiology.

Researchers from the School of Biosciences at the University of Birmingham have discovered the mechanisms that allow the common soil bacterium Desulfovibrio desulfuricans to recover the precious metal palladium from industrial waste sources.

Palladium is one of the platinum group metals (PGMs) which are among the most precious resources on earth. They possess a wide variety of applications, due to their exceptional chemical properties. PGMs are routinely used in many catalytic systems and are the active elements of autocatalytic converters that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Dr Kevin Deplanche who led the study explained why new ways of recovering PGMs are needed. “These metals are a finite resource and this is reflected in their high market value,” he said. “Over the last 10 years, demand has consistently outstripped supply and so research into alternative ways of recovering palladium from secondary sources is paramount to ensuring future availability of this resource.”

Previous work in the team’s lab showed that Desulfovibrio desulfuricans was able to reduce palladium in industrial wastes into metallic nanoparticles with biocatalytic activity. Now, the precise molecules involved in the reduction process have been identified. Hydrogenase enzymes located on the surface membrane of the bacterium carry out the reduction of palladium, which results in the accumulation of catalytic nanoparticles. The bacterial cells coated with palladium nanoparticles are known as ‘BioPd.”

The group believes that BioPd has great potential to be used for generating clean energy. “Research in our group has shown that BioPd is an excellent catalyst for the treatment of persistent pollutants, such as chromium, that is used in the paint industry. BioPd could even be used in a proton exchange fuel cell to make clean electricity from hydrogen,” said Dr Deplanche. “Our ultimate aim is to develop a one-step technology that allows for the conversion of metallic wastes into high value catalysts for green chemistry and clean energy generation,” he said.

French fries in the deep fryer. Don't pour that dirty fat from the fryer down the sink -- it could be used to make the fuel of the future. (Credit: iStockphoto)

Don’t pour that dirty fat from the fryer down the sink — it could be used to make the fuel of the future.

Hydrogen has been tipped as a cleaner, greener alternative to fossil fuels. But scientists have struggled to find a way to make it that doesn’t consume vast amounts of energy, use up scarce natural resources, or spew out high levels of greenhouse gas.

Researchers at the University of Leeds have now found an energy-efficient way to make hydrogen out of used vegetable oils discarded by restaurants, takeaways and pubs. Not only does the process generate some of the energy needed to make the hydrogen gas itself, it is also essentially carbon-neutral.

“We are working towards a vision of the hydrogen economy,” said Dr Valerie Dupont, who is leading the Leeds-based project. “Hydrogen -based fuel could potentially be used to run our cars or even drive larger scale power plants, generating the electricity we need to light our buildings, run our kettles and fridges, and power our computers. But hydrogen does not occur naturally, it has to be made. With this process, we can do that in a sustainable way by recycling waste materials, such as used cooking oil.”

Hydrogen can already be made quite easily from simple fossil fuels, such as natural gas. The fuel is mixed with steam in the presence of a metal catalyst then heated to above 800 degrees centigrade to form hydrogen and carbon dioxide.

However when much more complex fuels are used, such as waste vegetable oil, it is difficult to make very much hydrogen using this method without raising the temperature even further. The reactions could be run at lower temperatures but the catalysts would quickly become poisoned by residues left over from the dirty oil. In short, the process is not only expensive but also environmentally unsound.

Dr Dupont and colleagues have perfected a two-stage process that is essentially self-heating. To begin, the nickel catalyst is blasted with air to form nickel oxide — an ‘exothermic’ process that can raise the starting temperature of 650 degrees by another 200 degrees. The fuel and steam mixture then reacts with the hot nickel oxide to make hydrogen and carbon dioxide.

The researchers also added a special ’sorbent’ material to trap all the carbon dioxide produced, leaving them with pure hydrogen gas. This trick eliminated the greenhouse gas emissions and also forced the reaction to keep running, increasing the amount of hydrogen made.

“The hydrogen starts to be made almost straight away, you don’t have to wait for all of the catalyst to be turned into pure nickel,” Dr Dupont said. “So as well as the generation of heat, this is another way that makes the process very efficient.”

The researchers have shown that the two-stage process works well in a small, test reactor. They now want to scale-up the trials and make larger volumes of hydrogen gas over longer periods of time.

“The beauty of this technology is that it can be operated at any scale. It is just as suitable for use at a filling station as at a small power plant,” Dr Dupont said. “If we could create more of our electricity locally using hydrogen-powered fuel cells, then we could cut the amount of energy lost during transmission down power lines.”

Details of the work will be published in the journal Bioresource Technology.

The project was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and benefited from industrial collaboration with Johnson Matthey.

A new process that simultaneously combines the light and heat of solar radiation to generate electricity could offer more than double the efficiency of existing solar cell technology, say the Stanford engineers who discovered it and proved that it works. The process, called “photon enhanced thermionic emission,” or PETE, could reduce the costs of solar energy production enough for it to compete with oil as an energy source.

Stanford engineers have figured out how to simultaneously use the light and heat of the sun to generate electricity in a way that could make solar power production more than twice as efficient as existing methods and potentially cheap enough to compete with oil.

Unlike photovoltaic technology currently used in solar panels — which becomes less efficient as the temperature rises — the new process excels at higher temperatures.

Called “photon enhanced thermionic emission,” or PETE, the process promises to surpass the efficiency of existing photovoltaic and thermal conversion technologies.

“This is really a conceptual breakthrough, a new energy conversion process, not just a new material or a slightly different tweak,” said Nick Melosh, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering, who led the research group. “It is actually something fundamentally different about how you can harvest energy.”

And the materials needed to build a device to make the process work are cheap and easily available, meaning the power that comes from it will be affordable.

Melosh is senior author of a paper describing the tests the researchers conducted. It was published this week in Nature Materials.

“Just demonstrating that the process worked was a big deal,” Melosh said. “And we showed this physical mechanism does exist, it works as advertised.”

Most photovoltaic cells, such as those used in rooftop solar panels, use the semiconducting material silicon to convert the energy from photons of light to electricity. But the cells can only use a portion of the light spectrum, with the rest just generating heat.

This heat from unused sunlight and inefficiencies in the cells themselves account for a loss of more than 50 percent of the initial solar energy reaching the cell.

If this wasted heat energy could somehow be harvested, solar cells could be much more efficient. The problem has been that high temperatures are necessary to power heat-based conversion systems, yet solar cell efficiency rapidly decreases at higher temperatures.

Until now, no one had come up with a way to wed thermal and solar cell conversion technologies.

Melosh’s group figured out that by coating a piece of semiconducting material with a thin layer of the metal cesium, it made the material able to use both light and heat to generate electricity.

“What we’ve demonstrated is a new physical process that is not based on standard photovoltaic mechanisms, but can give you a photovoltaic-like response at very high temperatures,” Melosh said. “In fact, it works better at higher temperatures. The higher the better.”

While most silicon solar cells have been rendered inert by the time the temperature reaches 100 degrees Celsius, the PETE device doesn’t hit peak efficiency until it is well over 200 degrees C.

Because PETE performs best at temperatures well in excess of what a rooftop solar panel would reach, the devices will work best in solar concentrators such as parabolic dishes, which can get as hot as 800 degrees C. Dishes are used in large solar farms similar to those proposed for the Mojave Desert in Southern California and usually include a thermal conversion mechanism as part of their design, which offers another opportunity for PETE to help generate electricity, as well as minimizing costs by meshing with existing technology.

“The light would come in and hit our PETE device first, where we would take advantage of both the incident light and the heat that it produces, and then we would dump the waste heat to their existing thermal conversion systems,” Melosh said. “So the PETE process has two really big benefits in energy production over normal technology.”

Photovoltaic systems never get hot enough for their waste heat to be useful in thermal energy conversion, but the high temperatures at which PETE performs are perfect for generating usable high temperature waste heat. Melosh calculates the PETE process can get to 50 percent efficiency or more under solar concentration, but if combined with a thermal conversion cycle, could reach 55 or even 60 percent — almost triple the efficiency of existing systems.

The team would like to design the devices so they could be easily bolted on to existing systems, making conversion relatively inexpensive.

The researchers used a gallium nitride semiconductor in the “proof of concept” tests. The efficiency they achieved in their testing was well below what they have calculated PETE’s potential efficiency to be, which they had anticipated. But they used gallium nitride because it was the only material that had shown indications of being able to withstand the high temperature range they were interested in and still have the PETE process occur.

With the right material — most likely a semiconductor such as gallium arsenide, which is used in a host of common household electronics — the actual efficiency of the process could reach up to the 50 or 60 percent the researchers have calculated. They are already exploring other materials that might work.

Another advantage of the PETE system is that by using it in solar concentrators, the amount of semiconductor material needed for a device is quite small.

“For each device, we are figuring something like a six-inch wafer of actual material is all that is needed,” Melosh said. “So the material cost in this is not really an issue for us, unlike the way it is for large solar panels of silicon.”

The cost of materials has been one of the limiting factors in the development of the solar power industry, so reducing the amount of investment capital needed to build a solar farm is a big advance.

“The PETE process could really give the feasibility of solar power a big boost,” Melosh said. “Even if we don’t achieve perfect efficiency, let’s say we give a 10 percent boost to the efficiency of solar conversion, going from 20 percent efficiency to 30 percent, that is still a 50 percent increase overall.”

And that is still a big enough increase that it could make solar energy competitive with oil.

The research was largely funded by the Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford and the Stanford Institute for Materials Energy Systems, which is a joint venture of Stanford and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, with additional support from the Department of Energy and DARPA.

The process that lights up big-screen plasma TV displays is getting a new life in producing ultra-clean fuels, according to a report presented March 22 at the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). It described a small, low-tech, inexpensive device called a GlidArc reactor that uses electrically-charged clouds of gas called “plasmas” to produce in three steps super-clean fuels from waste materials. One is a diesel fuel that releases 10 times less air pollution than its notoriously sooty, smelly conventional counterpart.

“Low-tech and low cost are the guiding principles behind the GlidArc reactors,” said Albin Czernichowski, Ph.D., who presented the report. “Almost all the parts could be bought at your local hardware or home supply store. We use common ‘plumber’ piping and connections, for instance, and ordinary home insulation. Instead of sophisticated ceramics, we use the kind of heat-resistant concrete that might go into a home fireplace. You could build one in a few days for about $10,000.”

Czernichowski noted that the reactors, about the size of a refrigerator, are custom designed to clean dirty gases produced by a low-tech gasification of locally available wastes, biomass, or other resources to produce clean mix of carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas to synthesize biofuels. Corn farming regions, for instance, could use corn stover (leaves and stalks left in the field after harvest) as the raw material. In urban areas, waste cooking oil from restaurants could be the raw material. In regions that produce biodiesel fuel, glycerol could be converted into clean fuels. Czernichowski pointed out production of biofuels results in huge amounts of glycerol byproduct — 200 pounds for every 2,000 pounds of biodiesel. The glycerol is expensive to refine to the high purity needed for commercial use. GlidArc reactors could transform glycerol into a clean synthesis gas (the carbon monoxide and hydrogen) for production of fuels, he said.

A professor with the University of Orleans, France, Czernichowski realized in 1986 that a branch of science called non-equilibrium cold plasma could be used to produce new transportation fuels that are less polluting than their conventional counterparts as they lack harmful substances found in traditional transportation fuels.

The technology gets it name from the use of a gliding arc of electricity to that produces a plasma inside the reactor. The plasma allows chemical reactions to occur at dramatically reduced temperatures. Gases from heating (pyrolyse or gasification) biomass or glycerol, for instance, become clean and chemically active, and this allows for the transformation of those materials into clean fuels.

“The main advantage of such biobased fuels that the GlidArc Technology can create is that they constitute “drop-in replacements” for fossil Diesel oil, gasoline or kerosene, and no modifications are needed in engines, vehicles and distribution systems,” Czernichowski said. “The biofuels can also be used as additives to various types of engine fuels to improve certain fuel properties. Another important advantage, of course, is their much lower toxicity for mankind and the environment compared to conventional fuels.”

Coal-tar-based sealcoat — the black, shiny substance sprayed or painted on many parking lots, driveways, and playgrounds — has been linked to elevated concentrations of the contaminants polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in house dust. Apartments with adjacent parking lots treated with the coal-tar based sealcoat contained house dust with much higher concentrations of PAHs than apartments next to other types of parking lots, according to new research published online in Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T).

The study was conducted in Austin, Texas, by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Coal tar is a byproduct of the coking of coal, and can contain 50 percent or more PAHs by weight. Coal-tar-based pavement sealants therefore have very high levels of PAHs compared to other PAH sources (e.g., soot, vehicle emissions, used motor oil). PAHs are an environmental health issue because several are probable human carcinogens and they are toxic to fish and other aquatic life.

Small particles of sealcoat, which contains extremely high concentrations of PAHs, likely are tracked indoors by residents after they walk across the parking lot. The study found that apartments adjacent to coal-tar-sealcoated parking lots contained concentrations of PAHs in house dust with that were 25 times higher than in house dust from apartments with concrete, asphalt, or asphalt-based sealcoat parking lot surfaces. The study also found that dust directly on the coal-tar-sealcoated parking lots had PAH concentrations that were 530 times higher than in dust on the parking lots without coal-tar sealcoat.

“These findings represent a breakthrough in our understanding of one of the important sources of these contaminants in house dust and how these contaminants can move from outdoors to indoors. The study provides evidence that will be potentially useful for policy makers,” said Bob Joseph, Director of the USGS Texas Water Science Center.

In the past, several factors have been thought to affect PAH concentrations in house dust, including tobacco smoking and frequency of vacuuming. Researchers have had little success, however, demonstrating a relation between any of those factors and PAH concentrations.

Sealcoat products are widely used in the U.S., both commercially and by homeowners on their driveways. The products are commonly applied to parking lots of commercial businesses (including strip malls and shopping centers); apartment and condominium complexes; churches, schools, and business parks; residential driveways; and playgrounds. The City of Austin, Texas, estimates that before a ban on use of coal-tar-based sealcoat in 2006, about 660,000 gallons of sealcoat was applied every year in the city. The sealcoat wears off of the surface relatively rapidly, especially in areas of high traffic, and manufacturers recommend resealing every three to five years.

Two kinds of sealcoat products are widely used: coal-tar-emulsion based products and asphalt-emulsion based products. National use numbers are not available; however, previous research suggests that asphalt-based sealcoat is more commonly used on the West Coast, and coal-tar based sealcoat is more commonly used in the Midwest, the South, and on the East Coast.

Previous research by the same group of USGS scientists, published earlier in 2009, demonstrated that dust from sealcoated parking lots in cities east of the Continental Divide had concentrations of PAHs that were about 1,000 times higher than in dust from sealcoated parking lots in cities west of the Continental Divide.

Australia’s own distinctive red soils could play a part in the formation of the stinking swathes of blue-green algae often shovelled off east coast beaches in summer.

A QUT team of scientists is taking an in-depth look at how iron, which gives our iron-rich soil its red colour, reaches water to potentially contribute to the algal blooms, which not only have a foul smell, but also make our eyes sting, cause fish kills and smother seagrass.

Their research is centred on the catchment of Poona Creek on the Fraser Coast which drains into Great Sandy Strait — a dugong sanctuary and an internationally recognised wetlands for migratory birds.

Iron is known to be a component causative factor for algal blooms but the mechanism by which solid iron in soils becomes soluble and contributes to coastal algae blooms is largely unknown.

That is why the team from QUT’ s Institute for Sustainable Resources is taking the three-pronged approach of microbiology (biogeochemistry),

geochemistry and hydrology studies to put together enough pieces of the iron jigsaw to form the basis for future research into mitigating its contribution to dangerous algal blooms.

PhD student Lin Chaofeng is studying two types of bacteria in water that “feed on” iron.

“One type of bacteria in our waterways changes iron into a dissolved state and another type of bacteria oxidises the iron and turns it back into a insoluble form which can settle on the bottom of a creek ,” Ms Lin said.

“The oxidising type of bacteria possibly makes the iron less available as a contributing factor in algal blooms. It seems that these two bacteria usually balance each other out, but sometimes the balance is upset and so I am investigating how this happens.”

QUT geology student Stefan Loehr is studying soil and sediment samples from the catchment to analyse their iron content and search for possible contributory mechanisms for iron dissolving in water.

He has studied the concentration of iron in soil in native vegetation and in pine plantations and found no significant difference in iron concentrations.

“It could be that different types of plants lead iron to be more easily soluble and so I am also investigating whether there are any differences between natural vegetation and plantation areas,” Mr Loehr said.

Hydrology student Genevieve Larsen’s study of subsurface and surface water and flow processes is aimed at finding out how the iron gets from the ground into the water, and the chemical reactions that may take place when groundwater interacts in the estuary with the marine environment.

“I’m looking for possible links between subsurface water and natural waterways such as streams, creeks and the sea,” Ms Larsen said.

The study is funded jointly by the Queensland Department of Primary Industries-Forestry, Forestry Plantations QLD and the Australian Research Council.

Ethanol — often promoted as a clean-burning, renewable fuel that could help wean the nation from oil — would likely worsen health problems caused by ozone, compared with gasoline, especially in winter, according to a new study led by Stanford researchers.

Ozone production from both gasoline and E85, a blend of gasoline and ethanol that is 85 percent ethanol, is greater in warm sunny weather than during the cold weather and short days of winter, because heat and sunlight contribute to ozone formation. But E85 produces different byproducts of combustion than gasoline and generates substantially more aldehydes, which are precursors to ozone.

“What we found is that at the warmer temperatures, with E85, there is a slight increase in ozone compared to what gasoline would produce,” said Diana Ginnebaugh, a doctoral candidate in civil and environmental engineering, who worked on the study. She will present the results of the study on Tuesday, Dec. 15, at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. “But even a slight increase is a concern, especially in a place like Los Angeles, because you already have episodes of high ozone that you have to be concerned about, so you don’t want any increase.”

But it was at colder temperatures, below freezing, that it appeared the health impacts of E85 would be felt most strongly.

“We found a pretty substantial increase in ozone production from E85 at cold temperatures, relative to gasoline when emissions and atmospheric chemistry alone were considered,” Ginnebaugh said. Although ozone is generally lower under cold-temperature winter conditions, “If you switched to E85, suddenly you could have a place like Denver exceeding ozone health-effects limits and then they would have a health concern that they don’t have now.”

The problem with cold weather emissions arises because the catalytic converters used on vehicles have to warm up before they reach full efficiency. So until they get warm, a larger proportion of pollutants escapes from the tailpipe into the air.

There are other pollutants that would increase in the atmosphere from burning E85 instead of gasoline, some of which are irritants to eyes, throats and lungs, and can also damage crops, but the aldehydes are the biggest contributors to ozone production, as well as being carcinogenic.

Ginnebaugh worked with Mark Z. Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering, using vehicle emissions data from some earlier studies and applying it to the Los Angeles area to model the likely output of pollutants from vehicles.

Because E85 is only now beginning to be used in mass-produced vehicles, the researchers projected for the year 2020, when more “flex fuel” vehicles, which can run on E85, will likely be in use. They estimated that vehicle emissions would be about 60 percent less than today, because automotive technology will likely continue to become cleaner over time. They investigated two scenarios, one that had all the vehicles running on E85 and another in which the vehicles all ran on gasoline.

Running a widely used, complex model involving over 13,000 chemical reactions, they did repeated simulations at different ambient temperatures for the two scenarios, each time simulating a 48-hour period. They used the average ozone concentrations during each of those periods for comparison.

They found that at warm temperatures, from freezing up to 41 degrees Celsius (give F conversion), in bright sunlight, E85 raised the concentration of ozone in the air by up to 7 parts per billion more than produced by gasoline. At cold temperatures, from freezing down to minus 37 degrees Celsius, they found E85 raised ozone concentrations by up to 39 parts per billion more than gasoline.

“What we are saying with these results is that you see an increase,” Ginnebaugh said. “We are not saying that this is the exact magnitude you are going to get in a given urban area, because it is really going to vary from city to city depending on a lot of other factors such as the amount of natural vegetation, traffic levels, and local weather patterns.”

Ginnebaugh said the results of the study represent a preliminary analysis of the impact of E85. More data from studies of the emissions of flex fuel vehicles at various temperatures would help refine the estimates, she said.

Paul Livingstone contributed to the study while he was a postdoctoral researcher in civil and environmental engineering. He now works for the California Air Resources Board.

On 12th January 2010 the “Self” living module was presented publicly for the first time at the Swissbau exhibition in Basel. “Self” is a novel, highly innovative module for working and living which is self-sufficient in energy and water consumption. It includes a bedroom, bathroom, toilet and kitchen and is being used as a test bed and demonstrator for new building concepts and energy technologies by the research institutes Empa and Eawag.

The “Self” living module is designed as a living area and workplace for two persons. It is about the size of a shipping container and is independent of external water and energy supplies. Because the “Self” module is easily transported and can be located almost anywhere without difficulty, it is particularly suitable for temporary use, for example as a mobile research station, an event organizer’s dwelling and office, or as an inhabited advertising vehicle, to name but a few possibilities.

Two undergraduates at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), Bjoern Olsson und Sandro Macchi, designed the Empa concept-demonstrator for their final year project, and since 2008 they have both been working together with the team led by Mark Zimmermann of Empa’s Building Technologies Laboratory on the practical implementation of their design study. As a research and demonstration project “Self” is intended to provide concrete proof that it is possible to live — at least temporarily — without loss of comfort even when making sole use of natural sources of energy. The prototype module, constructed with the help of a wide range of

universities and industrial partners, is being presented for the first time at the Swissbau fair for the construction and real estate sectors held on the Basel Exhibition Site from the 12^th to 16^th January.

Independent of external energy and water supplies

“Self” is 7.7 meters long, 3.45 meters wide and 3.2 meters high. Weighing in at around 5 tonnes, the container can easily be transported by truck or helicopter. The challenge for the two young designers lay in integrating the technical, supply and spatial requirements efficiently while maintaining comfort levels for the inhabitants. Technical input was provided by Empa and Eawag as well as other partner institutions and companies. In order, for example, that two persons might live in “Self” without needing external water supplies, rain water which collects on the roof of the module must be treated to make it potable, and lightly soiled washing water (“gray water”) must be recycled. In the living room a transparent 200 liter fresh water tank makes it clear to the occupants how much water they are using. Making consumption visible is an important feature for the two designers. Bjoern Olsson and Sandro Macchi are convinced that “…abstract consumption s don’t actually mean very much. To change our behavior we need to make resource usage tangible and clearly visible.”

Testing innovative technologies and materials

Hardly any of the features of the “Self” module reflect the current state of the art — nearly everything is made of specially designed and manufactured components, one example being the shell of the container which is made of glass fiber reinforced polymer sandwich. Thermal insulation is provided by high performance vacuum insulating panels, a heat exchanger warms the fresh air using heat extracted from the exhaust air stream, the water filter operates almost without using any electric power and the toilet consumes just one liter of water per flushing cycle.

The project is also testing the practical applications of hydrogen technology — that is the synthesis, storage and usage of hydrogen for cooking and heating, for instance. The gas is generated by electrolysis using environmentally friendly electrical power supplied by solar cells on the roof of the module. Until it is required the hydrogen is stored in containers of metal hydride material, also an Empa-developed first.

For the foreseeable future the “Self” module will be used as a technology demonstrator and be exhibited at trade fairs and shows. Later Empa intends to utilize the module as living quarters for guests or as a research station in the mountains.

Finding alternative feed sources for chickens, pigs and other farm animals will significantly reduce pressure on the world’s dwindling fisheries while contributing positively to climate change, according to University of British Columbia researchers.

“Thirty million tons — or 36 per cent — of the world’s total fisheries catch each year is currently ground up into fishmeal and oil to feed farmed fish, chickens and pigs,” says UBC fisheries researcher Daniel Pauly, co-author of the Oryx: The International Journal of Conservationarticle,  recently published online.

“Meanwhile, 25 per cent of infants in Peru — which produces half of the world’s fishmeal using anchovies — are malnourished,” says Pauly.

In the Oryx article, nine of the world’s leading fisheries and conservation researchers — including four from UBC — reviewed the effectiveness of past conservation campaigns and propose new strategies to effect swifter and larger-scale changes.

“Globally, pigs and chickens alone consume six times the amount of seafood as US consumers and twice that of Japan,” says lead author Jennifer Jacquet, a post-doctoral fellow at UBC’s Fisheries Centre. “Ultimately these farm animals have a greater impact on our seafood supplies than the most successful seafood certification program.”

“We should work to eliminate the use of tasty fish for livestock production. It’s a waste,” says Pauly. “Plus, it is not what pigs or chickens naturally eat. When is the last time you saw a chicken fishing?”

Many sustainable seafood campaigns focus on consumers but ignore large-scale market impacts — such as farming demand for fishmeal — and have failed to reach their goals, say the study’s authors, which include Enric Sala of the National Geographic Society and Rashid Sumaila and Tony Pitcher of UBC.

After pioneering and distributing more than one million seafood wallet cards — pocket-sized guides that advise consumers of ocean-friendly seafood, the Monterey Bay Aquarium conducted a study that revealed no overall change in the market and that fishing pressures had not decreased for targeted species, the study points out.

“Sustainable seafood certification programs such as wallet cards have raised consumer awareness but are far less effective than targeting mega supermarket chains such as Walmart, Whole Foods and Loblaw through a combination of positive and negative publicity campaigns,” says Jacquet, adding that more than 60 per cent of seafood in Canada and half the seafood in the U.S. is sold through supermarkets.

The authors also suggest establishing international standards for labeling sustainable seafood, eliminating harmful fisheries subsidies and leveraging momentum for fisheries conservation through existing global concerns for climate change.

“Global fisheries consume 13 billion gallons of fuel each year just to catch and land fish,” says Jacquet. “That’s more gas than 22 million cars would use. Energy use would be much higher if we include the fuel used to ship fish further for processing and to market. No discussion of the overall impact of fisheries would be complete without clarifying its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.”

“Overall, we’d like to encourage people to engage more as citizens — as they have with the global climate change movement — and less as mere consumers,” said Pauly. “Big problems like overfishing require efforts to be directed at big change.”