The ability to monitoring energy usage and adjusting it according to how much is needed to avoid unnecessary drainage is one of the key ingredients to building a more sustainable future. And a team of researchers at MIT has come up with a clever system that allows you to see exactly how much power each of your devices is using with great accuracy. And the system is also very easy and affordable to install and use.
Air pollution is one of the key problems that need to be overcome in order to secure a more sustainable future for our planet. So it’s great news that a team of scientists from the University of Antwerp and KU Leuven, have devised a process that can both mitigate air pollution as well as provide a clean energy source in the form of hydrogen, at the same time. This device does so using nanomaterials and sunlight. (more…)
Solar powered lamps are great, but they’re usually not pretty. That could be about to change very soon though. The Japanese company Sphelar Power Corporation has recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to start exporting their so-called Lantern, a solar powered lamp that is designed to resemble an hourglass with lovely hardwood accents, which makes it perfect for any home. They also make a handheld version of the lamp called Stick. (more…)
While we have many options for recycling in developed areas of the world, such is not the case in remote, underdeveloped regions. Transporting plastic waste to a recycling plant from such areas is costly, but there is a new solution now. The so-called Trashpresso machine, created by the firm Miniwiz upcycles plastic waste into useful products, such as floor tiles, and it can do so off-the-grid.
(more…)
Soon, our clothing could harvest enough energy from the sun and from motion to power our gadgets. A team of researchers headed by Zhong Lin Wang, a professor at Georgia Tech, has managed to weave a new type of fabric that is created out of photoanodes, i.e. solar cells made from lightweight polymer fibers, and triboelectric nanogenerators, which can generate small amounts of electricity from motion. In other words this so-called “micro-cable power textile” is a fabric which has the ability to produce electricity.
This fabric was woven together with wool strands and has a thickness of only 320 micrometers. It is also highly flexible, breathable, lightweight, and can be adapted to a variety of uses. Needless to say, a fabric such as this would revolutionize charging devices in the field. (more…)
Back to the Future II is one of those movies that continue to influence our imagination even though it was released way back in 1989. It foretold a bunch of advancements that we would have by the year 2015, some of which came very close to coming true, some not so much. The movie also inspired a nanotechnology scientist at the University of Central Florida’s NanoScience Technology Center, Associate Professor Jayan Thomas, to try and create solar powered textiles. And he has now succeeded, so something like self-lacing shoes as worn by Marty McFly in the movie could well be available soon.
Thomas has successfully developed solar-powered filaments, which are able to harvest energy from the sun and store it. They can also be woven into textiles to create smart textiles, which would basically be a type of wearable solar-powered batteries. These batteries could then be used to charge our gadgets, while they’d also be able to perform various other functions. (more…)
