Metals Tech

Renewable energy and blockchain—the two buzzy words are cropping up in various corners of the design world, but how do they work together? And what do they really mean for day-to-day life?

A new project from Ikea’s research lab Space10 explores how neighborhoods can harness solar energy and share it via blockchain technology—and they do it with adorable wooden houses.

SolarVille is a working prototype featuring a series of small wooden houses tricked out with solar panels. These solar panels, fed by artificial light coming from above the installation, are attached to a micro-grid that allows SolarVille neighbors to purchase excess energy from each other on a decentralized ledger that keeps track of where energy is stored and where it’s going.

In real life, of course, these transactions are invisible. But Space10’s 1:50 scale village is meant to illustrate the abstract concept in a playful and easily graspable way. The flow of energy is shown through LED lights that illuminate the energy transactions that are happening.

Real-life companies and communities like Brooklyn Microgrid and Amsterdam’s Schoonschip are already harnessing blockchain technology to create a peer-to-peer energy sharing networks, but for the time being SolarVille is merely an exploration of the idea. The installation will travel around the world this year with the goal of inspiring communities to create their own networks in the future.

Exactly eight years ago, an earthquake off the east coast of Japan set a massive tsunami on a collision course with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The wall of water overwhelmed the reactors’ cooling mechanisms and over the next four days the plant suffered three nuclear meltdowns. It became the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. In response, Germany, Switzerland and some others around the world accelerated their plans to ditch nuclear power as an energy source.

Nuclear power is virtually free of emissions. By contrast, we burn coal and gas at industrial scale to make electricity, pumping carbon dioxide and other noxious chemicals into our atmosphere. As a result, our oceans are warming and extreme climate events are becoming more common. Our children are more aware of these changes than we adults are: later this week, on March 15, young people will walk out of their schools in more than 30 countries to protest the scars we are carving into their futures.

There are paths out of this mess. But on March 11, 2011, the world’s course was diverted away from one of the most important. I am talking about nuclear energy.

Traditionally, green opposition to nuclear power has been rooted, above all, in fears of radiation let loose in a reactor accident or from waste leaking out of disposal sites. To use nuclear power and generate radioactive waste, environmentalists argued, was like taking off in an airplane without knowing where to land. However, today several countries are building deep underground disposal sites where they can safely land high level radioactive waste. What are we now to fear most: a gram of plutonium escaping from a deep underground waste disposal site, perhaps in ten thousand years, or billions of tons of carbon-dioxide released from burnt fossil fuels in our time?

Frankly, it is not the waste from existing or expanded use of nuclear power that threatens our planet. One might even say that the nuclear waste is one of the greatest assets of nuclear power, as it is so small in volume that it can be — and is — safely taken care of in its entirety. On the other hand, the waste of fossil fuels, especially carbon dioxide, is so huge that (despite much experimenting) we do not know how to handle it.

Can we responsibly continue to rely on nuclear power after the big accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima? Those were three grave accidents, yes, but accidents in any industry, whether nuclear, aviation or others, lead also to new, safer designs and dedication to safety culture. Plane crashes have not stopped us from flying, because most people know it is an effective means of traveling. They know that risks are rarely zero but also that safety is very high. We must arrive at a similar acceptance of nuclear power.

There was a time, in the early atomic age, when nuclear-generated electricity was expected to be “too cheap to meter” — that it would be more effective, in other words, to provide it for free than to charge. In the end, it did not exactly turn out that way. Nuclear power has never been cheap and today it struggles to be competitive on purely economic grounds with electricity generated by burning natural gas — especially from fracking in the United States. However, the story is very different if we see emissions of greenhouse gases as a cost in themselves. According to a 2011 study, taken on average over the lifetime of an energy plant, the burning of coal results in 979 tons of carbon-dioxide (per gigawatt hour) entering the atmosphere. Gas gives off 550 tons. The figure for nuclear power is just 32 tons.

Some people claim we can manage the world’s great and increasing hunger for energy by using wind and solar power. The call for “renewable energy sources” excludes fossil fuels, but it also excludes nuclear power, which is based on non-renewable uranium resources. It has been a smart but facile message, and we should be grateful that the world’s two most populous countries — China and India — are fast expanding their use of nuclear power as well as of renewables. Solar and wind power are great in many places and have gone down in cost. However, getting rid of technically sound carbon dioxide-free nuclear power plants, to replace them with carbon dioxide-free wind and solar plants, does not make environmental sense. And to reject nuclear power because uranium is not renewable is silly. With modern technology the global resources of uranium and thorium could fuel thousands of years of expanded use of nuclear power. Is it not enough that they are sustainable?

We accept radiation in nuclear medicine, to combat cancer for instance. We accept the radiation of spices to kill pathogens. We lie in the sunshine hoping that the solar radiation will make us healthier. Radiation is a force that can be destructive and dangerous if not used prudently, but it can also be tamed and used to our benefit.

To satisfy the energy needs of a world demanding vastly more electricity for industry, cars and trains, desalination and digitalization, increased efficiency in the use of energy is valuable but not enough. We need innovation: better batteries for storage of electricity, superconductors saving energy and fusion. But before we succeed in these and other exciting projects we need to be rational and practical and make full use of nuclear power, before the world becomes uninhabitable for our children.

Our connected devices are hiding a big secret. They use energy—a lot of it. Every time you use your phone, your computer, or your smart TV to access the internet, you’re sending data requests to warehouse-sized buildings around the world, full of hundreds of thousands of servers. These data centers are among the most energy-intensive systems on the planet, representing approximately 10% of global electricity generation (though more conservative estimates put it at 3%).

Yet we’re still blindly making classic computers—and they’re getting bigger and even more energy dense. China is home to the most energy-intensive supercomputer in the world, the Tianhe-2 in Guangzhou. This machine uses about 18 megawatts of power, and is expected to be succeeded by the exascale Tianhe-3, which will only further increase this extraordinary level of energy consumption. For reference, the average hydroelectric dam in the US produces approximately 36 megawatts of power.

Our connected devices are hiding a big secret. They use energy—a lot of it. Every time you use your phone, your computer, or your smart TV to access the internet, you’re sending data requests to warehouse-sized buildings around the world, full of hundreds of thousands of servers. These data centers are among the most energy-intensive systems on the planet, representing approximately 10% of global electricity generation (though more conservative estimates put it at 3%).

Yet we’re still blindly making classic computers—and they’re getting bigger and even more energy dense. China is home to the most energy-intensive supercomputer in the world, the Tianhe-2 in Guangzhou. This machine uses about 18 megawatts of power, and is expected to be succeeded by the exascale Tianhe-3, which will only further increase this extraordinary level of energy consumption. For reference, the average hydroelectric dam in the US produces approximately 36 megawatts of power.

Our connected devices are hiding a big secret. They use energy—a lot of it. Every time you use your phone, your computer, or your smart TV to access the internet, you’re sending data requests to warehouse-sized buildings around the world, full of hundreds of thousands of servers. These data centers are among the most energy-intensive systems on the planet, representing approximately 10% of global electricity generation (though more conservative estimates put it at 3%).

Yet we’re still blindly making classic computers—and they’re getting bigger and even more energy dense. China is home to the most energy-intensive supercomputer in the world, the Tianhe-2 in Guangzhou. This machine uses about 18 megawatts of power, and is expected to be succeeded by the exascale Tianhe-3, which will only further increase this extraordinary level of energy consumption. For reference, the average hydroelectric dam in the US produces approximately 36 megawatts of power.

Quantum computers hold the promise to solve today’s toughest business problems and impact the bottom line for companies in virtually every industry. They’re also a key tool we can use to combat the looming threat of ever-growing energy use of classical computing. Businesses are already starting to feel the pressure to get their heads in the quantum-computing game, but the impetus goes beyond innovation and technological competition for a single company. It extends to a collective goal: ensuring our world’s computing power doesn’t outstrip our planet’s ability to support it.

CAPE TOWN — If the dates of South Africa’s Green Transport strategy time-frame prove accurate, then electric cars on our highways and by-ways won’t raise an eyebrow in 20 years’ time. But that depends on the application of re-charging technology and developing a national plug-in network from today. Luckily an outfit called the uYilo e-Mobility programme is funding local tech investments providing tetchy electric car suppliers with some hope that they won’t be selling into a dead-battery market – the 2050 green equivalent of the country running out of petrol and diesel today. The grassroots investments seek to provide the foundation for the growth of the local electric vehicle supply chain for domestic sourcing. With 145,000 electric vehicles predicted to be on our roads in just six years, we can’t afford to fall behind the exciting global turbo boost to a safer, less-polluted planet. If, like me, you had no idea how we’re powering into this new high tech-travel surge, prepare yourself for an accelerated ride below. Transportation currently generates nearly a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. To meet agreed global carbon-cutting targets, 100m electric vehicles must be on the road by 2030. Right now, we’re closer to 5% of that. – Chris Bateman

uYilo media statement

Two major factors of the Fourth Industrial Revolution combine in one key area – electric mobility. The global uptake of electric vehicles means that a complementary increase in non-traditional energy generation and storage are critical to economic development in this new environment.

South Africa’s adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) has been slow by global standards, but it is accelerating. From a fleet of around 1,221 plug in electric vehicles currently, it is projected that there could be as many as 145,000 electric vehicles on our roads in the next six years.

“The local battery electric vehicle market started with the introduction of the Nissan Leaf in 2013, and the BMW i3 in 2015. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles offerings include BMW, Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo. This year more manufacturers will bring EVs to the SA market, the first being Jaguar Land Rover,” says Hiten Parmar, director of uYilo eMobility Programme. The uYilo Programme is also one of the strategic initiatives within the Green Transport Strategy of the national Department of Transport that promotes introduction of electric and hybrid-electric vehicles.

“The supporting public EV charging infrastructure has progressed since early inceptions in 2013 with the majority of charge points installed having being supplied from international equipment manufacturers. As the local EV market grows, the demand from vehicle manufacturers for a variety of locally manufactured EV charging infrastructure and service providers will also increase. In preparations towards this there has been specific investment from the uYilo Kick Start fund into technology localisation projects, to ensure multiple local technology providers are available and that South Africa is not solely dependent on international suppliers and technologies.”

The South African Automotive Masterplan 2035 has set out several objectives, including having a localisation rate of 60%. The Department of Trade and Industry under Minister Rob Davies has been clear about its long-term commitment to support the local automotive sector, as well as the benefits of having a deep and diverse supply chain for domestic sourcing.

uYilo Kick Start Fund investments on specific electric vehicle charging infrastructure technology projects includes the GridCars AC charge point and server in 2014, the MLT Inverters Karoo70 High Voltage inverter for second-life EV batteries in 2015, the Microcare 50kW DC EV Fast Charger in 2017 and in 2018 QBSoft – EV BackOffice management system. The total allocation localisation funding extends across R13.2m to which R7.7m allocation has been from the uYilo grant funding, and R5.5 million co-funding from the specific project developers and related partners. This funding model has attracted greater participation and commitments towards expanding the local electric vehicle ecosystem of technologies. These grassroots investments seek to provide the foundation for the growth of the local electric vehicle supply chain for domestic sourcing.

“The uYilo smart grid facility additionally provides a live-testing environment for electric vehicle fleets and the related infrastructure ecosystem. At 128kW total EV charging capacity it is currently the largest dedicated EV charging, and technology advanced facility in Africa, with the inclusion of global technologies of the electric vehicle ecosystem,” says Parmar. “This includes solar EV charging, second life EV battery storage systems, BackOffice management, AC charge points, DC fast chargers and the leading Vehicle-to-Grid technology”.

The national Department of Transport, Green Transport Strategy 2018-2050 is good news for the future of cleaner mobility in South Africa. It is the first national policy document promoting electric vehicles adoption in the country. “The Green Transport Strategy contains five Implementation themes. Under the Green Transport Technologies theme, Strategic Pillar 8, is of particular importance. This relates to the promotion of Electric and Hybrid-Electric Vehicles.” Within the strategy, the uYilo eMobility Programme is profiled as a Strategic Initiative towards development of electric vehicle components.

The national uYilo eMobility Programme is an initiative of the Technology Innovation Agency, a public entity of the Department of Science and Technology. The programme operates towards a mandate of enabling, facilitating and mobilising electric mobility in South Africa.

The multi-stakeholder programme has supporting facilities and expertise across accredited battery testing of lead-acid and lithium-ion technologies, electric vehicles systems, and the smart grid ecosystem infrastructure for electric vehicles. The annual uYilo Kick Start Fund provides grant funding to encourage local technology development of products, process or services that can advance the South African eMobility industry.

Construction materials are emerging as a low cost carbon sink as chemists seek ways to tackle climate change.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that mankind will have to start removing 12bn.t of carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the Earth’s atmosphere every year by 2050 if it wants to halt global warming.

Many experts believe that treating the greenhouse gas as a raw material that could be used to manufacture marketable products offers a viable way forward.

Its potential uses vary – from fuels to carbonated drinks. But among the plethora of applications, the built environment stands out as a key beneficiary.

Carbon-enriched rock, insulating foams, cement and carbon fibre structures are all being developed in the hope that they can lock away CO₂ for a long period of time while aiding construction of our infrastructure and buildings.

While this may sound idealistic, proponents of these technologies say they are not cost prohibitive and are already quite close to market.

Improved insulators

In March 2018, Econic Technologies, a spin-out from Imperial College London, opened a demonstration plant in Alderley Park, near Manchester, where it manufacturers precursors for the production of insulating foams from waste CO2 captured from industrial plants.

The company can replace up to 50% of the main conventional raw material, known as feedstock, for making polyurethane with CO2 . According to Econic head of sales and licensing Leigh Taylor the approach offers many benefits. In addition to sequestering CO2 the resulting polyurethane, also known as proplylene oxide, is cheaper than the conventional alternative and performs better in many aspects of its functionality.

In rigid foams, we have seen that not only do we get really good thermal properties. We also get good fire performance

“Propylene oxide is roughly $2,000 (£1,500) per tonne of raw material as feedstock, whereas carbon dioxide can be as low as £23 to £38 a tonne as feedstock,” Taylor tells New Civil Engineer. “Even the most pessimistic views of the cost of carbon dioxide following capture are still substantially lower than the cost of the conventional propylene oxide raw material.

Econic is designing its system to be easily incorporated into existing polymer manufacturing facilities, hoping to remove barriers to adoption.

“We believe that our technology and the commercial and technical proposition that we have stands on its own two feet regardless of any kind of subsidies or legislation that would facilitate adoption,” says Taylor.

“It’s not only benefiting the environment but it makes sense from the commercial point of view as well.”

When tested, the CO2-enriched foams perform better than standard alternatives in other areas, according to Taylor.

“In rigid foams, we have seen that not only do we get really good thermal properties, we also get a good fire performance,” he said.

The carbon-eating polymers can also be used in adhesives and coatings. Taylor believes that if 30% of the industry adopted Econic technology, the green polymers would sequester or prevent about 3.5M.tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, which equates to taking about 2M cars off the road.

“The insulation is going to be there for the life of the house,” says Taylor.

“We are talking about multiple decades. These products can really have an environmental benefit first and foremost because they reduce the energy demand of those buildings, and second by sequestering CO2 within their chemical structure.”

Carbon-eating rock

California-based start-up Blue Planet has even bolder plans. The company’s chief executive, serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur Brent Constantz, believes that a significant portion of the 55 gigatonnes of rock that is mined and used globally every year could be replaced by artificial rock made of CO2 emissions.

Blue Planet operates a pilot plant in California next to a large gas-fired power station. The firm takes the raw flue gas from the power station and dissolves it in water. The carbon from the solution is then deposited onto small pieces of rock waste, creating a thick layer of carbonate coating.

“In 1.t of limestone that we make, we have 440kg of CO2 that is permanently converted into carbonate and mineralised,” says Constantz.

Constantz believes that the company can offer rock aggregate to the construction industry for equivalent or even lower prices than those of mined rock.

The price of rock, Constantz says, depends largely on the distance from source.

If we take 20% of all the waste manufactured in Europe, we could capture 1M.t of CO2 per year

Blue Planet’s facilities would always be based next to large industrial plants, which are usually close to where most of the construction work takes place.

British firm Carbon8 Systems has been pioneering a similar approach since 2006. Its subsidiary Carbon8 Aggregates currently operates three plants in the UK, which each manufacture 70,000t of construction aggregate by carbonating industrial waste and contaminated soils using purified CO2 from flue gas from industrial facilities.

“In 1t of waste we can sequester 100kg of CO2,” says Paula Carey, Carbon8 Systems’ managing director. “If we take 20% of all the waste manufactured in Europe, we could capture 1M.t of CO2 per year.”

The carbon-enriched aggregate is used to manufacturing blocks, which could be used for various construction projects.

Conservative construction

Carey says that although the price of Carbon8’s blocks is slightly lower than that of those made from natural stone, the company finds it difficult to persuade construction companies to take a risk with such a novel product.

“They think all aggregate needs to be like granite,” says Carey. “Our aggregate may not be as strong as aggregate that has formed in millions of years, but it still has a use in many applications, and has several other advantages, such as its light weight and good thermal properties.”

Blue Planet hopes that legislation might eventually help green materials break into the construction market. In California, the 2017 Buy Clean Act obliges state authorities to only award state infrastructure contracts to firms using low carbon materials

Although the Act does not so far cover rock and cement, Blue Planet hopes it eventually will.

The question is now whether investors will finance the development of green construction materials, helping entrepreneurs to scale up production to take advantage of the carbon-sequestering potential of the built environment.

Novacem, a spinout from Imperial College London, sets a sad precedent. The company’s carbon-eating cement was once hailed as a breakthrough. But the company failed to attract investors and folded in 2012. With the debate about climate change intensifying, one might hope green innovators of today stand a better chance.

What do pizza slices, sea slugs and one possible design for future soft-bodied robots have in common? They all have frilly surfaces, and new insights about the surprising geometry of frilly surfaces may help a future generation of energy-efficient and extremely flexible soft-body robots move.

The complex folds of a frilly surface like coral reefs or kale leaves is a surface mathematicians refer to as an “inflected nonsmooth surface.” It changes the direction in which it bends.

“People have looked at these hyperbolic surfaces for 200 years, but nobody has thought about the role of smoothness in relation to how these things move, their mechanics,” said University of Arizona mathematician Shankar Venkataramani. “Nobody saw a relevance to these things until now.”

Venkataramani will present his group’s research on nonsmooth surfaces, sea slugs and possible robotic applications at the 2019 American Physical Society March Meeting in Boston.

Until recently, Venkataramani said, physicists generally assumed that natural frills occur when the balanced forces between simultaneous bending and stretching of a sheet cause the surface to crumple. However, Venkataramani, in recent work with doctoral students John Gemmer and Toby Shearman and Hebrew University physicist Eran Sharon, showed that there can be nonsmooth surfaces that are simultaneously unstretched yet frilly.

“The idea that these frilly surfaces don’t have stretching in them, that was completely counterintuitive,” he said.

And, he noted, the research showed that changes from one form to another appear to require very little energy. This is key since the ability to change the geometry of surfaces has big implications for their strength and thus ability to act on the surroundings. Pick up a soggy slice of pizza and it creates a mess but “put a little curvature and it becomes stiff and you can eat it,” he said.

Having developed the mathematics to describe these surfaces, his group modeled nonsmooth thin films with six up-and-down portions and wondered how they would move.

“We realized that nature already solved the problem millions of years ago. Some sea slugs and marine worms use this geometry to get around,” Venkataramani said.

The challenge now, he said, is determining exactly how the distinctive swimming gait of these soft-bodied marine invertebrates, such as the Spanish dancer sea slug, is related to their nonsmooth geometry.

The answer may provide “a potential avenue for building soft robots that are energy-efficient and extremely flexible,” Venkataramani said.