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Tag: materials

The ShAPE Aluminum Recycling Method Could Change The Industry Forever

Posted on by dishanth
The ShAPE Aluminum Recycling Method Could Change The Industry Forever

Our Lives are Built with Aluminum

Aluminum is one of the most widely used industrial materials available today. It exists in our cars, our boats and ships, and in the buildings we live in.

In the EV industry, the importance of aluminum cannot be overstated, given that it is required to create the casing of the batteries that power the vehicle. The benefits of aluminum come down to its strength and its weight.

However, mining the raw materials that go into aluminum harms our environment. Bauxite is a mineral used in the creation of aluminum, and the mines that pull the ore out of the ground are responsible for acres of deforestation, water pollution via the Bayer process, air pollution due to the temperatures required to forge it, and other environmental impacts.

The aluminum manufacturing industry has been taking steps to reduce its reliance on new aluminum, though current technology still requires a sizeable amount of new aluminum to recycle scrap aluminum.

However, a new technology has been created that could eliminate that need entirely. This is how the ShAPE aluminum recycling process could change how we procure aluminum.

What is it, and How Does it Work?

The Shape aluminum recycling (Shear Assisted Processing Extrusion) process is an innovative new method of recycling aluminum created by the United States Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington.

This process was created primarily for the automotive industry so as to reduce the reliance on freshly created aluminum and cut the environmental impacts of creating EVs. The process was also created in collaboration with Magna, a leading mobile technology company.

This process could reduce 50% of the embodied energy and 90% of the carbon dioxide emissions output by reducing the amount of aluminum required by mining. The ShAPE aluminum recycling process is unique because it doesn’t require any pre-heating step to remove impurities in the scrap aluminum.

It works by rotating the aluminum on a die in the ShAPE aluminum recycling machine while being pushed through a small opening. Combining rotation and deformation ensures that the metal elements are distributed evenly, eliminating the need for a pre-heating process.

In testing to ensure that the aluminum produced by ShAPE aluminum recycling is as strong as they think, they used electron microscopy and electron backscatter diffraction to create an image of the placement and microstructure of the metal particle within the finished product.

They did this test using aluminum 6063, also known as architectural aluminum. They found that this aluminum product was uniformly strong and lacked manufacturing defects that would otherwise cause the aluminum to fail in its application.

They also found no impurities in the metal, which is important due to the fact that the metal they used was entirely recycled, and raw scrap metal is full of impurities.

While incredibly promising, EV technology currently relies on industries and industrial methods that are incredibly damaging to the environment. The EV industry is working hard to eliminate this contradiction of being eco-friendly yet requiring damage to the environment to be created.

With the ShAPE aluminum recycling method, there could be significant changes to multiple industries, not only the automotive industry. A lead researcher on the project, Scott Whalen, said, “We are now working on including post-consumer waste streams, which could create a whole new market for secondary aluminum scrap.”

While current methods are being used, the environmental damage cannot be understated. However, in the future, using this new method, things could change forever for the better.

 

 

 

 

Source Happy Eco News

Biomimicry in Sustainable Designs

Posted on by dishanth
Biomimicry in Sustainable Designs

Biomimicry in Sustainable Design

The construction industry is very energy intensive. Steel and concrete, both popular materials in construction, are very carbon-intensive in their production. Many of the emissions from concrete production are attributed to burning fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas, which heat up the limestone and clay that becomes Portland cement. There is an opportunity for the construction industry to shape a nature-positive economy from the city to the building design and material and component levels.

The Mobius Project, a greenhouse designed by Iguana Architects, uses biomimicry in sustainable design by drawing inspiration from how ecosystems in nature work. They are committed to revolutionizing food production by turning waste into locally grown, low-carbon nutritious food. The biological waste can also be turned into methane to generate electricity for the greenhouse. In their closed cycle with zero waste, one organism’s waste becomes the next’s input. The idea for the Mobius Project came from observing the oak tree, which has the potential to reuse its output resources, including materials, energy and water.

The Eden Project, designed by exploration architecture, uses biomimicry in sustainable design with a giant greenhouse inspired by the biblical Garden of Eden. It was designed to resemble soap bubbles, carbon molecules, and radiolaria. The idea was that the soap bubbles would be optimally positioned in the sun to allow for complete self-healing. They also took inspiration from dragonfly wings for the best way to assemble steel pieces, allowing for a lightweight structure that required fewer carbon emissions to transport from place to place.

Designers have also looked at lotus leaves to decrease the need for protective finishings, which are usually toxic. The lotus leaf has tiny hairs covered with a waxy coating that allows it to stay dry. Water that hits the leaf will roll off the waxy nonpolar coating. This has inspired a protective coating for external areas that will repel water and dirt, which reduces the need for maintenance. Moreover, reducing the water accumulation in buildings will reduce deterioration mechanisms in infrastructures, such as steel corrosion, sulphate attacks, freezing and thawing.

Limestone-producing bacteria can be used to extend a building’s lifespan. Certain bacteria can produce limestone, filling the gaps and cracks that affect concrete structures over time. This can reduce the need to use new concrete for repairs.

Learning from nature and imputing the way nature works into our designs and in the construction industry can make our built environments more sustainable. There’s so much we can learn from nature; the more we discover, the more we can work toward reducing our impact on the planet.

 

 

 

 

Source Happy Eco News

Superconductors: Material raises hope of energy revolution

Posted on by dishanth
Superconductors: Material raises hope of energy revolution

Scientists have found the first material that displays a much sought-after property at room temperature.

It is superconducting, which means electrical current flows through it with perfect efficiency – with no energy wasted as heat.

At the moment, a lot of the energy we produce is lost as heat because of electrical resistance.

So room temperature “superconducting” materials could revolutionise the electrical grid.

Until this point, achieving superconductivity has required cooling materials to very low temperatures. When the property was discovered in 1911, it was found only at close to the temperature known as absolute zero (-273.15C).

Since then, physicists have found materials that superconduct at higher – but still very cold – temperatures.

The team behind this latest discovery says it’s a major advance in a search that has already gone on for a century.

“Because of the limits of low temperature, materials with such extraordinary properties have not quite transformed the world in the way that many might have imagined,” said Dr Ranga Dias, from the University of Rochester, in New York State.

“However, our discovery will break down these barriers and open the door to many potential applications.”

Dr Dias added that room temperature superconductors “can definitely change the world as we know it”.

In the US, electrical grids lose more than 5% of their energy through the process of transmission. So tackling this loss could potentially save billions of dollars and have an effect on the climate.

The scientists observed the superconducting behaviour in a carbonaceous sulphur hydride compound at a temperature of 15C.

However, the property only appeared at extremely high pressures of 267 billion pascals – about a million times higher than typical tyre pressure. This obviously limits its practical usefulness.

So Dr Dias says the next goal will be to find ways to create room temperature superconductors at lower pressures, so they will be economical to produce in greater volume.

These materials could have many other applications. These include a new way to propel levitated trains – like the Maglev trains that “float” above the track in Japan and Shanghai, China. Magnetic levitation is a feature of some superconducting materials.

Another application would be faster, more efficient electronics.

“With this kind of technology, you can take society into a superconducting society where you’ll never need things like batteries again,” said co-author Ashkan Salamat of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

The results are published in the prestigious journal Nature.

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