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Tag: Polymers

4D-Printed Seeds That Can Study the Soil

Posted on by dishanth
4D-Printed Seeds That Can Study the Soil

Soil plays an important role in keeping our planet healthy. Soil filters our water, provides plants with nutrients, and provides a home for billions of organisms. Moreover, the soil is an important ingredient for growing food, and it protects us against flooding and combats drought. Because soil is made in part of broken down plant matter, they contain a lot of carbon that the plants took in from the atmosphere. The capacity of carbon that soil can hold depends on climate, temperature, rainfall, soil type and depth.

Soil is under threat due to rising temperatures and biodiversity loss due to climate change. Half of the topsoil in the world has been lost in the last 150 years due to erosion. These impacts include compaction, loss of soil structure, nutrient degradation and soil salinity. Soil nutrient loss is recognized as among the most critical problems at a global level for food security and sustainability.

Because many of the effects of climate change on soil happen underground, it can be difficult to study the impacts. Scientists from the Bioinspired Soft Robotics Lab in Genoa, Italy, have developed a solution to this problem. They have designed the first 4D-printed seed-inspired soft robot. The robotic seed mimics the movement and performance of a natural seed. The seed is said to help act as a sensor for monitoring pollutants, CO2 levels, temperature and humidity in the soil.

The structure of the South African geranium inspires the artificial seed. The seeds can change shape in response to how humid their environment is. The seed can autonomously move around a terrain surface and penetrate the soil. Here, the seed can explore the soil and penetrate inside fractures, extracting energy from the environmental humidity changes. The seeds can find a home for themselves by expanding and shrinking due to changes in the water content of the air.

The seed was created using 4D printed structures as they can create dynamic morphological changes under environmental stimuli. Additionally, these structures can be programmed to reshape and perform work for any type of scenario. The seed is also strong enough to lift about 100 times its own weight. The seeds are made out of biodegradable polymers, which are activated using oxygen plasma to increase water-attracting abilities. The scientists chose these materials because they absorb and expand when exposed to humidity.

This invention could be a battery-free wireless tool for environmental topsoil monitoring. It could be a low-cost system to collect soil data across remote areas without monitoring data. It is also a relatively non-invasive way to study and monitor the soil. And the role of biodegradable materials and eco-friendly processing is fundamental for sustainable and green robotics to avoid the dispersal of new waste in natural environments. This study could be an inspiration for other researchers looking to study hard-to-reach areas that are at risk due to climate change.

 

 

 

 

Source Eco Hero News

Could this colourful plant-based film replace the need for air conditioning?

Posted on by dishanth
Could this colourful plant-based film replace the need for air conditioning?

Scientists at Cambridge University in the UK are working on an eco-friendly alternative. Their invention consists of a plant-based film that stays cool when exposed to sunlight.

The material could someday be used to keep buildings and cars cool without the need for external power. Coming in a range of textures and bright iridescent colours, it’s aesthetically pleasing too.

How does the eco-friendly cooling film work?

For a material to stay cooler than the air around it during the daytime, there are two critical requirements. It must have high solar reflectance to reflect the warmth of the sun and not heat the air around it. It must also have a high emissivity in infrared bands to emit heat into outer space efficiently.

Only a few materials have these properties and scientists are already developing them into paints and films capable of what is known as ‘passive daytime radiative cooling’ (PDRC).

When applied to the surface of a car or building, it means that these materials create a cooling effect without consuming electricity or creating pollution.

How can PDRC materials be made more attractive?

Since they need to be solar reflective, PDRC materials are usually white or silver.

Adding colour would decrease their cooling performance. This is because coloured pigments selectively absorb specific wavelengths of light, only reflecting the colours we see. This extra light absorption creates a warming effect.

“These limited colours hinder the applications where visual appearance is a key consideration, such as for architecture, cars and clothes,” says project member, Dr Qingchen Shen.

To increase the desirability of these materials, colour is an important factor.

Along with the project’s lead investigator, Dr Silvia Vignolini, Dr Shen set out to research ways of achieving colour without the use of pigments.

They looked to structural colouration as a solution. This is where shapes and patterns reflect specific colours of light without the presence of pigmentation, as seen on soap bubbles and oil slicks.

Seeking a natural source of this phenomenon, the research team used cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) – derived from the cellulose found in plants – to create iridescent, colourful films without any added pigment.

“We specifically use cellulose-based materials for our films because cellulose is the most abundant polymer in nature,” says Dr Shen.

It is also one of the few natural materials capable of promoting PDRC.

After experimenting with basic colours, the researchers are now working on glittery CNC-ethyl cellulose films. They are also developing different textures that could blend in with various wood finishes.

How effective is the colourful cooling film?

The researchers created layered cellulose films in vibrant blue, green and red colours and put them to the test.

When placed under sunlight, they were an average of nearly 4°C cooler than the surrounding air.

One square metre of the film generated over 120 watts of cooling power, rivalling many types of residential air conditioners.

As a general guideline, bedrooms require around 80 watts per square metre and living spaces 125 watts of air conditioning capacity.

The researchers hope to find new ways to leverage CNC-ethyl cellulose films. These include adding sensors to detect environmental pollutants or weather changes.

Ultimately, they hope the film coating could serve several purposes at once. It could be used to both cool buildings and to alert to changing levels of pollutants in congested areas, for example.

 

 

 

 

Source Euronews Green

New approach to recycling plastic could change the way we reuse waste

Posted on by dishanth
New approach to recycling plastic could change the way we reuse waste

Every person will discard two metric tonnes of plastic in their lifetime.

But a study has suggested a new way to deal with plastic waste.

The Swiss research suggests a proof-of-concept idea of a new approach to plastic recycling – inspired by the way nature ‘recycles’ the components of organic polymers present in our environment.

Proteins inside organic polymers are constantly broken down into parts and reassembled into different proteins.

Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) believe that this approach could work with plastics too.

Researcher Simone Gavieri wrote: “A protein is like a string of pearls, where each pearl is an amino acid. Each pearl has a different colour, and the colour-sequence determines the string structure and consequently its properties.

“In nature, protein chains break up into the constituent amino acids and cells put such amino acids back together to form new proteins, that is they create new strings of pearls with a different colour sequence.”

 

Professor Francesco Stellacci, of EPFL, said: “We selected proteins and divided them up into amino acids. We then put the amino acids into a cell-free biological system that assembled the amino acids back into new proteins with entirely different structures and applications.”

Giaveri and Stellacci successfully transformed silk into a protein used in biomedical technology.

Stellacci said: “Importantly, when you break down and assemble proteins in this way, the quality of the proteins produced is exactly the same of that of a newly-synthesised protein. Indeed, you are building something new.”

Stellacci said it would take time to develop a working method to recycle plastic in this way.

 

He added: “It will require a radically different mindset. Polymers are strings of pearls, but synthetic polymers are made mostly of pearls all of the same colour and when the colour is different the sequence of colour rarely matters.

“Furthermore, we have no efficient way to assemble synthetic polymers from different colour pearls in a way that controls their sequence.”

Research this year found that thousands of rivers, including smaller ones, are responsible for most of the plastic pollution worldwide.

Previously, scientists believed that 10 large rivers – such as the Yangtze in China – were responsible for the bulk of plastic pollution.

 

In fact, 1,000 rivers – just 1% of all rivers worldwide – carry most of the plastic to the sea.

The research means that areas like tropical islands are likely to be among the worst polluters, the researchers said.

The study by non-profit organisation The Ocean Cleanup used measurements and modelling to work out that 1,000 rivers worldwide are behind 80% of plastic emissions.

 

 

Source Yahoo News