#Safe drinking water Via Solar power Desalination Natasha Wright, an MIT Phd student in mechanical engineering, has designed a solar powered system that makes water safe to drink for rural, off-grid Indian villages.
she had no idea how to remove salt from groundwater to make it more palatable, nor had she ever been to India,
with a possible focus on filtering biological contaminants from groundwater to make it safe to drink. There are already a number of filters on the market that can do this,
Although the available filters made water safe to drink, they did nothing to mitigate its saltiness so the villagersdrinking water tasted bad and eroded pots and pans,
providing little motivation to use these filters. In reviewing the list of questions she had prepared for her interviews with locals,
Wright noticed that there were no questions about the water salty taste. o one had asked ever them about that.
Almost 60 percent of India has groundwater that noticeably salty, so later, after returning to MIT,
which uses a difference in electric potential to pull salt out of water. This type of desalination system has been around since the 1950s,
but Wright calculated that the amount of water used by a single farm is similar to the amount of water that a small village needs for its daily drinking water 6 to 12 cubic meters.
poor access to water pipelines often leads to a heavy reliance on well water. But some ranchers find that even their livestock won tolerate the saltiness of this water. t useful to install a small-scale desalination system where people are
so spread out that it more costly to pump in water from a municipal plant, she says. hat true in India and that also true in the U s. ource:
Julia Sklar, MIT Newsimage: Bryce Vickmar S
#More than 80%Efficiency Attained in New Ultralow-power Circuit Researchers at MIT developed a new ultralow-power circuit that improves efficiency of energy harvesting to more than 80 percent.
and UV LIGHT can rapchemicals for easy removal from soil and water. Many human-made pollutants in the environment resist degradation through natural processes,
and extract a variety of contaminants from soil and water. Ferdinand Brandl and Nicolas Bertrand, the two lead authors, are former postdocs in the laboratory of Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT Koch Institute
When they learned that UV LIGHT was used to disinfect water in certain treatment plants, they began to ask a different question. e thought
or hormones from water, because we saw that the particles aggregate once you irradiate them with UV LIGHT. trap for ater-fearingpollutionthe researchers synthesized polymers from polyethylene glycol,
and dispersed evenly in water. But when exposed to UV LIGHT, the stabilizing outer shell of the particles is shed,
anoparticles with photoinduced precipitation for the extraction of pollutants from water and soil, Nature Communications 6, Article number:
#Climateminder helps farms be smarter about water usage California start-up Climateminder, which is selling technology that its founder first put to the test in Turkish greenhouses,
is piloting an environmental monitoring system that helps agribusiness concerns be smarter about how much water they use.
a former electronics engineer with IBM and Sun who got the idea for a water-monitoring system
Val Babajov, president of Climateminder, says his company's goal is to help agricultural concerns produce the same yield with less water.
and water needed to grow food. Researchers at Cornell University and Rothamsted Research in the United kingdom successfully transplanted genes from a type of bacteria-called cyanobacteria-into tobacco plants
#Germany and Canada Are Building Water Splitters to Store Energy Germany which has come to rely heavily on wind
and solar power in recent years is launching more than 20 demonstration projects that involve storing energy by splitting water into hydrogen gas and oxygen.
The electrolyzer projects under construction in Germany typically consist of a few buildings each the size of a shipping container that consume excess renewable energy on sunny and windy days by turning it into an electric current that powers the water-splitting reaction.
pumping water up a hill and then letting it back down to drive a turbine. That approach is limited severely by geography
Ozcan has created also a mobile device for detecting water contamination and a mobile microscope. t is quite important to have these kinds of mobile devices,
and extract a variety of contaminants from soil and water. Ferdinand Brandl and Nicolas Bertrand, the two lead authors, are former postdocs in the laboratory of Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT Koch Institute
When they learned that UV LIGHT was used to disinfect water in certain treatment plants, they began to ask a different question. e thought
or hormones from water, because we saw that the particles aggregate once you irradiate them with UV LIGHT. trap for ater-fearingpollutionthe researchers synthesized polymers from polyethylene glycol,
and dispersed evenly in water. But when exposed to UV LIGHT, the stabilizing outer shell of the particles is shed,
#Saturas Successfully Conducts Field trials of Embedded Stem Water Sensor The field tests were conducted on peach and citrus trees at the Hula Valley Orchards Experimental Farm.
The results were consistent with the stem water potential measurement using manual measurement tools and successfully demonstrated continuous measurement of the water status in the tree.
Based on the research of Dr. Moshe Meron Saturas has developed a miniature stem water potential (SWP) sensor that is embedded in the trunks of trees vines and plants.
SWP is recognized a scientifically highly accurate parameter for determining water status in crops but today SWP can only be measured in a labor-intensive procedure.
The Saturas sensor provides accurate information for optimized irrigation to reduce water consumption with no stress to the plants and increases fruit production and quality.
The Saturas sensing system tailors irrigation to the crop's real-time water needs resulting in more efficient water use
and insulated with concrete to prevent any leakage from entering local groundwater. Bacteria that naturally occur within cowsdigestive tracts are added to the manure,
and then recycled so local farmers can use it to water their crops. The by-product that remains at the end of the process,
The plants are kept hydrated by drips of water condensing on the inner walls of the biospheres,
including lack of fresh water, fertile soils, and extreme temperature changes, said a spokesman for the project. e are trying to find an alternative and economically viable technology enabling efficient production.
and transported a patch of the nanowire carpet on water droplets that were used used to deliver it to the site of injury.
#Hematite're-growth'smoothes rough edges for clean energy harvest (Nanowerk News) Finding an efficient solar water splitting method to mine electron-rich hydrogen for clean
according to a report published online today in the journal Nature Communications("Enabling Unassisted Solar Water Splitting by Iron Oxide and Silicon").
Water splitting combines sunlight and water in a chemical reaction in order to harvest clean hydrogen energy. By smoothing the surface of hematite,
a team of researchers led by Boston College chemist Dunwei Wang achieved'unassisted'water splitting using the abundant rust-like mineral and silicon to capture and store solar energy within hydrogen gas.
to achieve complete water splitting for solar hydrogen generation, 'said Wang, whose research focuses on discovering new methods to generate clean energy.'
'This unassisted water splitting, which is very rare, does not require expensive or scarce resources.'
she had no idea how to remove salt from groundwater to make it more palatable, nor had she ever been to India,
with a possible focus on filtering biological contaminants from groundwater to make it safe to drink. There are already a number of filters on the market that can do this,
Although the available filters made water safe to drink, they did nothing to mitigate its saltiness so the villagers drinking water tasted bad and eroded pots and pans,
Wright noticed that there were no questions about the waters salty taste. No one had asked ever them about that.
Almost 60 percent of India has groundwater thats noticeably salty so later, after returning to MIT,
which uses a difference in electric potential to pull salt out of water. This type of desalination system has been around since the 1950s,
but Wright calculated that the amount of water used by a single farm is similar to the amount of water that a small village needs for its daily drinking water 6 to 12 cubic meters.
poor access to water pipelines often leads to a heavy reliance on well water. But some ranchers find that even their livestock wont tolerate the saltiness of this water.
Its useful to install a small-scale desalination system where people are so spread out that its more costly to pump in water from a municipal plant,
she says. Thats true in India and thats also true in the U s s
#Toward tiny, solar-powered sensors The latest buzz in the information technology industry regards he Internet of thingsthe idea that vehicles, appliances, civil-engineering structures, manufacturing equipment,
helping them to use less fertilizers and water, and to control the general condition of their crops.
if a poor state of health is caused by disease or a lack of water anyway,
In a new paper published this week in Nature Communications("Nanoparticles with photoinduced precipitation for the extraction of pollutants from water and soil),
and extract a variety of contaminants from soil and water. Nanoparticles that lose their stability upon irradiation with light have been designed to extract endocrine disruptors, pesticides,
and other contaminants from water and soils. The system exploits the large surface-to-volume ratio of nanoparticles,
When they learned that UV LIGHT was used to disinfect water in certain treatment plants, they began to ask a different question. e thought
or hormones from water, because we saw that the particles aggregate once you irradiate them with UV LIGHT.
and dispersed evenly in water. But when exposed to UV LIGHT, the stabilizing outer shell of the particles is shed,
one-pot conversion of CO2 and epoxides to polycarbonate block copolymers that contain both water-soluble and hydrophobic regions
they polymerized first and attached the water-soluble groups afterwards. The entire process is even a one-pot reaction:
Subsequently a thiolene click reaction can be used to simply click a water-soluble group into place at the double bond.
and looped irrigation system they use requires 70 percent less water than open-field farming and can produce crops all year round,
From the products of a biomass gasification plant i e. hydrogen carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide the Demosng pilot plant directly produces methane and water by means of a nickel catalyst (SNG operation.
Frank Graf Section Head of the test laboratory of the German Technical and Scientific Association of Gas and Water (DVGW) at KIT adds:
"In simple terms, this type of fuel cell works because the bacteria consume the waste materials found in the water,
the water itself becomes purified, "he says. Searching for the best bacteria"Our challenge has been to find the mechanisms
"To start with, we had to find a bacterium which was not only able to consume the waste products in the water,
Today, they have a small demonstration plant bubbling away in the lab--efficiently exploiting the bacterias'ability to purify dirty water
Perovskites are damaged easily by heat and readily dissolve in water. This inherent instability ruled out virtually all of the conventional techniques for applying electrodes onto the perovoskite solar cell
But if you expose perovskite to water or light it likely will degrade. We have a ways to go to show that perovskite solar cells are stable enough to last 25 years.
Wee been able to find out what in the water, the feed and the air, he said.
After absorbing water, they and the tissue they comprise expand in such a way that entire plant parts move in a defined pattern.
< Back - Next >
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011