Heaven may have rain at this year's big climate summit in Belem, Brazilbut engineers have invented a lot of interesting things climate technology this year is worth celebrating. Here are some of the year's best IEEE spectrum history of climate technology:
Richard Zare, Xiaowei Song, et al.
Ammonia is an essential component of human civilization, feeding agriculture, explosivesAnd new generation cargo ships. The researchers turned to classical laboratory chemistry and artificial intelligence in search of more efficient ammonia production. Freelance writer in January Alfred Poor reported a real demonstration passive technology for capturing ammonia from windNo batteries included or required.
Daniel Koontz
IN IEEE spectrum, we like any story that puts electrons useful and freelance contributor Rachel Berkowitz found a startup using piezoelectric catalysts destroy chemicals forever that pollute our waterways. Most systems spend a lot of energy mechanically filtering long-lasting harmful chemicals, but these researchers suggest using kinetic energy the natural flow of water to drive their system, as well as their clever chemical use of electrons. Take those mechanical engineers! And always chemicals, of course.
Original photo: Emily Waltz
Thought I was the only one greenhouse gas you had to worry about carbon dioxide? Beware: Some gases containing fluorides have the ability to trap heat thousands of times more than CO.2. Specifically, S.F.6is the main insulator in high voltage circuit breakers necessary in all our electrical networks. Energy Editor Emily Waltz there was a story about how to use instead supercritical gas CO2maintaining toxic NF6—about 1 percent responds global warming in 2018 – released our supply chain and atmosphere.
Chris Philpot
It's one thing to prevent emissions greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and quite another to capture carbon from the air. Longtime editor W. Waite Gibbs delved into the issue how much carbon could society remove? from the atmosphere for Problem of scale. The resulting infographic identifies places where we can inject CO2.2 underground, how many people have already been captured, and the scale of the remaining problem.
Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters/Redux
Mining in Greenland will require more than just engineering rare earth elementswhich are valuable for many types of climate technologies, writes mining consultant and former deputy director of the Geological Survey Denmark And Greenland Flemming Faithful Christiansen V guest article: It will require political clarity, which is currently lacking.. Like many interesting engineering problems, politics is the limiting factor.
Nicole Millman; Original art: Daria Ustyugova.
And finally, because IEEE spectrum readers know that we must balance the technical side of our lives with poetry, meditation To fiber optic engineer and poet Stephen Searcy about the joys and electrons of summer.
Articles from your site
Related articles on the Internet
