Good News Notes: “Researchers have developed a technique to turn bioplastics into fertilizer, in a process that tackles the twin problems of plastic waste and emissions-intensive fertilizer production. Unlike regular plastics that are derived from fossil fuels, bioplastics are produced using renewable feedstocks such as corn, wheat, and agricultural waste. From the get-go, these plastics…
Tag: researchers
Newly Discovered Symbiosis Could Power Carbon Removal in The Sea
Good News Notes: “Tropical rainforests are often called the lungs of our planet, sucking vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and puffing out oxygen in exchange. As it turns out, however, there are even bigger lungs in our oceans. Seagrass meadows are vast fields of underwater plants capable of capturing carbon 35 times faster than tropical…
Planting the seeds for better vertical farm crops
Good News Notes: “Humans have been farming outside for around 12,000 years. Over those thousands of years, farmers have stumbled upon or bred specific varieties of plants and seeds that do well in outdoor field farming environments. And as farming has turned from a local business to a massive profit-making behemoth, the process of developing the…
S. Korea develops technique to recycle discarded solar panels into high-performance solar cells
Good News Notes: “Researchers have developed a non-destructive technique to recycle discarded solar panels to create high-performance solar cells. The technique will become crucial in a few decades when solar panels that are currently being used are discarded after their operational life of about 20 years. A solar panel is a photovoltaic module made of…
Can This Sun-Reflecting Fabric Help Fight Climate Change?
Good News Notes: “IN 2020, A graduate student from Zhejiang University in China donned a seemingly plain white vest and sat in the direct sunlight for one hour. A few feet away, researchers monitored his body temperature with infrared cameras and sensors on his skin. Half of the vest was made from ordinary cotton; the other…
Alternative cement with low carbon footprint developed
Good News Notes: “Researchers at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) in Germany and the Brazilian University of Pará have developed a climate-friendly alternative to conventional cement. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions can be reduced during production by up to two thirds when a previously unused overburden from bauxite mining is used as a raw material….
Archaeology breakthrough: Researchers unearthed ‘world’s oldest coin’ in China excavation
Good News Notes: “Archaelogists were staggered after unearthing what is believed to be some of the world’s oldest coins in a rare find on a Chinese excavation site. The researchers found a series of clay moulds used for casting spade coins, as well as fragments of the coins, at a location in Guanzhuang in Xingyang, Henan…
Microorganisms Used to Convert CO2 into Plastic and Polymers
Good News Notes: “They employed greenhouse gas as a raw material for producing plastics. To perform this, they initially produced formic acid and methanol from CO2, which were later converted into building blocks for polymers and similar materials through microorganisms. When fossil-based raw materials are burned, CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere. Until now, CO2 concentration in…
Purdue University develops new way to recycle polyolefin plastics
Good News Notes: “Single-use plastic scrap continues to be a growing problem internationally with only 9 percent of the 8.3 billion tons of plastic produced in the last 65 years being recycled. One of the biggest contributors to this issue is polyolefins, such as polypropylene and polyethylene. Researchers at Purdue University are working to solve that problem…
Solar device generates electricity and desalinates water with no waste brine
Good News Notes: “A device that can generate electricity while desalinating seawater has been developed by researchers in Saudi Arabia and China, who claim that their new system is highly efficient at performing both tasks. The device uses waste heat from the solar cell for desalination, thereby cooling the solar cell. It also produces no…