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An integrated plant that will remove 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year and create new freshwater from salty seawater is planned in the Daesan Industrial Complex in South Korea. When ready, this will be the world’s first such facility.

As countries work on their promises to go carbon neutral in a few decades, there is a strong push for innovative approaches that capture and utilize carbon. Carbon capture facilities work onsite to help reduce the release of carbon into the atmosphere. In contrast, direct air capture (DAC) technology focuses on removing the released carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Green Li-ion has launched a commercial-scale plant to process unsorted battery waste, or “black mass,” from used lithium-ion batteries.

Within an existing recycling facility in Atoka, Oklahoma, the plant will produce sustainable, battery-grade cathode precursor, lithium, and anode materials – closing the EV recycling loop with the production done all in one plant.

The current recycling process for spent lithium-ion batteries in North America includes sorting batteries before shredding, which are then processed into black mass and further into sulfates. The material is then exported overseas, most often to China and South Korea, for further processing.

Tesla has released more details about Powerwall 3, its new generation home energy storage system, and there’s some more good news.

Electrek first reported that Tesla started Powerwall 3 installations in the US despite having yet to launch the product on its website officially back in September.

As we previously reported, the biggest difference with the Powerwall 3 is a higher power output of 11.5 KW continuous and an integrated solar inverter.

Do you know what they’ve discovered? This is the proton engine that Einstein predicted decades ago and that, for the first time, they’ve managed to materialize. The best part? It challenges even the laws of physics and the universe, and it’s going to decarbonize transportation.

Nuclear fusion has long been a sought-after but elusive goal for science. It involves joining atomic nuclei to release energy, the same process that occurs in the Sun and other stars. In fact, it’s a process similar to what we saw two weeks ago with the plasma engine.

Unlike nuclear fission used in current nuclear power plants—which, remember, we are highly critical of due to its lack of being an eco-friendly or renewable option—fusion offers the promise of a virtually inexhaustible and clean energy source.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Japan’s Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Masahito Moriyama have signed an agreement to advance sustainable human exploration of the Moon.

Japan will design, develop, and operate a pressurized rover for crewed and uncrewed exploration on the Moon. NASA will provide the launch and delivery of the rover to the Moon as well as two opportunities for Japanese astronauts to travel to the lunar surface.

Continue reading “NASA, Japan Advance Space Cooperation, Sign Agreement for Lunar Rover” »

Researchers have successfully transformed CO₂ into methanol by shining sunlight on single atoms of copper deposited on a light-activated material, a discovery that paves the way for creating new green fuels.

An international team of researchers from the University of Nottingham’s School of Chemistry, University of Birmingham, University of Queensland, and University of Ulm have designed a material made up of copper anchored on nanocrystalline carbon nitride.

The copper atoms are nested within the nanocrystalline structure, which allows electrons to move from carbon nitride to CO₂, an essential step in the production of methanol from CO₂ under the influence of solar irradiation. The research has been published in the Sustainable Energy & Fuels journal.

Israeli startup Watergen, which has developed a technology to produce water from air, has installed a generator for a Navajo Nation Native American community in Arizona to help them deal with a crippling water shortage.

The first generator was set up at the Rocky Ridge Gas & Market in northeast Arizona and aims to address the lack of access to clean drinking water within the Hard Rock community there, according to a joint press statement issued Thursday.

Nearly 10,000 families across Navajo Nation lack access to running water, per recent estimates. Local groundwaters have been contaminated over the years by mining and the situation has been exacerbated by the devastating drought affecting the Western United States.

Is the most advanced water-from-air generator on the market. It’s an innovative and simple solution to supply fresh, safe drinking water.

“We need to accelerate and intensify efforts to recover Antarctic meteorites,” said Dr. Harry Zekollari. “The loss of Antarctic meteorites is much like the loss of data that scientists glean from ice cores collected from vanishing glaciers – once they disappear, so do some of the secrets of the universe.”

How can climate change effect the search for meteorites in Antarctica? This is what a recent study published in Nature Climate Change hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated how melting snow and ice could prevent successful identification of meteorites, of which approximately 60 percent of all meteorites retrieved on Earth have been found in Antarctica. This study holds the potential to help scientists, climate change activists, and legislators better understand the impacts of climate change on science, as meteorites are crucial for gaining greater insight into the formation and evolution of the solar system and beyond.

With a combination of climate models, satellite observations, and artificial intelligence, the researchers estimate that at current rates, they will lose the ability to identify approximately 5,000 meteorites annually, with approximately 24 percent being lost by 2050 and potentially 76 percent by 2100.

Continue reading “Sinking Stars: Climate-Induced Loss of Antarctic Meteorites” »