Tiny electricity-generating plastic beads could cut global fossil fuel reliance
The world's energy demand is continuously increasing, with fossil fuels such as petroleum, natural gas, coal, oil shales, tar sands, bitumens, and heavy oils remaining the primary source.
These, however, release massive amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂) when burned, making them the leading cause of climate change. This, in turn, fuels global warming, alters weather patterns, worsens natural disasters, and endangers both ecosystems and human health.
With global energy consumption projected to rise by 50% from 2005 to 2030, it's no surprise that researchers are increasingly seeking alternative energy sources to meet demand while reducing environmental impact.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcHlz2cHy5s&ab_channel=ClickView
Now, in a bid to address rising energy demand, researchers have come up with an unconventional way to produce electricity by using tiny plastic beads. When positioned next to each other and brought into contact, the beads appeared to generate more energy than usual, through triboelectrification.
The phenomenon, known as the triboelectric effect, occurs when physical contact between two dielectric materials generates triboelectric charges on their surfaces, similar to how rubbing a balloon against hair creates static electricity.
The team, consisting of scientists from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Riga Technical University, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and the MESA+ Institute at the University of Twente, focused on triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) in their study. Capable of converting mechanical movement into electrical energy, these devices rely on the interaction between materials to generate charge.
The current research reveals that when a tightly packed surface of small beads touches another surface with identical beads, some of them gain a positive charge while others become negatively charged. Ultimately, greater charge transfer boosts electricity production.
After conducting tests with various bead types, researchers discovered that size and material are crucial factors, with larger beads generally acquiring a negative charge, while smaller ones are more likely to become positively charged.
However, melamine-formaldehyde (MF) beads exhibited the most significant effect, demonstrating superior charge retention and transfer efficiency. This occurred because the material's low elasticity allowed it to retain and transfer electric charge more effectively.
According to the researchers, using beads not only provides a more affordable alternative to costly TENG technology but also improves sustainability by eliminating the need for solvents through dry fabrication.
The scientists believe that innovations in triboelectrification could open the door to novel energy-harvesting technologies capable of functioning independently of batteries or external power sources.
They point out that smart clothing, which converts motion into energy, and self-powered devices that require no charging are getting closer to becoming a reality. As a result, wearable technology and sustainable energy solutions are poised to benefit from this innovation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWMAZywTK8M&ab_channel=Future%26ConspirationTube
"Our research shows that small changes in material selection can lead to significant improvements in energy generation efficiency," Ignaas Jimidar, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at VUB and lead author of the study, says in a press release. "This opens up new possibilities for triboelectric nanogenerators in everyday life, without reliance on traditional energy sources."
Nevertheless, Jimidar points out that despite the promising potential, significant work remains to improve efficiency and reliability before the technology can be widely applied. The study has been published in the journal Small.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Yahoo
Climate action could save half of world's vanishing glaciers, says study
More than three-quarters of the world's glaciers are set to vanish if climate change continues unchecked, a major new study warned Thursday, fueling sea-level rise and jeopardizing water supplies for billions. Published in Science, the international analysis provides the clearest picture yet of long-term glacier loss, revealing that every fraction of a degree in global temperature rise significantly worsens the outlook. It may sound grim, but co-lead author Harry Zekollari, a glaciologist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and ETH Zurich, told AFP the findings should be seen as a "message of hope." Under existing climate policies, global temperatures are projected to reach 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9F) above pre-industrial levels by 2100 -- a pathway that would ultimately erase 76 percent of current glacier mass over the coming centuries. But if warming is held to the Paris Agreement's 1.5C target, 54 percent of glacial mass could be preserved, according to the study, which combined outputs from eight glacier models to simulate ice loss across a range of future climate scenarios. "What is really special about this study is we can really show how every tenth of a degree of additional warming matters," co-lead author Lilian Schuster of the University of Innsbruck told AFP. The paper's release comes as Swiss authorities monitor flood risks following the collapse of the massive Birch Glacier, which destroyed an evacuated village. While Swiss glaciers have been heavily impacted by climate change, it remains unclear how much the latest disaster was driven by warming versus natural geological forces. - Cultural and economic importance - Glaciers are found on every continent except Australia -- from Mount Kilimanjaro to the Austrian Alps and the Karakoram range in Pakistan. While most are clustered in the polar regions, their presence in mountain ranges across the world makes them vital to local ecosystems, agriculture and human communities. Vast bodies of snow, ice, rock, and sediment that gain mass in winter and lose it in summer, glaciers formed in the Earth's deep past when conditions were far colder than today. Their meltwater sustains rivers critical for farming, fisheries, and drinking water. Their loss can have profound ripple effects, from disrupting tourism economies to eroding cultural heritage. In recent years, symbolic glacier funerals have been held in Iceland, Switzerland and Mexico. "The question I always get is, why are you a glaciologist in Belgium?" said Zekollari. "Well -- sea level rise. Glaciers melt everywhere on Earth... and that affects coastal defenses even in places far from mountains." Around 25 percent of current sea-level rise is attributed to glacier melt. Even if all fossil fuel use stopped today, the study finds that 39 percent of glacier mass loss is already locked in -- enough to raise sea levels by at least 113 millimeters (4.4 inches). - Uneven impacts - One key finding of the study is that some glaciers are far more vulnerable than others -- and the global average obscures drastic regional losses. Glaciers in the European Alps, the Rockies of the US and Canada, and Iceland are expected to lose nearly all their ice at 2C of warming -- the fallback goal of the Paris accord. In the central and eastern Himalayas, whose rivers support hundreds of millions of people, only 25 percent of glacier ice would remain at 2C. By contrast, the west of the range may retain 60 percent of its ice at the same temperature thanks to its wide range of elevations, which allows some glaciers to persist at colder, higher altitudes, said Shuster. Glacier loss is already affecting communities. In a related commentary in Science, Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer of Rice University describe how the retreat of Oregon's Glisan Glacier has imperiled orchards, fisheries, and the cultural heritage of the Indigenous Quinault people. "Unfortunately we'll lose a lot, but with ambitious targets we can still save many of these glaciers -- which are not only beautiful, but vital for water supply, sea-level regulation, tourism, hydroelectricity, spiritual values, ecology, and more," said Zekollari. ia/sla/aha
Yahoo
12-04-2025
- Yahoo
At the site of the dinosaur-killing crater, scientists find a surprise
When colossal asteroids rock Earth, it's not all doom and gloom. The menacing asteroid that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs left a colossal marine crater in what's now the Yucatan Peninsula. But after analyzing deeply drilled rock core from the impact site created by the six-mile-wide asteroid, geologists have found compelling evidence that life soon thrived in the basin following the seismic episode. The asteroid's impact stoked nutrients and chemicals to be released from beneath the seafloor, a process called hydrothermal activity. Similar activity naturally occurs today in the deep sea, where hydrothermal vents emit superheated chemical-rich fluid into the water, feeding unique colonies of life, including huge tubeworms, crabs, fish, microorganisms, and beyond. "This study reveals that impact cratering events, while primarily destructive, can in some cases also lead to significant hydrothermal activity,' Steven Goderis, a researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium who co-authored the study, said in a statement. 'In the case of Chicxulub, this process played a vital role in the rapid recovery of marine ecosystems.' SEE ALSO: NASA dropped a new report. It's a wake-up call. The research was published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications. The colossal impact event, which triggered a mass extinction event over much of Earth's land and ocean environments, also filled the present-day Gulf of Mexico with nutrients for at least 700,000 years, the researchers concluded. In the core drilled from the impact site, called "Chicxulub crater" (which you should Google for a novel Google-created search result), researchers found a ratio of the metallic element osmium that is associated with asteroid remnants. When the asteroid struck this region, its pulverized particles — which contained osmium — mixed beneath the seafloor and were emitted into the water, before eventually settling back down on the seafloor. When scientists drilled into the ocean bottom, they brought up this ancient seafloor, revealing that hydrothermal fluid containing asteroid remnants flowed into the gulf for hundreds of thousands of years. The impact, which precipitated widespread hydrothermal activity, ultimately created a nutrient-rich oceanic bath, the researchers say. A graphic showing how the environment in the Chicxulub crater following the impact could have spawned rich hydrothermal activity in the enclosed Gulf of Mexico. Credit: Sato et al. A gravity anomaly map of the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan Peninsula. Credit: NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission "After the asteroid impact, the Gulf of Mexico records an ecological recovery process that is quite different from that of the global ocean, as continuous hydrothermal activity has created a unique marine environment," Honami Sato, an earth scientist at Japan's Kyushu University who led the research, explained. If such a cataclysmic event could create extremely habitable conditions on a region of Earth, the same might happen on other worlds, too. It could happen on ocean moons, or in a related way, perhaps even on desert worlds. Mars, for example, is a planet bombarded with meteor strikes. Such impacts could melt the plentiful water ice in parts of Mars' subsurface, creating an inviting environment for microbes to thrive. Fortunately for us earthling land-dwellers, the odds of a cataclysmic space rock impact are exceedingly small. Here are today's general risks from asteroids or comets both tiny and very large. Importantly, even relatively small rocks can still be threatening, as the surprise 56-foot (17-meter) rock that exploded over Russia and blew out people's windows in 2013 proved. Every single day about 100 tons of dust and sand-sized particles fall through Earth's atmosphere and promptly burn up. Every year, on average, an "automobile-sized asteroid" plummets through our sky and explodes, according to NASA. Impacts by objects around 460 feet (140 meters wide) in diameter occur every 10,000 to 20,000 years. A "dinosaur-killing" impact from a rock perhaps a half-mile across or larger happens on 100-million-year timescales.
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Yahoo
European universities offer ‘scientific asylum' to US researchers fleeing Trump's cuts
Laced with terms such as 'censorship' and 'political interference', the Belgium-based jobs advert was far from typical. The promise of academic freedom, however, hinted at who it was aimed at: researchers in the US looking to flee the funding freezes, cuts and ideological impositions ushered in by Donald Trump's administration. 'We see it as our duty to come to the aid of our American colleagues,' said Jan Danckaert, the rector of Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), in explaining why his university – founded in 1834 to safeguard academia from the interference of church or state – had decided to open 12 postdoctoral positions for international researchers, with a particular focus on Americans. 'American universities and their researchers are the biggest victims of this political and ideological interference,' Danckaert said in a statement. 'They're seeing millions in research funding disappear for ideological reasons.' The university is among a handful of institutions across Europe that have begun actively recruiting US researchers, offering themselves as a haven for those keen to escape the Trump administration's crackdown on research and academia. Since Trump took power in late January, researchers in the US have faced a multipronged attack. Efforts to slash government spending have left thousands of employees bracing for layoffs, including at institutions such as Nasa, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US's pre-eminent climate research agency. The government's targeting of 'wokeism' has meanwhile sought to root out funding for research deemed to involve diversity, certain kinds of vaccines and any mention of the climate crisis. In France, the director of the prestigious Pasteur Institute in Paris, Yasmine Belkaid, said it was already working to recruit people from across the Atlantic for work in fields such as infectious diseases or the origins of disease. 'I receive daily requests from people who want to return: French, European or even Americans who no longer feel able to do their research or are afraid to do it freely,' Belkaid told the French newspaper La Tribune. 'You might call it a sad opportunity, but it is an opportunity, all the same.' The sentiment was echoed by France's minister for higher education and research, Philippe Baptiste, in a recent letter that called on research institutions to send in proposals on how best to attract talent from the US. 'Many well-known researchers are already questioning their future in the US,' he said. 'Naturally, we wish to welcome a certain number of them.' On Thursday, the Netherlands said it was aiming to swiftly launch a fund to attract researchers to the country. While the fund would be open to people of all nationalities, the country's education minister, Eppo Bruins, hinted at the tensions that have gripped US academia in announcing the plans. 'There is currently a great global demand for international top scientific talent. At the same time, the geopolitical climate is changing, which is increasing the international mobility of scientists,' Bruins said in a letter to parliament. 'Several European countries are responding to this with efforts to attract international talent,' he added. 'I want the Netherlands to remain at the vanguard of these efforts.' The Dutch effort comes after France's Aix-Marseille University said it had set up a programme – titled Safe Place for Science – that would put aside funding for more than two dozen researchers from the US for three years. 'We wish we didn't have to do this,' said Éric Berton, the university's president. 'We're not looking to attract researchers. But we were quite indignant about what was happening and we felt that our colleagues in the US were going through a catastrophe … we wanted to offer some sort of scientific asylum to those whose research is being hindered.' Two weeks after the programme was launched there have been about 100 applications, with researchers from Yale, Nasa and Stanford among those who have expressed interest. The university continues to receive about 10 applications a day, said Berton, many of them from researchers involved in studying climate, health or social sciences. Berton said he hoped universities across Europe would join his in providing a safe space for researchers. 'I think that we need to realise the historic moment we're living through and the serious, long-term consequences this could have,' he said. 'Europe must rise to the occasion.' At VUB, the opening of the 12 postdoctoral positions was also aimed at acknowledging the global impact of Trump's crackdown. Two research projects in which the university was involved – one delving into youth and disinformation and another investigating the transatlantic dialogue between the US and Europe – had been cancelled due to 'changed policy priorities', it said. For the university in Brussels, the openings were also a vindication of sorts. In a 2016 interview with Fox News, Trump had sought to characterise life in Brussels as akin to 'living in a hellhole', falsely accusing migrants in the city of failing to assimilate. 'At the time, the statement elicited many emotional reactions in Europe,' the university said. 'This gives additional symbolic meaning to the VUB initiative.'
