Category Environtal Studies

When food waste piles up, who are you gonna call?

Food is one of the biggest components of garbage produced by humans. Decomposing food emits methane, a gas that contributes hugely to global warming.

One might think that food thrown away by people can be fed to livestock. However, it is shunned by farmers, because it was found to cause infection in animals.

China has found a solution. Cockroach farms! Before you go “Ugh!” consider this: almost a billion cockroaches live in a plant run by Shandong Qiaobin Agricultural Technology Company in Jinan. They munch their way through 45 metric tons of food scraps in a day, waste that would otherwise have gone to a landfill.
Food collected from restaurants is cleaned of stray plastic, glass or metal pieces and ground into a mushy paste. The paste is piped into the cockroaches living quarters, which are kept dark, damp and warm. The insects flourish on the perpetual garbage buffet.

Dead roaches, a good source of protein, are crushed into food for farm animals such as pigs. Dried roach powder is also widely used in Chinese medicine, in skin creams to treat bums and to cure gastric problems.

In fact, the biggest farm in China breeds 6 billion adult cockroaches annually. Seven years ago, the farm in Sichuan was vandalised and a million roaches escaped and ran riot in the streets, sending people scurrying for cover. Now you can go “Ugh!”

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When boreal forests burn?

A large portion of our planet’s land surface is covered by forests (of different types). These include tropical, subtropical temperate, and boreal forests. While forests the world over are threatened by global warming boreal forests grapple additionally with an issue unique to them. What is it? Come; let’s find out the boreal forests of the northern hemisphere span Scandinavia, Siberia, Alaska, and Canada. Due to this vastness and the sheer number of trees they hold, these forests are an important carbon sink. Carbon has also accumulated over thousands of years in the soil due to the (long) time it takes for dead organic matter to decompose, thanks to the region’s cold climate and water-logged ground. The ecosystems here have been shaped mainly by “wildfires ignited by lightning” During these fires, due to the quantum of carbon it holds, a boreal forest “will release 10 to 20 times more carbon compared to a similarly sized fire in other ecosystems”. But then, unlike most other types of forests, these forests “might burn only once a century, sometimes even less often than that”. Because of this frequency, the amount of carbon stored has always exceeded that of carbon released into the atmosphere; it has been so for at least 6,000 years now. But now global warming is threatening this delicate balance.

Due to rising global temperatures, the fire season has become longer, leading to an increase in the frequency and severity of wildfires. As the “interval between fires shortens, more carbon is being released from organic soils in boreal forests than the ecosystems can reabsorb”. A new study shows a dramatic spike “in emissions from boreal fires over the past two decades”. In 2021 alone, they showed “a record 23% of global vegetation wildfire emissions, more than twice their contribution in a more typical year. If such spikes continue, it is likely that boreal forests may soon become a significant source of global emissions from biomass burning.

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What’s a living fossil?

Living fossils are those species that have retained the same form over millions of years. They have few or no living relatives. Most of these animals have changed relatively little since their origins.

Did you know that some archaic species that lived millions of years ago have survived for a long time and still live alongside us? The anatomy of these species has remained unchanged and these relics of the past are called living fossils.

The term “living fossil” refers to those species that have retained the same form over millions of years. They have few or no living relatives. Most of these animals have changed relatively little since their origins. They have often survived several mass extinctions.

It was English naturalist Charles Darwin who introduced the concept of a “living fossil”. He coined the term in his book On the Origin of Species (1859). He described them as species that are still in existence but belonging to an old lineage. While most species have been evolving, these underwent slow rates of evolution. The appearance of these are mostly unchanged from their extinct fossil relatives.

They have survived from an earlier period or in a primitive form, have long-enduring lineages and also belong to a group with low diversity. Their DNA has hardly changed in millions of years.

Some examples of living fossils include coelacanths, horseshoe crabs, tuataras, komodo dragon, aardvark, red panda, nautilus and purple frog. The tree Ginkgo biloba is the only living species of its group. It dates back almost 300 million years in the fossil record.

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In a tearing hurry?

Climate change is making hurricanes wetter, windier and altogether more intense. There is also evidence that it is causing storms to travel more slowly, meaning they can dump more water in one place.

If it were not for the oceans, the planet would be much hotter due to climate change. But in the last 40 years, the ocean has absorbed about 90% of the warming caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions. Much of this ocean heat is contained near the water’s surface. This additional heat can fuel a storm’s intensity and power stronger winds.

Climate change can also boost the amount of rainfall delivered by a storm. Because a warmer atmosphere can also hold more moisture, water vapour builds up until clouds break, sending down heavy rain. During the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season-one of the most active on record – climate change boosted hourly rainfall rates in hurricane-force storms by 8%-11%, according to an April 2022 study in the journal Nature Communications.

The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average. Scientists at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration This image obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), shows Hurricane Idalia making landfall in Florida on August 30, 2023. AFP (NOAA) expect that, at 2 degrees Celsius of warming, hurricane wind speeds could increase by up to 10%. NOAA also projects the proportion of hurricanes that reach the most intense levels Category 4 or 5- could rise by about 10% this century. To date, less than a fifth of storms have reached this intensity since 1851.

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Clean, sustainable fuels from industrial waste?

As we strive towards a future where net-zero emission becomes a reality, the need for clean. sustainable fuels has become more important than ever before. There’s been some progress along those lines as a group of researchers from the University of Cambridge have developed a solar-powered reactor that converts captured CO and plastic wastes into sustainable fuel and other useful chemical products.

 In the tests that were conducted, CO was converted into syngas, which is a key component for sustainable liquid fuels. Plastic wastes, meanwhile, were converted into glycolic acid, which is widely used in the cosmetics industry. The results were reported in the journal Joule in June

Inspired by photosynthesis

 This research group has been working towards developing sustainable, net-zero carbon fuels for several years. Their technology was inspired by photosynthesis, which is the process employed by plants to convert sunlight to food. Most of their solar-driven tests using artificial leaves until now, however, used pure, concentrated

CO2 from a cylinder. For this research, the team took CO2 from real-world sources such as industrial exhaust or even the air itself. By capturing and concentrating the CO2, they were then able to convert it into sustainable fuel.

Carbon capture and utilisation

For this, they were inspired by the carbon capture and storage (CCS) popular in the fossil fuels industry wherein CO2 is captured and then pumped underground and stored. But rather than storing it with unknown long-term implications, this group focussed on carbon capture and utilisation.

By bubbling air through the system with an alkaline solution, they were able to selectively trap the CO2. Other gases like nitrogen and oxygen, meanwhile, bubbled out harmlessly. The bubbling process thus made the air or the exhaust easier to work with, as CO2 could be concentrated.

The integrated system allowed the researchers to convert CO2 and plastics into fuels and chemicals using just the power of the sun. While improvements are definitely needed for this technology to be used at scale, the positive results are a step towards producing clean, sustainable fuels to power the world.

As we strive towards a future where net-zero emission becomes a reality, the need for clean. sustainable fuels has become more important than ever before. There’s been some progress along those lines as a group of researchers from the University of Cambridge have developed a solar-powered reactor that converts captured CO and plastic wastes into sustainable fuel and other useful chemical products.

 In the tests that were conducted, CO was converted into syngas, which is a key component for sustainable liquid fuels. Plastic wastes, meanwhile, were converted into glycolic acid, which is widely used in the cosmetics industry. The results were reported in the journal Joule in June.

Picture Credit : Google

 

Can hydrogen really become a climate solution?

 

Hydrogen or H is getting a lot of attention lately as governments in the U.S., Canada and Europe push to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. But what exactly is H2 and is it really a clean power source?

Here are some key facts about this versatile chemical that could play a much larger role in our lives in the future.

SO, WHAT IS HYDROGEN?

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but because its so reactive, it isn’t found on its own in nature. Instead, it is typically bound to other atoms and molecules in water, natural gas, coal and even biological matter like plants and human bodies.

Hydrogen can be isolated, however on its own, the H2 molecule packs a heavy punch as a highly effective energy carrier. It is already used in industry to manufacture ammonia, methanol and steel and in refining crude oil.

HYDROGEN AS AN ENERGY SOURCE

As a fuel, hydrogen can store energy and reduce emissions from vehicles, including buses and cargo ships. Hydrogen can also be used to generate electricity with lower greenhouse gas emissions than coal or natural gas power plants. Because it can be stored, H2 could help overcome intermittency issues associated with renewable power sources like wind and solar. It can also be blended with natural gas in existing power plants to reduce the plants emissions. Using hydrogen in power plants can reduce carbon dioxide emissions when either blended or alone in specialised turbines, or in fuel cells, which consume H2 and oxygen, or Oz, to produce electricity, heat and water. But it’s typically not entirely CO-free. That’s in part because isolating Hz from water or natural gas takes a lot of energy.

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