Environment

Sharp-Shooting Farm Robot

SprayBox can target individual weeds and crops at a 20-per-second rate and then spray them at a millimeter’s accuracy.

Organic Redox Flow Battery

Redox flow batteries are stationary batteries in which the energy is located in the electrolyte, outside of the cell itself, as in a fuel cell.

Top 10 Most-Read Tech Briefs Stories of 2022

See Tech Briefs’ most-read stories of 2022.

Small But Mighty: Stratospheric Microballooons

A zero-emission reusable stratospheric balloon developed by Urban Sky for remote sensing could one day be used for real-time wildfire monitoring.

Low-Cost, High-Energy Battery Could Change the Decarbonization Game

The battery was made using sodium-sulphur — a type of molten salt that can be processed from sea water at a low cost.

Self-Folding Origami Honeycombs Perfect for Protective Packaging

A research team has demonstrated a promising method to easily manufacture self-folding origami honeycomb structures.

Meeting the Challenge of Electric Vehicle Battery Cell Innovation

Today, batteries are the new engine for innovative electric vehicle (EV) development.

Sleep Mode Makes Internet of Energy More Energy Efficient

A group of scientists in Nagoya University, Japan, have developed a possible solution to one of the biggest problems of the Internet of Energy, energy efficiency. They did so by...

Producing Oil from Duckweed

Scientists say that such oil-rich duckweed could easily be harvested to produce biofuels or other bioproducts.

A Systems Engineering Approach to Sustainable Power Systems

Research and development work continue to deliver cleaner, more efficient, and more diverse ways of generating the energy we need to power modern society.

2022 Create the Future Design Contest: Consumer Product Design Category Winner — Green Screen

The core of the Green Screen consists of noise-absorbing mineral wool, which also serves as a vertical surface for evaporating rain coming from the roofs of the adjacent buildings.

2022 Create the Future Design Contest: Electronics/Sensors/IoT Winner - RF Fingerprinting for Industrial IoT Security

Some of the hardest to detect cyber-attacks are wireless, including man-in-the-middle attacks and rogue access points.

2022 Create the Future Design Contest: Sustainable Technologies/Future Energy Category Winner — SUNPave: Tomorrow’s Energy Today

When solar panels are placed horizontally, they harvest 15-20 percent less energy from the sun, and hence consumers end up paying a higher price for the harvested energy.

Designing to Minimize Environmental Impact

According to the NASA Earth Observatory, air temperatures on Earth have been rising since the Industrial Revolution. Here is a suggestion about one way that engineers could help reduce the problems caused by that in their everyday work.

New Imaging Method Reveals Concealed Objects

Using state-of-the-art indium phosphide transistors and a basic computer and mirrors, researchers were able to produce images of concealed bodies.

Bringing More Reliable Electricity to Puerto Rican Microgrids

Ben Ollis and a team of engineers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory are creating a novel orchestrator tool to manage a cluster of microgrids so they can directly support and communicate with each other, making them more resilient during long power outages. It is being installed as a demonstration project in the small town of Adjuntas in the Central Mountains of Puerto Rico.

5 Ws of Energy-Harvesting Yarns

A group of University of Texas at Dallas researchers have invented energy-harvesting yarns made from carbon nanotubes that produce electricity when repeatedly stretched.

Glow-in-the-Dark Algae May Be Ideal for Soft Robots

Engineers developed soft devices containing algae that glow when under mechanical stress —perfect for building soft robots.

Pulsed 2-Micron Laser Transmitter

The design produces a compact, efficient, long-lifetime laser transmitter as needed for use in space, while also having potential applications as an airborne or ground-based wind measurement tool.

A New Fabrication Process Produces Smart Textiles

By incorporating a special type of plastic yarn and using heat to slightly melt it — a process called thermoforming — the researchers were able to greatly improve the precision of pressure sensors woven into multilayered knit textiles, which they call 3DKnITS.

Scientists Stick Hydrogen Where the Sun Doesn’t Shine

One method for keeping removed carbon out of the atmosphere long-term involves injecting CO2 into rock formations deep underground.

Smart Microrobots Walk Autonomously

A collaborative effort has installed electronic “brains” on solar-powered robots that are 100 to 250 micrometers in size — smaller than an ant’s head — so that they can walk autonomously without...

How Much Do You Know About Electric Aircraft Advances?

How much do you know about the advances regarding to electric aircraft?

A Silky-Smooth Alternative to Microplastics

The EU has already declared that the nonbiodegradable microplastics must be eliminated by 2025, but a team of MIT scientists has perhaps expedited that timeline.

Create the Future Design Contest: Success Story - Plastic-Eating Enzymes Chomp into the Future

A polymer breaking enzyme when infused into plastic causes the material to break down into its original components when submerged in compost or even warm water.

The Battery Powering a Truly Green Revolution in Personal Electronics

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently announced that they have figured out how to engineer a biofilm that harvests the energy in evaporation and...

5 Ws of the Artificial Leaf

Researchers at University of Cambridge have developed floating “artificial leaves” that generate clean fuels from sunlight and water and could eventually operate on a large scale at sea.