Car Deal of the Day: Renault Symbioz is the new kid on the block from £190 per month
A tried and tested platform with a clever hybrid powertrain –- the new Renault Symbioz is our Deal of the Day for 23 August
Turning CO2 into an eco-friendly resource
A new Australian research initiative based at The University of Queensland (UQ) could see carbon dioxide becoming a useful resource in the production of fuels and chemicals.
Dubbed ‘GETCO2’, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Green Electrochemical Transformation of Carbon Dioxide is a $45 million, seven-year collaboration between seven Australian universities alongside industry and government. It is being led by Professor Xiwang Zhang within UQ’s School of Chemical Engineering.
“With electrochemical conversion, CO2 is transformed from being the biggest problem of our time to a valuable resource,” Zhang said.
“We’ve assembled world-leading experts with strong connections to industry along with talented early-career researchers.”
A GETCO2 team has already built a device that generates electricity by absorbing CO2. Zhang and Dr Zhuyuan Wang are finalists for the 2024 Eureka Prize for Innovative Research in Sustainability for their work on this device — a small, proof-of-concept nanogenerator that is carbon negative as it consumes greenhouse gas.
“Imagine in the future a device like this powering a mobile phone or a laptop computer using CO2 from the atmosphere,” Zhang said.
“On a larger scale, this technology could integrate with an industrial CO2 capture process to make electricity.
“It is very exciting, and we will keep developing this technology and many others at GETCO2.”
The centre was officially launched on 30 July 2024 by Assistant Minister for Education Senator Anthony Chisholm.
Image credit: iStock.com/Sakorn Sukkasemsakorn
Healthy Soil Sounds ‘Like an Underground Rave Concert’ With Clicks, Pops and Crackles of a Vast Ecosystem
If you’ve ever wondered what healthy soil sounds like, a new study has found that it emits the clicks, crackles and pops of worms and ants moving around underground. Barely audible to humans, the cacophony of sounds is “a bit like an underground rave concert of bubbles and clicks,” a press release from Australia’s Flinders […]
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Wind and Solar Produced More Energy Than Coal in the U.S. From January Through July This Year, a First
From January through July of this year, wind and solar in the U.S. generated more net electricity than power from coal, according to recent data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). According to the EIA’s Monthly Energy Review for July 2024, electricity net generation from renewable energy outpaced coal for the first seven months […]
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466 Million Children Live in Parts of the World Where Extremely Hot Days Per Year Have Doubled: UNICEF Report
Nearly half a billion children live in areas of the globe where there are twice as many or more “extremely hot days” each year than there were six decades ago, according to a new UNICEF analysis. The report, A Threat to Progress: Confronting the effects of climate change on child health and well-being, found that […]
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