Cleantech and Environmental News – Latest Headlines

RSS Subscribe to our Cleantech News feed

Producing biodegradable plastic just got cheaper and greener

Biodegradable drinking cups or vegetable wrapping foil: the bioplastic known as polylactic acid (PLA) is already a part of our everyday lives. And yet, PLA is not yet considered a full alternative to traditional petroleum-based plastics, as it is costly to produce. Researchers now present a way to make the PLA production process more simple and waste-free.

Jul 6th, 2015

Read more

Carbon Capture and Storage safety investigated

A significant step has been made for potential Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) deployment, with the publication of the results from the world's first experiment into the realistic simulation of potential environmental impact of a submarine CO2 leakage.

Jul 1st, 2015

Read more

Fuel and chemicals from steel plant exhaust gases

Carbon monoxide-rich exhaust gases from steel plants are only being reclaimed to a minor extent as power or heat. Researchers have developed a new recycling process for this materially unused carbon resource: They successfully produced fuel and specialty chemicals from these exhaust gases on a laboratory scale.

Jul 1st, 2015

Read more

Europe: 50% renewable energies by 2030 possible with greater integration

By 2030 around half of all electricity in Europe should come from renewable energies in order to reach EU climate targets. This applies to Germany, France, the Benelux countries, Austria and Switzerland. Varying volumes of national wind and solar supply can be balanced out through the cross-border integration of power systems.

Jun 25th, 2015

Read more

Distributed technique for power 'scheduling' advances smart grid concept

Researchers have developed a new technique for 'scheduling' energy in electric grids that moves away from centralized management by tapping into the distributed computing power of energy devices. The approach advances the smart grid concept by coordinating the energy being produced and stored by both conventional and renewable sources.

Jun 24th, 2015

Read more

Solar fuels: how planes and cars could be powered by the sun

Research in solar-derived liquid fuels, or solar fuels, aims to make a range of products that are compatible with our energy infrastructure today, such as gasoline, jet fuel and hydrogen. The goal is to store sunlight in liquid form, conveniently overcoming the transient nature of sunlight.

Jun 23rd, 2015

Read more

New research simplifies recycling of rare-earth magnets

Researchers have now pioneered a process that could enable the efficient recycling of two rare-earth metals, neodymium and dysprosium. These elements comprise the small, powerful magnets that are found in many high-tech devices. In contrast to the massive and energy-intensive industrial process currently used to separate rare earths, the method works nearly instantaneously at room temperature and uses standard laboratory equipment.

Jun 18th, 2015

Read more