Today I want to go through a handful of my favorite new technologies that have vast potentials to make our lives so much “greener,” yet for whatever reason, are practically unheard of to the general public. There’s a huge phenomenon of new innovations getting zero public attention for some reason or another, whether it be low efficiency, high costs, or perhaps some sort of vested interest against said technology going mainstream (but that’s kind of difficult to establish, so maybe not).
First off is my all-time favorite innovation basically ever: transparent solar cells! The earliest source I can find for these is a 2013 MIT article that describes how a team of researchers had developed a see-through photovoltaic coating that could be applied at pretty low cost to any transparent material, avoiding entirely the expenses from integrating glass into solar cell production. They claimed that the compound could be applied to newly constructed buildings, like skyscrapers with countless windows, with little additional cost—on top of being environmentally friendly to produce and requiring no excessively difficult methods to manufacture. The only downsides are that a solar cell that is transparent is purposefully avoiding the light frequencies we need to see—the ones MIT reports on allow about 70% of light to pass through, which is about the same as typical tinted building windows-- leading to a relatively lower efficiency than typical photovoltaics, and that the material in its current state needs to be workshopped before it lasts long enough for commercial applications on that scale. Once a way is found to make the coating last longer, however, the concept of making materials all around us suddenly photovoltaic is revolutionary to satisfying energy needs. Even if current models only have a power conversion efficiency of about 2%, theoretical models show the compound could reach upwards of 12%, which is actually on par with typical photovoltaics! As it is now, additionally, just stacking the transparent cells to compound the amount of energy conversion in the same space can reach up to about 10% efficiency while still transmitting light. But even at that 2% statistic, researchers have been able to power a small clock with a transparent cell array and ambient light, which is nothing to scoff at. That’s results! That’s tangible, real applications of a groundbreaking technology!
Next is another green energy innovation I saw recently on social media and decided to look into which is less ‘why did we all ignore this’ and more ‘this was invented 3 years ago and I haven’t seen anything even remotely similar until now, so that’s not as bad, but still c’mon’. The video I saw was of a wind turbine in Istanbul placed in the median between two sides of a busy roadway, where the momentum of the passing vehicles was turning the turbine and generating power. This caught me by surprise—why hadn’t we thought of this already? Created by Istanbul Technical University and the tech firm Devecitech, ENLIL turbines are specifically designed with tall, thin blades that fit nicely in those spaces between lanes of traffic while still catching as much as possible of that wind turbulence. They even have a small solar panel on the top to generate some additional power and everything. This idea of harnessing a byproduct of something that already exists, in this case traffic, to generate power is stunning. Imagine rows of these lined up on the medians between the sides of busy highways, all generating power from the traffic passing by—wouldn’t that be incredible? I hate cars probably more than the next guy, actually, but I do have to admit that they’re something we can’t exactly get rid of, so the next best option is to harness their operation to generate clean energy. And not only are they efficient, but they’re powerful: ENLIL turbines can produce about 1Kw per hour of energy, which is enough for the daily energy needs of about two average households. Just one turbine! Incredible!!!
Lastly, we have the newest innovation: fabric that generates energy from movement. In April of this year, a team at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore created a fabric that turns movement into power. Not only is this material really cool, because just tapping on the 3x4cm piece of fabric is able to ‘light up over 100 LEDs’ (I wish I had an actual number for the power generation, but oh well), but it’s also waterproof, doesn’t lose function when folded or crumpled, and can maintain a stable output for up to 5 months in its current iteration. This isn’t the only instance of power-generating fabric, though! The Georgia Institute of Technology has also created a type of fabric that additionally has interwoven fibrous photovoltaic cells that allow the fabric to capture both light and kinetic energy. This textile showed an output of two volts in one minute from a 4x5cm piece with ample sunlight and movement, and has proven to be able to withstand fairly rigorous use. Yet another fabric, produced by researchers at the School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering, the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka, and Loughborough University have also created a material capable of producing upwards of 35V from artificial movement that resembled regular slow body movements. This textile uses ‘TENG’s, which are to my knowledge very small electrical generators that collect static charges through electrostatic induction. Usual TENGs aren’t very easy to utilize, being manufactured on rigid sheets, but these carefully-designed new versions are no different in texture than typical knit shirts. All of these options are potential avenues into self-powered health technology, charging of personal electronic devices, and many other self-sufficient and sustainable power-generation methods.
I focused here on methods of energy production that I don’t see talked about, but there are countless other new technologies that are vastly underappreciated that help us tackle environmental concerns. That will have to be a potential blog entry for another week, though.
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