Environment

Welcome To A New Era In Recycling Of Plastics

In an advance toward a new era in recycling of plastics, scientists in Japan are reporting development of a process that breaks certain plastics down into their original chemical ingredients, which can be reused to make new, high quality plastic. That approach fostered recycling of beverage cans, scrap steel, and glass containers, which are melted to produce aluminum, glass and steel.

However, no process has emerged to depolymerize, or breakdown, the long chains of molecules that make up millions of pounds of polymer, or plastic, materials that are trashed each year. Instead, recycling of certain plastics involves melting and reforming into plastic that is less pure than the original.

Akio Kamimura and Shigehiro Yamamoto report invention of an efficient new method to depolymerize polyamide plastics -- which include nylon and Kevlar -- The technology, still at the laboratory-scale stage, does not require costly pressure chambers, extreme temperatures, or high energy inputs. Rather, it uses ordinary laboratory glassware.

The method relies on ionic liquids, liquids that contain only ions (atoms with an electric charge) and are powerful solvents. Researchers used an ionic liquid that changed nylon-6 into its component compound, captrolactam, and could be recycled and reused multiple times. "This is the first example of the use of ionic liquids for effective depolymerization of polymeric materials and will open a new field in ionic liquid chemistry as well as plastic recycling," the report states.

The article, "An Efficient Method to Depolymerize Polyamide Plastics: A New Use of Ionic Liquids," is scheduled for publication in the July 5 issue of ACS' Organic Letters.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by American Chemical Society.

Health

Fuel For Your Body -- And Car

With an increasing percentage of the nation's corn harvest going to ethanol production, some are questioning the wisdom of taking away corn as food for people. But Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist Kurt Rosentrater has a way to at least partially allay that concern: create new foods from an edible byproduct of ethanol production, distiller's dried grains (DDGs).

A typical ethanol plant in West Burlington, Iowa (Big River Resources, LLC). (Credit: Photo by Steven Vaughn)

The new foods could include cookies, breads and pastas that are low in calories and carbohydrates, but high in protein and fiber.

Rosentrater, an agricultural engineer at the ARS North Central Agricultural Research Laboratory, Brookings, S.D, is working on many fronts to find new uses for the growing supply of DDGs as ethanol production roars along. One such front is making a better cookie out of distiller's grains.

Rosentrater is working with Padmanaban G. Krishnan, professor and acting department head of the Department of Nutrition, Food Science and Hospitality at South Dakota State University, and colleagues to make cookies with DDGs flour, substituting it for more than 50 percent of the wheat flour normally used.

The cookies are smaller than those made with all-wheat flour because the high-protein/low-starch combination keeps the cookie batter from spreading as easily as batter made with 100 percent wheat. But the batter bakes consistently. The main problem right now is appeal. The fermentation process used to make ethanol often imparts a bitter off-flavor and odor to distiller's grains. That's why, to date, there have been no commercial foods made with ethanol byproducts.

But DDGs flour is often more nutritious than regular flour, because ethanol processing tends to concentrate the grain's protein and fiber three- to nine-fold.

Research on these uses was done in the 1980s, but interest then waned. Since 2000, there has been only one published study on food products made with distiller's dried grains, other than the studies by Rosentrater and colleagues.

Many new ethanol plants are designed for production of food-grade ingredients. Rosentrater and colleagues are among the few researchers today dedicated to giving them a way to make products that will sell like hotcakes.

ARS is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific research agency.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by USDA/Agricultural Research Service.

Australia Weighs In To Make The Perfect Kilogram

Australian scientists and optical engineers will be making a perfect sphere that may one day re-define the kilogram – and tomorrow they’re taking delivery of the cylinder of silicon from which it will be made.

The roundest object in the world. (Credit: Image credit CSIRO Industrial Physics)

The kilogram is one of seven base units in the International System (SI) used in science, commerce and everyday life. However, it is the only one still defined by a physical object – a lump of metal, known as the International Prototype, sitting in a vault in France. All the others have moved with the scientific times and are defined in terms of a fundamental constant of nature so anyone anywhere can reproduce them and they do not change over time.

Under the auspices of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), near Paris, the decision has been made that international effort will focus on two ways of re-defining the kilogram: one of which involves making a perfect sphere from a single crystal of exceptionally pure silicon.

The work will be done with the close cooperation of Australia’s National Measurement Institute (NMI) and CSIRO’s Australian Centre for Precision Optics (ACPO), which share the same site in the Sydney suburb of Lindfield.

While a physical object will still be necessary for calibrating scales and balances, the silicon atoms in the sphere will always remain the same. It is for this reason that the scientists working on what’s known as the Avogadro Project are collaborating to determine what is effectively the number of atoms in a sphere. Once the number of atoms is known, the definition of the kilogram can be based on it from then on.

“The only people who can make what is likely to be the roundest object in the world are our colleagues at CSIRO’s ACPO,” Dr Barry Inglis, Chief Executive of NMI says.

The best sphere the ACPO team has made had a total out-of-roundness of 35 nanometres. That is, the diameter varies by an average of only 35 millionths of a millimetre, making it probably the roundest object in the world.

Mr Alain Picard of the BIPM, who is bringing the silicon to Australia, says: "My laboratory has maintained the International Prototype kilogram since 1889. We are really pleased that this international collaboration will finally let us improve the definition of the unit of mass by basing it on a physical constant."

Ms Katie Green is part of ACPO’s team of expert optical engineers who will fabricate the spheres and Mr Walter Giardini of NMI lends skills in precision measurement to the project.

It has taken three years to produce the 20 cm long cylinder of silicon. The special silicon, known as monoisotopic silicon, was made in Russia and grown into a near perfect crystal in Germany. It will take something like twelve weeks to make one sphere 93 mm in diameter (the team will make two).

(Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by CSIRO Australia.)

Australia Weighs In To Make The Perfect Kilogram

Australian scientists and optical engineers will be making a perfect sphere that may one day re-define the kilogram – and tomorrow they’re taking delivery of the cylinder of silicon from which it will be made.

The roundest object in the world. (Credit: Image credit CSIRO Industrial Physics)

---

The kilogram is one of seven base units in the International System (SI) used in science, commerce and everyday life.

However, it is the only one still defined by a physical object – a lump of metal, known as the International Prototype, sitting in a vault in France. All the others have moved with the scientific times and are defined in terms of a fundamental constant of nature so anyone anywhere can reproduce them and they do not change over time.

Under the auspices of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), near Paris, the decision has been made that international effort will focus on two ways of re-defining the kilogram: one of which involves making a perfect sphere from a single crystal of exceptionally pure silicon.

The work will be done with the close cooperation of Australia’s National Measurement Institute (NMI) and CSIRO’s Australian Centre for Precision Optics (ACPO), which share the same site in the Sydney suburb of Lindfield.

While a physical object will still be necessary for calibrating scales and balances, the silicon atoms in the sphere will always remain the same. It is for this reason that the scientists working on what’s known as the Avogadro Project are collaborating to determine what is effectively the number of atoms in a sphere. Once the number of atoms is known, the definition of the kilogram can be based on it from then on.

“The only people who can make what is likely to be the roundest object in the world are our colleagues at CSIRO’s ACPO,” Dr Barry Inglis, Chief Executive of NMI says.

The best sphere the ACPO team has made had a total out-of-roundness of 35 nanometres. That is, the diameter varies by an average of only 35 millionths of a millimetre, making it probably the roundest object in the world.

Mr Alain Picard of the BIPM, who is bringing the silicon to Australia, says: "My laboratory has maintained the International Prototype kilogram since 1889. We are really pleased that this international collaboration will finally let us improve the definition of the unit of mass by basing it on a physical constant."

Ms Katie Green is part of ACPO’s team of expert optical engineers who will fabricate the spheres and Mr Walter Giardini of NMI lends skills in precision measurement to the project.

It has taken three years to produce the 20 cm long cylinder of silicon. The special silicon, known as monoisotopic silicon, was made in Russia and grown into a near perfect crystal in Germany. It will take something like twelve weeks to make one sphere 93 mm in diameter (the team will make two).

(Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by CSIRO Australia.)

Cheap, green, food-friendly biofuel produced in India

Sweet sorghum makes a cheap and environmentally-friendly biofuel

T. V. Padma
19 June 2007
Source: SciDev.Net

[NEW DELHI] The first commercial batch of biofuel from the stalks of a new sweet sorghum hybrid has been produced this month (13 June) at a distillery in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India.

Ethanol is produced from the sweet juice in the stalk of the sweet sorghum. The researchers responsible for the hybrid say by using sorghum, resource-poor farmers will still be able to use the sorghum grain and protect food security, while earning an additional income from selling the stalks.

This first batch marks a major success for the research consortium that developed the new hybrid, says Belum V. S. Reddy, principal sorghum breeder at the India-based International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT).

Sweet sorghum is a cheap biofuel crop to grow, costing about a fifth of that of sugarcane. It also requires half the water needed to grow maize and about an eighth of that required for sugarcane.

It is also carbon neutral, according to the Latin American Thematic Network on Bioenergy — a project promoting the sustainable use of bioenergy. Sweet sorghum takes in the same of amount of carbon dioxide during its growth that it emits during growth and its later conversion to ethanol and the eventual ethanol combustion.

When sweet sorghum biofuel is blended with petrol it also emits less polluting sulphur and nitrous oxide compared to sugarcane biofuel, according to Reddy.

A major problem for ICRISAT was ensuring availability of sweet sorghum stalks throughout the year. "Different plant types produce different amounts of juice at different times of the year and it is important to have genetic stocks that can produce the same amount of juice throughout the year," says Reddy.

ICRISAT solved the problem by developing hybrids that can be planted at any time of the year.

The team intend to plant at least 4000 acres of the new crop during the next rainy season, according to G. Subba Rao, director of Aakrithi Agricultural Associates of India, a partner in the project.

Clusters of villages have been identified for the planting, and seeds distributed to the farmers. A method has also been designed to collect the stalks from the farmers, which will then be crushed at cluster centres and the syrup transported to the main distillery.

'Sci-fi' and 'sci-non-fi' - welcome

By Galileo

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Believe me, science only tickles you for more science. Science thrills when it is broken down to simpler levels.
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