Lead, microplastics and coal on our dirty planet, plus faster-charging lithium-ion batteries

This week we reported on new developments in lithium-ion batteries and a real hat trick in industrial pollution with articles on coal, lead and microplastics.

Batteries changed

On Monday morning, in a presentation of a game that had already been played decades before, the Nobel committee awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to the developers of the lithium-ion battery, long after the technology had already reshaped the technological face of the planet and some 40 years after Stanley Whittingham first developed his innovative lithium-ion intercalating cathode. It’s as if the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had decided in 2023 to award the prize for best film to “Goodfellas”. Too little, too late, AMPAS, no one will ever forget the face from “Dances with Wolves”.

But okay! Now that we’ve had rechargeable batteries in virtually every device for 25 years, we’ve achieved our goal: charging those batteries even faster. Researchers from Huazhong University of Technology in China have proposed a new fast-charging battery design incorporating graphite-based material. In testing, the new design accelerated charging time while preserving capacity over thousands of charging cycles. Their breakthrough could likely attract the attention of Stockholm-based judges in just four decades.

Profitable cleaning

Humans have a long historical experience with lead poisoning, including lead tableware in ancient Rome, lead-based cosmetics in 18th-century Europe, widespread use globally lead-based paint and the absolute granddaddy of steroids. of all mass poisoning events, the one that affected the brain and health of everyone on the planet born between 1921 and 1975: the burning of leaded gasoline. And it was for such a hilariously stupid reason: to make the engines quieter.

Well, they phased out leaded gasoline as the use of catalytic converters in cars became more widespread. Global levels of atmospheric lead have fallen, and generations born after about 1985 will likely have two or three IQ points higher than previous generations. A new study calculates that eliminating airborne lead resulted in an average increase in U.S. workers’ lifetime earnings of 3.5 percent, or $21,400 for the average worker. The study authors report that the total revenue impact of the Clean Air Act is approximately $4.23 trillion and continues to pay a national dividend of more than 1% each year.

Tiny Janitors

Microplastic pollution has been discovered in the most remote regions of Earth, including at the poles and in deep ocean trenches, and poses a pervasive threat to life and health. Researchers from Brno University of Technology and Mender University in the Czech Republic have developed controllable biohybrid microrobots capable of removing micro- and nanoplastics from water without causing additional pollution. Their robots are made of environmentally friendly algae and iron nanoparticles.

They explain that the robots are precisely controlled by an external magnetic field. The robots have a negative surface charge that electrostatically attracts negatively charged micro- and nanoplastics; In their study, the researchers controlled the robots with high precision and removed most of the microplastics from the water tanks in which they were tested. Coming from algae, microbots can be introduced into natural bodies of water without contaminating them.

An anachronistic technology

In the 1950s, American futurists posited a world powered by nuclear power, which could theoretically produce electricity too cheap to measure. Instead, we lived through an era in which Victorian coal-fired technology dominated the energy sector and blanketed industrial areas in a fog that would have seemed intimate to Charles Dickens and probably inspired him to compose another book about orphans who coughed.

Exposure to fine particulate air pollutants from coal-fired power plants has been associated with a mortality risk twice that of fine particulate matter._2.5 pollutants from other sources, according to a George Mason University study. On the one hand, 460,000 deaths in the United States were attributable to PM_2.5 emissions from coal-fired power plants between 1999 and 2020. In contrast, deaths decreased by 95% during the study period due to the closure of coal-fired power plants and the installation of scrubbers in factories in activity ; deaths were highest between 1999 and 2007.

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