As a friend of mine said, "Its all getting a bit predictable!" after having previously won and being Highly Commended. Having written my third essay for the Independent/Bosch Technology Horizons Award, answering the question "How can technology and engineering provide innovative solutions to today's global challenges?", I have been one the 14 (out of 545 entries) short-listed students for the 2009 prize. I was happily surprised to find out that I won 2nd prize, meaning I've collected all 3! A pity for me, and a boon for the younger generation, it is that I'm now too old to participate in the contest again... I think. Stand by for next year ;-)
UPDATE: To read previous winning and 2nd place essays by the various contestants in recent years, check out the new Bosch Technology Horizons site!
UPDATE: To read previous winning and 2nd place essays by the various contestants in recent years, check out the new Bosch Technology Horizons site!
"Waste not want not
Climate change: our direst global challenge. The media preaches manifold solutions, including the well-worn emphasis on renewable energy sources and status quo approaches like "clean coal". Technology has endowed us with god-like powers of geoengineering: we can either help nature, by infusing iron into oceans to proliferate carbon-absorbing plankton, or bypass nature by floating lenses in space to reflect the Sun - a modern-day Perseus' shield.
This is all very well. But so long as it evades the underlying problem, our entire approach remains misguided. Climate change is one symptom of our society's affliction: its vampiric lust for energy. There's no denying that climate change must be prevented, but if we don't attack its root cause our efforts remain in vain. Here's where engineering comes in handy. It's not simply the tools it provides, but the philosophy it embodies. Engineering is all about efficiency - using just enough resources to solve a problem, and doing it well to boot. In recent years, researchers have realised we waste much of the extracted energy before using it. That's why an engineer's mindset is so beneficial to scientific research. Let's see how...
Even as we liberate the energy latent in light, wind and tides, much of it is lost. At times when the supply of generated energy exceeds the moment's demand, conventional batteries cannot effectively store the excess. Often the problem is that we store energy in an inefficient form. Think, "what is cheaper and simpler, my thermos or my laptop battery?" Terry Murphy, CEO of SolarReserve has put this simple idea to use in solar thermal plants, by storing energy as heat in molten salt until it is needed to create electricity. A similar approach, useful for wind turbines, is the use of flywheels which store rotational energy by increasing their speed of rotation, then release it back as they slow down.
Photovoltaic solar plants, however, can't afford these solutions, since they produce electricity directly. By way of solution, Donald Sadoway at MIT has developed a cheap and efficient liquid battery, in which energy is stored as metal ions, then freed when the ions fuse into an electrolyte. But perhaps the most promising method is one inspired by photosynthesis: professor Daniel Nocera of MIT has happened upon a holy grail of chemistry - an efficient catalyst to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, the latter of which can be burned to run our car or used in a fuel cell. Importantly, this process does not need a large infrastructure, so every household could manufacture its own fuel.
Speaking of households, new technologies will avoid waste here too. A breakthrough by MIT researchers Byoungwoo Kang and Gerbrand Ceder, speeds the tunnelling of lithium ions inside batteries. This means much higher speeds of recharging, allowing a mobile phone to charge within 10 seconds, and an electric car in 5 minutes. This simple development could effectively eliminate the energy waste from chargers being left on overtime.
A quite different solution is necessary for the PC, an energy hog in our age of constant Internet access. Companies like CherryPal propose a shift towards "cloud computing", where the bulk of processing power is distributed and accessed by many users from individual home terminals. These terminals are simple, integrated and ecological machines that avoid energy waste. However, their connection to the cloud can provide scalable processing power depending on our needs - from web browser to supercomputer.
Yet another way to conserve energy mirrors the thermos example described above. Recent improvements in the manufacture of aerogel, a powerful insulating material, mean it could be affordable enough for use in utilities, such as fridges and ovens, and even in construction. This means we could keep the right places in our houses cold and warm using far less energy. Given that buildings cause over a third of carbon emissions, this becomes a very attractive proposal.
Another big spender is lighting, since our addiction to incandescent bulbs burns one whole fifth of the energy we produce. LED bulbs, similar in usability to incandescents, use some 30 times less energy and have a lifespan 100 times longer, but their price has made them prohibitive. Until recently, that is: a new advance by Colin Humphreys of Cambridge University allows LEDs to be manufactured en masse on silicone wafers instead of the typical sapphire, at a fraction of the usual cost.
In the light of these advances, reducing our carbon footprint is a piece of cake: all we need is to learn how to slice our cake more thinly! When it comes to tackling the challenges ahead, the old proverb is right: "waste not, want not"."
Climate change: our direst global challenge. The media preaches manifold solutions, including the well-worn emphasis on renewable energy sources and status quo approaches like "clean coal". Technology has endowed us with god-like powers of geoengineering: we can either help nature, by infusing iron into oceans to proliferate carbon-absorbing plankton, or bypass nature by floating lenses in space to reflect the Sun - a modern-day Perseus' shield.
This is all very well. But so long as it evades the underlying problem, our entire approach remains misguided. Climate change is one symptom of our society's affliction: its vampiric lust for energy. There's no denying that climate change must be prevented, but if we don't attack its root cause our efforts remain in vain. Here's where engineering comes in handy. It's not simply the tools it provides, but the philosophy it embodies. Engineering is all about efficiency - using just enough resources to solve a problem, and doing it well to boot. In recent years, researchers have realised we waste much of the extracted energy before using it. That's why an engineer's mindset is so beneficial to scientific research. Let's see how...
Even as we liberate the energy latent in light, wind and tides, much of it is lost. At times when the supply of generated energy exceeds the moment's demand, conventional batteries cannot effectively store the excess. Often the problem is that we store energy in an inefficient form. Think, "what is cheaper and simpler, my thermos or my laptop battery?" Terry Murphy, CEO of SolarReserve has put this simple idea to use in solar thermal plants, by storing energy as heat in molten salt until it is needed to create electricity. A similar approach, useful for wind turbines, is the use of flywheels which store rotational energy by increasing their speed of rotation, then release it back as they slow down.
Photovoltaic solar plants, however, can't afford these solutions, since they produce electricity directly. By way of solution, Donald Sadoway at MIT has developed a cheap and efficient liquid battery, in which energy is stored as metal ions, then freed when the ions fuse into an electrolyte. But perhaps the most promising method is one inspired by photosynthesis: professor Daniel Nocera of MIT has happened upon a holy grail of chemistry - an efficient catalyst to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, the latter of which can be burned to run our car or used in a fuel cell. Importantly, this process does not need a large infrastructure, so every household could manufacture its own fuel.
Speaking of households, new technologies will avoid waste here too. A breakthrough by MIT researchers Byoungwoo Kang and Gerbrand Ceder, speeds the tunnelling of lithium ions inside batteries. This means much higher speeds of recharging, allowing a mobile phone to charge within 10 seconds, and an electric car in 5 minutes. This simple development could effectively eliminate the energy waste from chargers being left on overtime.
A quite different solution is necessary for the PC, an energy hog in our age of constant Internet access. Companies like CherryPal propose a shift towards "cloud computing", where the bulk of processing power is distributed and accessed by many users from individual home terminals. These terminals are simple, integrated and ecological machines that avoid energy waste. However, their connection to the cloud can provide scalable processing power depending on our needs - from web browser to supercomputer.
Yet another way to conserve energy mirrors the thermos example described above. Recent improvements in the manufacture of aerogel, a powerful insulating material, mean it could be affordable enough for use in utilities, such as fridges and ovens, and even in construction. This means we could keep the right places in our houses cold and warm using far less energy. Given that buildings cause over a third of carbon emissions, this becomes a very attractive proposal.
Another big spender is lighting, since our addiction to incandescent bulbs burns one whole fifth of the energy we produce. LED bulbs, similar in usability to incandescents, use some 30 times less energy and have a lifespan 100 times longer, but their price has made them prohibitive. Until recently, that is: a new advance by Colin Humphreys of Cambridge University allows LEDs to be manufactured en masse on silicone wafers instead of the typical sapphire, at a fraction of the usual cost.
In the light of these advances, reducing our carbon footprint is a piece of cake: all we need is to learn how to slice our cake more thinly! When it comes to tackling the challenges ahead, the old proverb is right: "waste not, want not"."
