How to Meet the Clean Air Challenge

Similar to the process of producing clean water, one method China uses to attempt to reduce chronic smog pollution moves dirty air through a filtration system.

     In Beijing, a Dutch invention cleans air using a 23-foot, cylindrical filtration tower powered by electricity from a coal-fired power plant. A 300-foot tower surrounded by coated greenhouses in Xian, Shaanxi province, is experimenting with a more complex process. In daylight hours, solar radiation heats polluted air in the greenhouses before it rises in the tower through a series of purifying filters and is released into a 3.86 square mile area. Thus far, the Xian tower, when treating severely polluted air, especially in winter when coal provides heat in the area, shows only a 15% reduction in the fine small particles most hazardous to health. Yet, Xian's developers have an ambitious plan to construct 1,640-foot anti-pollution towers, each surrounded by 11.6 square miles of greenhouses, in other Chinese cities.

     Based on the Australian study mentioned in the earlier post, "Priority: Eliminate generating electricity from fossil fuels," coal-fueled power plants are the major source of pollution. These air filtration towers would seem to do the most good, if they were located in the vicinity of power plants.

     Startups and traditional automakers throughout the world race to produce the electric cars that promise to eliminate a source of pollution, the fossil fuels that power today's cars and trucks. The challenge to up the percentage of electric passenger cars from less than 1% on the world's roads today to at least 33% by 2040 involves financing, designing, engineering, manufacturing, charging stations, searching for the lithium used in batteries, and marketing. China is the industry's acknowledged leader with Tesla in the U.S. and European automakers also in the hunt.

     Although China is expected to continue to import lithium from South America's Argentina-Chile-Bolivia Belt (See the earlier post, "Technology's Hard Sell and the Public's Role in the Lithium-ion Battery Industry."), it has its own domestic supply. In the cold, thin air high in China's mountains between the Tibet Autonomous Region and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, mining in Chaerhan Salt Lake is on track to supply a plant that will produce 30,000 tons of lithium carbonate by 2020 or 2021 and eventually plants that produce 200,000 tons annually.

     China also has ideas for creating charging methods to keep electric cars on the road away from home. When driving long distances, drivers could visit automated swap stations to switch their dying batteries for new ones in three minutes, or they could call mobile vans to come and recharge their dying batteries in ten minutes. (I cannot help but recall the toxic nano particles a high school student found, when her summer intern project at the University of Wisconsin studied the effects of decomposing lithium batteries. See the earlier post, "The Challenge of New Technologies: Prepare to Think.") By requiring foreign auto dealers to sell only electric cars and to provide charging options, China is in a position to restrict entry into the world's biggest market.

   

     

Let's Repurpose Our Mindsets

When I read an article titled, "How to Mine Cobalt Without Going to Congo," I learned Canadian scientists have figured out how to produce the cobalt (and lithium) needed to power electric cars from batteries that fail quality control tests and now end up in hazardous-waste dumps, buried in the ground, or giving off toxic emissions as they burn. When as many as 118 million electric cars take the road in 2030, more batteries will stop working. That means more rare metals can be recycled from old batteries to produce replacements.

The idea of recycling cobalt from worn out electric car batteries started me thinking about how many examples of repurposing I've become aware of lately. It reminded me of how I started noticing how many people wore glasses after I began wearing them in fifth grade.

In the fashion industry, designer Stella McCarthy endorsed the MacArthur Foundation's report that urged increasing the less than 1% of material now made from the used clothing and textiles that end up in landfills. In the July, 2018 issue of VOGUE, eco-conscious model, Gisele, cites the statistic that "between eight and thirteen million tons of clothing ends up in landfills every year."  Already, women in India turn their old saris into quilts. A young designer I know began her path to a career by using the material from her mother's worn hijabs.

On "American Pickers," the TV hosts travel through the U.S. looking for parts to rebuild old cars, motorcycles, and bicycles. They also come across pharmacy cabinets, industrial lamps, moldings, signs, and award trophies that can be used in new ways and as decorative objects in homes and restaurants. When you think about it, eBay made a big business out of giving used items a new purpose in life the way yard sales and thrift stores do on a smaller scale.

I guess I was subconsciously trying out a new repurpose mindset when I read about the "convolute" that ILC (formerly Playtex) designed to enable astronauts to move their arms, legs, and hands while wearing an airtight, protective spacesuit on the moon. To me, the flexible, but somewhat rigid, ribbed rubber and dacron "convolute" looked like a sleeve that could be repurposed to stabilize a person's shaking or weak arms and legs and better enable him or her to hold items and walk.

As Christmas approaches, I'm reminded that the stable in the creche scene at our church was made as an Eagle Scout project by a young man who found the wood in an old barn a farmer was about to burn.

What items have you repurposed? (Also see the earlier post, "Dump the Dump.")