Wastewater from these plants emerges laden with sodium sulfate, a byproduct of sulfuric acid and caustic soda, two chemicals used in battery manufacturing, copper refining and other industries.
“We can totally create a circular economy around these reagent chemicals,” Bilen Akuzum, co-founder and CTO of Aepnus Technology, told TechCrunch.
The two founded Aepnus to modernize the century-old chloralkali process, which splits salts like sodium sulfate back into the acids and bases that created them.
“We don’t use any expensive catalysts in our electrolyzers,” Akuzum said.
For customers, fully recycling sodium sulfate waste should reduce disposal and material costs.
Brendan Smith didn’t intend to be in the critical minerals business.
But Smith and Grossman’s company, SiTration, has a different proposal: use its equipment to treat the wastewater and harvest more minerals in the process.
To turn the wafers into filters, Smith and Grossman tweaked an existing chemical treatment to etch minute pores in them.
For a larger mining site, the company would use about as much silicon as a medium-size solar farm, Smith said.
Although SiTration is starting with mining waste, including a pilot project with Rio Tinto, it’s also pitching its filtration systems to battery recyclers and metal refiners.
The aluminum used to make the spacecraft held more than 10 times the energy of any cutting-edge battery.
To release the energy embodied in refined aluminum, Godart had to figure out how to get past the metal’s defenses, so to speak.
“One of the hardest elements of heavy industry to decarbonize is the heat,” Godart said.
Aluminum is slightly heavier than diesel or bunker fuel, but its energy density could be game changing for those industries.
One could imagine future ships powered by aluminum dropping their waste powder off at a smelter to be refueled for a return voyage.
In 2021, the company says it used 214 million or so pounds of single-use plastic in its packaging.
Nonprofit ocean conservation firm Oceana, on the other hand, put that figure at approximately ~700 million pounds.
Take for example, its ongoing efforts to reduce package weights and replace plastics with paper products.
The first is a robot that is primarily deployed in recycling facilities to sort through different materials.
We’ve also received a pretty significant grant from the Michigan Department of Environment for further deployments of our technology.
Mill, a food waste startup, is releasing an entirely new design of its bin that grinds and dries scraps, turning it into compost-like grounds that can feed plants and chickens alike.
Now, the heating elements surround the entire bin and the fan blows hot air through the food waste as it’s being processed.
That program continues nationwide, and a standards body recently certified Mill’s feed product, which should help the startup speed adoption among interested farmers.
“We’ve actually closed the loop in Phoenix,” Rogers said.
Mill may have already diverted 1 million pounds of food waste from landfills (and the associated greenhouse gasses), but it’s not enough for him.
It’s not everyday you come across kombucha playing a starring role in potential industrial disruption.
They can also be treated to have different properties — such as elasticity or water resistance.
Freixas had a selection of samples of knitted bio-filament on show, offering a glimpse of eco-friendly alternative to materials like cotton or plastic essentially being brewed into existence.
Freixas is undertaking the project at the Barcelona School of Design and Engineering as part of the Elisava Research team.
Unlike conventional fabric production the methods involved in producing Biocel are not labor intensive and do not require lots of energy or harsh chemicals, per Freixas.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is pumping $3.5 million into C16 Biosciences, the Y Combinator-backed company fermenting alternatives to the environmentally destructive palm oil business.
While the industry’s given itself something of a makeover lately, deforestation linked to palm oil production is once again on the rise.
Using yeast and agriculturally derived feedstocks, C16 already brews an alternative to the seed oil for use in beauty products, under the name Palmless.
A 2020 study found that climate pollution from palm oil plantations alone equate to about half that of the whole aviation industry.
In addition to the Gates Foundation and Elemental, C16’s previous investors include Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy and DCVC.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is pumping $3.5 million into C16 Biosciences, the Y Combinator-backed company fermenting alternatives to the environmentally destructive palm oil business.
While the industry’s given itself something of a makeover lately, deforestation linked to palm oil production is once again on the rise.
Using yeast and agriculturally derived feedstocks, C16 already brews an alternative to the seed oil for use in beauty products, under the name Palmless.
A 2020 study found that climate pollution from palm oil plantations alone equate to about half that of the whole aviation industry.
In addition to the Gates Foundation and Elemental, C16’s previous investors include Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy and DCVC.
The upgrade, dubbed Reencle Gravity, is due out by around September of this year.
If the upcoming composter works as advertised, it’ll help households reduce their greenhouse gas emissions from food waste, while generating nutrient-rich fertilizer for gardens.
However, the Gravity composter may also digest a good chunk of your income, thanks to its expected $649 price tag.
Still, many of these tools demand outdoor space, time and some elbow grease in order to turn food waste into fertilizer.
Reencle also says the Gravity composter can handle up to 3.3 pounds of food waste per day, or 50% more than the Prime model.
Poor grocery demand forecasting is responsible for more waste than you might expect.
It’s not only bad for the environment — food waste is a major source of carbon emissions — but costly for grocers.
Per Retail Insights, food and grocery retailers lose up to 8% of revenues through inadequate inventory availability.
“Food waste and food security are issues that Jack and I care deeply about, and we were really excited about an opportunity to actually address food waste at its core,” Wang said.
But Wang says that Guac is differentiated both by its dedication to transparency and its intense fine-tuning of forecasting models.
