Solarpunk technology
- What Solarpunk Tech do you own?
Kind of curious what tech people own, everything from small to big tech. Assuming solarpanels are a given for a lot of peeps here, or maybe will be in the future. But what other tech do you own that you're happy with?
- A Tour of the Jevons Paradox: How Energy Efficiency Backfireseconomicsfromthetopdown.com A Tour of the Jevons Paradox: How Energy Efficiency Backfires – Economics from the Top Down
Efficiency isn't a tool for conserving energy --- it's a catalyst for technological sprawl.
- Self-balancing commuter pods ride old railway lines on demandnewatlas.com Self-balancing commuter pods ride old railway lines on demand
Country folk tend to like the independence offered by their cars, so how do you get them to use public transit? The Monocab system may be the answer, as it utilizes individual on-demand pods that travel on existing abandoned railways.
- Exercise bike that can store 2KWh of electricitymastodon.social Chris Adams (@mrchrisadams@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image This is an industrial designed exercise bike from Lithuania that can store 2KWh of electricity generated by your own exercise. The electricity can then be used for loads of stuff - it has a bunch of DC outputs, like USB-C (up to 60W) and USB-A, and AC outputs (can output up to 2K...
> This is an industrial designed exercise bike from Lithuania that can store 2KWh of electricity generated by your own exercise.
- University of Denver to make its electricity 100% solar within three yearscoloradosun.com University of Denver to make its electricity 100% solar within three years
The University of Denver is doubling down on climate change goals with plans to be 100% solar for electricity within three years.
- Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US productionnewatlas.com Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production
Two years ago, sodium-ion battery pioneer Natron Energy was busy preparing its specially formulated sodium batteries for mass production. The company slipped a little past its 2023 kickoff plans, but it didn't fall too far behind as far as mass battery production goes. It officially commenced…
It's so rare to actually see a new battery tech exit the lab and enter production. Always seems like there's 10,000 new up and coming breakthroughs in battery technology, but none ever leave the workbench.
While Na-ion batteries don't have the energy density of Li-ion, they make up for it with many other factors such as more abundant source materials, increased safety, higher charge/discharge currents, and increased number of charge cycles.
Slashdot summary:
>Not only is sodium somewhere between 500 to 1,000 times more abundant than lithium on the planet we call Earth, sourcing it doesn't necessitate the same type of earth-scarring extraction. Even moving beyond the sodium vs lithium surname comparison, Natron says its sodium-ion batteries are made entirely from abundantly available commodity materials that also include aluminum, iron and manganese. Furthermore, the materials for Natron's sodium-ion chemistry can be procured through a reliable US-based domestic supply chain free from geopolitical disruption. The same cannot be said for common lithium-ion materials like cobalt and nickel.
>Sodium-ion tech has received heightened interest in recent years as a more reliable, potentially cheaper energy storage medium. While its energy density lags behind lithium-ion, advantages such as faster cycling, longer lifespan and safer, non-flammable end use have made sodium-ion an attractive alternative, especially for stationary uses like data center and EV charger backup storage. [...] Natron says its batteries charge and discharge at rates 10 times faster than lithium-ion, a level of immediate charge/discharge capability that makes the batteries a prime contender for the ups and downs of backup power storage. Also helping in that use case is an estimated lifespan of 50,000 cycles.
- Generate shadows without trees: vegetable awnings, a new way to generate shadows in the city.
I found these kind of cool as an idea, as they can be added rather easily to existing cities and provide some greenery without taking up space, while providing shade:
https://www.singulargreen.com/en/green-shades-valladolid/
- Hydro Power Overview
A good overview and link collection around small scale hydro power technologies
- The wave glider, a robot to catch data in the oceanwww.liquid-robotics.com The Wave Glider | Unmanned Surface Vehicle by Liquid Robotics
The Wave Glider is the most experienced unmanned surface vehicle (USV) on the planet, revolutionizing how we explore and understand the world's oceans.
I was watchin the last episode of ''earthsounds'' (docuseries that you can find on torrent) and they said to have used one of this with a microphone mounted under it to record better sounds from whales (because they travel a looooooot and not always on the same routes).
Autonomous robot solarpowered to catch better ocean data, pretty solarpunk to me :3
p.s. the series is nice even tho first 4 episodes have much more cool sounds; it's also interesting to see how hard it is to capture the sounds at the end of every episode
p.p.s. ye, it's not open source, by a company owned by boeing and probably also used for militar purposes so it's not perfectly as we would like it to be
- Why Flushing Isn't For Everyone - YouTube
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💩 tech! On a serious note, this was in my random recommends and I clicked it and now I know about something I had no idea even existed. If this technology can come to fruition, it'll be great for the world.
- New PCB design is repeatably recyclable — vitrimer PCBs could save millions of tons in eWaste, say UW researcherswww.tomshardware.com New PCB design is repeatably recyclable — vitrimer PCBs could save millions of tons in eWaste, say UW researchers
vPCBs can be recycled with 98% vitrimer recovery and 100% glass fiber recovery.
- Keurig's new K-Rounds coffee pods are plastic-free and could finally make single-serve coffee-making sustainablewww.techradar.com Keurig's new K-Rounds coffee pods are plastic-free and could finally make single-serve coffee-making sustainable
K-Rounds are virtually nothing but coffee
This is quite exciting in that it removes plastic waste. I see no reason why different companies can't make different shape ones to maintain their lock-in. I expect a knock-off market to pop-up, but that exists with plastic pods too. It's a step in the right direction at least.
- Transform Home Energy with a System that Powers Through Outages and Enhances Sustainable Living - Yanko Designwww.yankodesign.com Transform Home Energy with a System that Powers Through Outages and Enhances Sustainable Living - Yanko Design
https://youtu.be/HfyBw808-Ug Engineered to tackle the complex challenges of today's energy challenges, the Anker SOLIX X1 is a sophisticated home energy storage system that ensures consistent power during outages and optimizes energy usage for greater efficiency and cost savings. Homeowners often fa...
A wild Anker enters the home battery market.
- 3 Old Technologies For A Sustainable Futurewww.resilience.org 3 Old Technologies For A Sustainable Future
We don't need high-tech innovation to create a sustainable future for humanity. In fact, all the tech we need to regenerate our ecosystem and provide a good life for all already exists.
- Giant nanomechanical energy storage capacity in twisted single-walled carbon nanotube ropeswww.nature.com Giant nanomechanical energy storage capacity in twisted single-walled carbon nanotube ropes - Nature Nanotechnology
A single-walled carbon nanotube spring stores three times more mechanical energy than a lithium-ion battery, while offering wide temperature stability and posing no explosion risk.
- solar concrete kiln design questions
This might be a bit of a reach but I’m wondering if anyone here knows enough about concrete production to help me plan the layout of my next photobash. I’d like to do a scene of a solar-thermal concrete factory – there are several supposedly in the works, like Synhelion’s new partnership with Cemex, funded by the US DoE, or the french company Solpart (whose prototype involved a rotary kiln), or Heliogen. Unfortunately I’ve had a lot of trouble finding decent photos of their setups, and even though Synhelion is apparently working on a pilot industrial-scale solar concrete plant, I haven’t found any plans to work from.
I’ve been doing some reading about existing concrete factories, and plan to keep as much as possible the same, while mostly modifying the kiln to include at least one structure similar to a solar falling particle receiver, and adding some onsite algae farms or greenhouses for capturing CO2 released by the burning of the lime, and a trainyard (either electric trains or fireless steam locomotives, given that it’s a solar plant) for moving material into and out of the plant.
I’ll say upfront I know very little about concrete production, and I’m struggling to come up with a kiln design that’ll hit the required temps for long enough, without burning the lime and messing it up.. Originally I’d pictured basically a rotating kiln feeding into a falling particle receiver, linked up so heat from the sunlight hitting the falling concrete could still travel up the tube and eventually up into the cyclones where the mix is dried. But it seems like the concrete needs a longer, slower firing time than whatever heat it gets wafting up from the aperture, and then a blast of light and heat as it goes past. The diagrams I could find seems to just be a rotary kiln with sunlight being blasted into the open lower end, but I’m not sure if that’s just the design they went with because it was a proof of concept prototype.
I also know that temperature changes are bad for lining of rotary kilns, which are normally run pretty constantly IRL, so it seems like they’d need some changes anyways to cope with the day night cycle?
In case you’re reading this and wondering why make concrete this way, the concrete industry is a huge portion of human CO2 production (around 8% total), due both to the release of CO2 from the chemical process of baking the limestone, and from the tremendous amounts of heat necessary for doing that. A more solarpunk society would hopefully use much less concrete overall, especially with changes in building design and priorities that allow for weaker materials like hempcrete and mycocrete, but for some things we’re still going to need modern concrete. Solar furnaces can hit temps well above what a rotary kiln uses, and heliostat systems aren’t far behind, and it’s a pretty direct use of heat from the sun, which would minimize conversion losses. It’s not a great fit for every current concrete plant, but it seems like it could help.
- Plastic Waste May FINALLY Have a Solution! - YouTube
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- The Mushroom Motherboard: The Crazy Fungal Computers that Might Change Everything - YouTube
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- Nearly all of our #shoes end up in #landfills, but these entrepreneurs are trying to change that. - YouTubeyoutube.com Nearly all of our #shoes end up in #landfills, but these entrepreneurs are trying to change that.
------------------------------------------------------Business Insider tells you all you need to know about business, finance, tech, retail, and more.Visit o...
- We Need To Rewild The Internetwww.noemamag.com We Need To Rewild The Internet | NOEMA
The internet has become an extractive and fragile monoculture. But we can revitalize it using lessons learned by ecologists.
- The Ancient World’s Ingenious Ice Making Air Conditioning System - YouTube
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- Scientists make breakthrough with advanced technology generating water from thin air — and it could save millions of liveswww.thecooldown.com Scientists make breakthrough with advanced technology generating water from thin air — and it could save millions of lives
Researchers in China have reportedly developed a new technology for harvesting water out of thin air that is powered by energy from the sun.
Researchers in China have reportedly developed a new technology similar to hydropanels for harvesting water out of thin air that is powered by energy from the sun. The device could be especially useful in dry, arid areas where water — but not sunlight — is hard to come by.
The findings from the research team from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China were published in the scientific journal Applied Physics Reviews.
"This atmospheric water harvesting technology can be used to increase the daily water supply needs, such as household drinking water, industrial water, and water for personal hygiene," said Ruzhu Wang, one of the study's authors.
According to the study, the device is more efficient than other existing atmospheric water generators because it uses a "novel rotating operational strategy, in which one module works in the desorption, while the others work in the adsorption simultaneously … to keep the device harvesting water continuously."
The technology could also be used for purposes ranging from dehumidification to agriculture irrigation to thermal management for electronic devices.
- A Long-Range Meshtastic Relayhackaday.com A Long-Range Meshtastic Relay
In the past few years we’ve seen the rise of low-power mesh networking devices for everything from IoT devices, weather stations, and even off-grid communications networks. These radio module…
- Emails Over Radiohackaday.com Emails Over Radio
The modern cellular network is a marvel of technological advancement that we often take for granted now. With 5G service it’s easy to do plenty of things on-the-go that would have been diffic…
- The Ultimate CyberDeck for Encrypted Messaging over a Meshnet
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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/8609299
> The Ultimate CyberDeck for Encrypted Messaging over a Meshnet > > The lilygo t deck is an all in one device that includes a LoRa antenna with a screen and keyboard for messaging people over long distances without any internet using the open source end to end encrypted software Meshtastic. > > The video is way longer than it needs to be but you can see the device in action. There’s a growing community of people making meshnets using Meshtastic in different cities.
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- License Free, Encrypted, Off-Grid, Decentralized Mesh Network Comms: A full guide on how to get started with LoRa devices and Meshtasticadrelien.com What is Meshtastic? - Full Guide on How To Get Started
Meshtastic – an open-source mesh networking platform redefining communication. From decentralized, long-range capabilities to versatile applications in emergency response, outdoor adventures. Discover the diverse hardware options, step-by-step setup guide, and the remarkable range of 5 KM - 10 KM.
This seems like a great technology to build resiliency and redundancy in a community, especially for places where cell service is spotty, or in the odd event where normal lines of communication are blocked.
The LoRa boards can be easily powered with a small solar panel for continuous use, and if put in a high enough place with a good antenna, they can have a surprisingly long range!
In addition to being genuinely useful, they also seem like they'd be a lot of fun to experiment and play around with, printing cool 3D cases for them, or designing a better antenna or repeater setup.
If and of you already have experience with LoRa, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts! :D
- The first all-electric tugboat in the US is about to launchwww.canarymedia.com The first all-electric tugboat in the US is about to launch
The eWolf will begin operating this spring at the Port of San Diego, marking an important early step towards slashing diesel pollution from America's ports.
- Billie Eilish announces eco-friendly album plan - BBC Newswww.bbc.co.uk Billie Eilish announces eco-friendly album plan
The star says she will only use recycled vinyl and BioVinyl for her new album, Hit Me Hard And Soft.
- how to avoid spam in decentralized networks?
what bugs me the most is thinking that if lemmy became as relevant as reddit, servers to spam all over the threadiverse would be created nonstop
does anyone have some resources into solutions for spam in stuff like email? i'd like to check if having some giants gatekeepers like microsoft and google is inevitable
- Plastic-Free Vegan Leather that Dyes Itself Grown from Bacteriawww.imperial.ac.uk Plastic-free vegan leather that dyes itself grown from bacteria | Imperial News | Imperial College London
Researchers at Imperial College London have genetically engineered bacteria to grow animal- and plastic-free leather that dyes itself.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/14059725
> Plastic-Free Vegan Leather that Dyes Itself Grown from Bacteria
- Doncaster giant airship plant to create 1,200 jobswww.bbc.co.uk Doncaster giant airship plant to create 1,200 jobs
Hybrid Air Vehicles aims to make 24 ships a year at the site in Doncaster.
Did someone say airship?
- We Need to Decarbonize Software | IEEE Spectrumspectrum.ieee.org We Need to Decarbonize Software
The green software movement is tackling the hidden environmental impact of today’s code
An interesting tool from the article is ecograder.com which grades a website's carbon emissions and provides recommendations to improve. There is also the Green Web Foundation's directory of hosting providers powered by renewable energy.
This is the report for slrpnk.
- The Greenhouse Effect Isn’t For Greenhouseshackaday.com The Greenhouse Effect Isn’t For Greenhouses
Think of a greenhouse. It’s a structure with glass walls that lets light in and traps heat, all for the benefit of the plants inside. As for how it works, that’s elementary! It’s …
- Indonesia’s e-bike shops are building their own batteriesrestofworld.org Indonesia’s e-bike shops are building their own batteries
Battery-pack builders chase maximum range, despite safety risks.
- How to Escape From the Iron Age?solar.lowtechmagazine.com How to Escape From the Iron Age?
We cannot lower carbon emissions if we keep producing steel with fossil fuels.