PROJECTS II
ASSIGNMENT
TOPIC: Emerging technologies for Sustainable Development
Submitted By
ROSHNI VINOD
3151
Wasteful energy policies, overuse of resources, water supply shortages, global climate
change, and deforestation are just some of the issues experts say need to be addressed for
humans to achieve sustainable living on this planet. By the year 2025, an additional 2.9
billion people will strain tightening water supplies, and the world\'s energy needs will go up
60 percent by 2030, according to the United Nations.
Technology has become the greatest agent of change in the modern world. While never
without risk, positive technological breakthroughs promise innovative solutions to the most
pressing global challenges of our time, from resource scarcity to global environmental
change. However, a lack of appropriate investment, out dated regulatory frameworks and
gaps in public understanding prevent many promising technologies from achieving their
potential.
New challenges need new technologies to tackle them. Here, are few of the most promising
technology trends that can help to deliver sustainable growth in decades to come as global
population and material demands on the environment continue to grow rapidly. These are
technologies that have made development breakthroughs and are nearing large-scale
deployment.
OnLine Electric Vehicles (OLEV)
Wireless technology can now deliver electric power to moving
vehicles. In next-generation electric cars, pick-up coil sets under the
vehicle floor receive power remotely via an electromagnetic field
broadcast from cables installed under the road. The current also
charges an onboard battery used to power the vehicle when it is out
of range. As electricity is supplied externally, these vehicles need
only a fifth of the battery capacity of a standard electric car, and can achieve transmission
efficiencies of over 80%. Online electric vehicles are currently undergoing road tests in
Seoul, South Korea.
3-D printing and remote manufacturing
Three-dimensional printing allows the creation of solid structures
from a digital computer file, potentially revolutionizing the
economics of manufacturing if objects can be printed remotely in the
home or office. The process involves layers of material being
deposited on top of each other in to create free-standing structures
from the bottom up. Blueprints from computer-aided design are sliced into cross-section for
print templates, allowing virtually created objects to be used as models for hard copies
made from plastics, metal alloys or other materials.
Self-healing materials
One of the defining characteristics of living organisms is their
inherent ability to repair physical damage. A growing trend in
biomimicry is the creation of non-living structural materials that
also have the capacity to heal themselves when cut, torn or
cracked. Self-healing materials which can repair damage without
external human intervention could give manufactured goods longer lifetimes and reduce the
demand for raw materials, as well as improving the inherent safety of materials used in
construction or to form the bodies of aircraft.
Energy-efficient water purification
Water scarcity is a worsening ecological problem in many parts
of the world due to competing demands from agriculture, cities
and other human uses. Where freshwater systems are over-used
or exhausted, desalination from the sea offers near-unlimited
water but a considerable use of energy mostly from fossil
fuels to drive evaporation or reverse-osmosis systems. Emerging technologies offer the
potential for significantly higher energy efficiency in desalination or purification of
wastewater, potentially reducing energy consumption by 50% or more. Techniques such as
forward-osmosis can additionally improve efficiency by utilizing low-grade heat from
thermal power production or renewable heat produced by solar-thermal geothermal
installations.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) conversion and use
Long-promised technologies for the capture and underground
sequestration of carbon dioxide have yet to be proven commercially
viable, even at the scale of a single large power station. New
technologies that convert the unwanted CO2 into saleable goods can
potentially address both the economic and energetic shortcomings of
conventional CCS strategies. One of the most promising approaches
uses biologically engineered photosynthetic bacteria to turn waste CO2 into liquid fuels or
chemicals, in low-cost, modular solar converter systems. Individual systems are expected to
reach hundreds of acres within two years. Being 10 to 100 times as productive per unit of
land area, these systems address one of the main environmental constraints on biofuels from
agricultural or algal feedstock, and could supply lower carbon fuels for automobiles, aviation
or other big liquid-fuel users.
Enhanced nutrition to drive health at the molecular level
Even in developed countries millions of people suffer from
malnutrition due to nutrient deficiencies in their diets. Now modern
genomic techniques can determine at the gene sequence level the vast number of naturally
consumed proteins which are important in the human diet. The proteins identified may have
advantages over standard protein supplements in that they can supply a greater percentage of
essential amino acids, and have improved solubility, taste, texture and nutritional
characteristics. The large-scale production of pure human dietary proteins based on the
application of biotechnology to molecular nutrition can deliver health benefits such as muscle
development, managing diabetes or reducing obesity.
Remote sensing
The increasingly widespread use of sensors that allow often passive
responses to external stimulae will continue to change the way we
respond to the environment, particularly in the area of health.
Examples include sensors that continually monitor bodily function
such as heart rate, blood oxygen and blood sugar levels and, if necessary, trigger a medical
response such as insulin provision. Advances rely on wireless communication between
devices, low power-sensing technologies and, sometimes, active energy harvesting. Other
examples include vehicle-to-vehicle sensing for improved safety on the road.
Precise drug delivery through nanoscale engineering
Pharmaceuticals that can be precisely delivered at the molecular
level within or around a diseased cell offer unprecedented
opportunities for more effective treatments while reducing
unwanted side effects. Targeted nanoparticles that adhere to
diseased tissue allow for the micro-scale delivery of potent therapeutic compounds while
minimizing their impact on healthy tissue, and are now advancing in medical trials. After
almost a decade of research, these new approaches are finally showing signs of clinical
utility.
Organic electronics and photovoltaics
Organic electronics a type of printed electronics is the use of
organic materials such as polymers to create electronic circuits and
devices. In contrast to traditional (silicon-based) semiconductors that
are fabricated with expensive photolithographic techniques, organic
electronics can be printed using low-cost, scalable processes such as
ink jet printing, making them extremely cheap compared with traditional electronics devices,
both in terms of the cost per device and the capital equipment required to produce them.
While organic electronics are currently unlikely to compete with silicon in terms of speed and
density, they have the potential to provide a significant edge in cost and versatility. The cost
implications of printed mass-produced solar photovoltaic collectors, for example, could
accelerate the transition to renewable energy.
Fourth-generation reactors and nuclear-waste recycling
Current once-through nuclear power reactors use only 1% of the
potential energy available in uranium, leaving the rest radioactively
contaminated as nuclear waste. While the technical challenge of
geological disposal is manageable, the political challenge of nuclear
waste seriously limits the appeal of this zero-carbon and highly scalable energy technology.
Spent-fuel recycling and breeding uranium-238 into new fissile material known as Nuclear
2.0 would extend already-mined uranium resources for centuries while dramatically
reducing the volume and long-term toxicity of wastes, whose radioactivity will drop below
the level of the original uranium ore on a timescale of centuries rather millennia. This makes
geological disposal much less of a challenge (and arguably even unnecessary) and nuclear
waste a minor environmental issue compared to hazardous wastes produced by other
industries. Fourth-generation technologies, including liquid metal-cooled fast reactors, are
now being deployed in several countries and are offered by established nuclear engineering
companies
WEBLIOGRAPHY
Emerging technologies : World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Emerging
Technologies
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2013/02/top-10-emerging-technologies-for-2013/
http://www.livescience.com/11334-top-10-emerging-environmental-technologies.html
