chanel la sat at the front of the nanomaterials class ready for the first day of her ph.d. studies six years ago. she brought four pencils, several pens and a water bottle for exam day. she read her answers over and over again. 

chris tonge sat all the way in the back of the classroom and seemed more “chill.” he showed up to class with one pencil for an exam and was one of the first to finish, la said. 

they both were attending the university of british columbia pursuing doctorate degrees in chemistry. then one night, la needed to get into the nuclear magnetic resonance room, a lab with a giant magnet that allows for visualization of molecular structure. there’s only one room like it that all the graduate students shared and la needed to drop off her sample. la forgot her keys in her lab so she texted the group chat seeking help from another first-year student. 

she asked if anybody could let her into this room. everyone responded they were already home, since it was 10 o’clock, except tonge. so, tonge let her in and they had their first real conversation. 

“i was surprised that he worked so hard,” la said, considering he was the only one who was still working in the lab. after that conversation, they planned to go on a date to the aquarium and to get ramen. 

“the rest is history,” tonge said. 

la’s mom is from malaysia and her dad is from vietnam. tonge’s dad is from england and his mom is from spain. la sat in the front of the class and tonge in the back.

but the chemistry is there. “we just mesh really well,” tonge said. 

and chemistry is taking their research in innovative directions. during their ph.d. program, they both focused on making polymers, organic compounds with a sequence of units repeated. la focused on protons as a building block. and tonge? electrons. a proton is a positively charged subatomic particle and an electron is negatively charged. it’s as if their differences and the natural pull of negative charge to positive charge drew them together.  

they also made discoveries within their own research during their studies. la created a library of drug molecules and one of them is promising for helping dissolve blood clots without the problematic side effect of promoting bleeding. tonge helped create experimental emitters for oleds, or organic light-emitting diodes, that could make televisions more efficient with capabilities to last longer, save energy and create purer color.

focusing on protons and the discovery of a new drug molecule to help with thrombosis

la’s high-school science teacher piqued her interest in chemistry, which led her to continue studying chemistry in graduate school and focus on molecules to help decrease blood clots.

depending on where they move in the bloodstream, blood clots can lead to strokes, heart attacks and breathing problems. surgery and several physical conditions increase the risk of blood clots from forming. while current antithrombotic agents are available such as heparin, they can increase the risk of bleeding, said jayachandran kizhakkedathu, la’s professor at ubc and principal investigator of the research. 

the goal of la’s research was to create a drug molecule that can prevent thrombosis, or clotting of the blood inside a blood vessel, without the side effects of bleeding. 

to reach this goal, la worked with experts who focused on enzymes and proteins within the clotting cascade. the clotting cascade is “the series of enzymatic events that occur for a blood clot to form,” la said. 

previous research from james morrissey, a biological chemistry professor at the university of michigan, discovered that polyphosphate, a naturally occurring, negatively charged biopolymer, plays multiple roles within the clotting cascade, and primarily speeds up the clotting process. 

la explains how many current anticoagulants target key factors within the clotting cascade such as thrombin. other drugs can inhibit different key enzymes within the clotting cascade, kizhakkedathu said. la was looking to design polymers that inhibit and target polyphosphate. 

“if you can inhibit polyphosphate, you’re not inhibiting one of the key factors like thrombin, and you may have reduced bleeding as a side effect,” la said.  

previous studies show positive polymers like polyethyleneimine do bind to polyphosphate. however, because these polymers are extremely positively charged, they not only bind to polyphosphate but other essential negative polymers in the body. this can be toxic and ultimately lead to other side effects. 

so, la designed and synthesized a library of polymers. the core of the polymer is globular and she functionalized it with “positive partners that would bind to the polyphosphate.”

the goal was to have enough positive charge on the molecule that it can bind to polyphosphate without binding to the other essential negative ions within the blood that can lead to toxic side effects. 

“you’re trying to find that balance. positive enough, but not too positive,” la said. 

the next step was to conduct research with in vitro studies, studies within the lab, and in vivo studies, or studies using living animals. three of the drug molecules did well in vitro and moved on to in vivo studies with mice. 

la traveled to michigan where she worked with morrissey to look at the drug molecule more closely. she looked at whether the drug by itself would induce bleeding by administering the drug to a mouse and letting it circulate for five minutes. then she cut the tail and measured the bleeding time and quantity of blood loss. this is compared to a control using saline and heparin.

based on this work, la’s university and university of michigan have since applied for a provisional patent on these set of drug molecules and researchers are studying the effects in large animal models. after getting the patent, the next steps are to build a body of evidence to show the efficacy and safety of the drug, la said. then the drug molecule will hopefully be tested with humans.

“the holy grail for thrombosis treatment is to develop a drug molecule which could prevent thrombosis, but also won’t have any side effects such as bleeding,” kizhakkedathu said. “we are close to that, but we don’t know,” considering more evaluation needs to be done on larger animals and then humans. this process can take years.

“the basis of the technology is to adapt beyond polyphosphate and is a valuable platform to design more positive polymer therapeutics,” la said.

focusing on electrons and making emitters and complex polymer structures 

tonge’s love for chemistry started when he was in middle school. he loved doing experiments where significant visual changes were observed, such as foaming and color changes. this love of chemistry led him to pursue a ph.d. in organic chemistry, where he focused on developing and producing emissive compounds of many different colors.

besides making multicolored fluorescent compounds, he also worked closely developing “complex polymeric structures” using these emitters to simulate multilayer organic electronic devices such as an organic solar cell or an organic led.

a typical led television can be simplified to two key layers. one layer is a light emitting layer that functions as a backlight and the other layer is a color filter, which changes the color of the light to give you a pixel. basically, these led televisions have a part that makes “white” light across the color spectrum and another that selectively removes or tunes the color from that light to leave the color you see, tonge said. 

on the other hand, an organic led, or oled, makes light by specifically designing fluorescent emitters to address the colors that are being emitted by the screen. this creates very vibrant colors as well as deep black colors that are desirable to consumers. these emitters generate light by generating an excited state on an emitter using electricity followed by quenching of that excited state to emit light. 

with these oleds, manufacturers design panels with very small, emissive pixels, the smallest subunit of the panel that “can make all the colors that you’re trying to display.”  when electricity enters a pixel, it glows a specific color based on the emissive properties of the dyes used and the specific energy levels of the emitters to create the image seen on the screen. so, when you want the pixel to be red, just the red lights up. this also allows for very deep black colors because when it’s black, it just turns off. this is different than a normal televisions where the light is still on behind the color filter, leading to a slight glow even when the pixel is turned off, tonge said. 

the experimental emitters he made throughout his doctorate started off with simple electron transport and hole transport polymers for emissive devices. when working with these compounds, he found several highly emissive donor-acceptor intermediates that drew his interest. these emissive compounds emit light as electrons fall “from an excited state to a non-excited state,” tonge said. “the color that’s emitted is defined by the energy gap from the excited state to the ground state.”

to generate high energy blue light, a high energy gap from excited state to ground state is needed. tonge explained it’s harder to make blue pixels that last for a long time because it’s a very high energy emission. the high energy excited states required are unstable leading to emitters decomposing. when it comes to red light, it’s a “very small energy drop,” so small that the excited states can quench without emitting light. “sometimes, instead of emitting light, your excited electron just dissipates as heat,” tonge said. the easiest color to make with high efficiency is green as these emitters are less likely to decompose because of high energy states.

one of the highlights of tonge’s work included designing and synthesizing a super high-efficiency red emitter. what tonge was doing in the lab was “proof-of-concept work and not focused on making something commercially viable.” the emitter is more stable, more efficient and has higher color purity than many emitters on the market. despite these advantages, the low-yielding synthesis makes the cost of this emitter to be very high, about “$10,000 a gram, and they need about a gram per tv,” tonge said. 

“when things break down inside an oled, it’s because of undesired side reactivity happening that was not anticipated,” tonge said. this usually means something in a high energy state reacts with something else instead of emitting light or even undergoes a spontaneous rearrangement that results in decomposition of the emitters. tonge’s contributions focused on developing emitters were more “rigid” and less likely to undergo side reactions. he did this by bridging adjacent groups and by blocking the positions of the molecules where side reactions happen most frequently.

besides simple emitters, he also worked on some more complex polymers, specifically focusing on large macromolecules called a bottlebrush polymer. picture a pipe cleaner where there is a wire in the middle and many hairs or brushes perpendicular to that wire along its length. for his project he made a bottlebrush polymer by connecting norbornene, or a specific “handle people use to build polymers, building blocks to generate the wire in the middle of the brush. these norbornenes were modified with short, polymeric semiconductors to simulate a multilayer electronic device in a single polymer chain. in this way, he would attach a series of polymers tuned to glow specific colors or have specific properties.

“like a tree of christmas tree lights,” tonge said. 

he gives this example of an application of bottlebrush polymers. he was able to demonstrate that if the “brush” side arms of these polymers were segregated by electronic properties, it was possible to directly allow or prevent charge transfer between adjacent arms in the solid state. this can be observed by choosing two polymers that emit one color when they are prepared in a film, but form a complex when mixed together in a film that emits a different color. by making bottlebrushes that are separated into two distinct regions, it prevents the two polymers from mixing. simply put, this means a mixed film can be forced to glow as if the polymers were not mixed at all. 

the ability to control how components of organic semiconductors mix in the solid state is important for designing devices with long life spans and consistent performance over the life of the device. 

the benefits of tonge’s emitters include longer lifespans for the device, higher efficiencies and improved color purity. his creations aren’t used commercially, but the lab continues to explore the use of these emitters and polymer architectures for additional applications. 

while certain devices may not last forever, the future for la and tonge looks bright. they live together with their dog chuckles in chicago and their bond continues to get stronger with each year that passes. 

the next step? picking out a ring to solidify their bond and the magnetic force that drew them together. 

they have everything at whole foods, so much so that i cannot stop myself from buying much more than i need. of course i need my kale salad, walnuts, and stuffed grape leaves, but what about those coconut covered dates for dessert, and a synergy kombucha to top it all off; don’t i need a smoothie from their café in case i’m still hungry when i’m done with all this? the answer is always yes, yet even with all these exotic products at the slightest whim, i hardly stop to wonder where they’ve all come from.

beautiful marketing, organic labeling, and a seemingly local vibes at this national chain function the way they are supposed to, to sell a particular story. the bag of coffee i bought for $12.99 is fair trade, organic, and features a nicely painted picture of a dark-skinned woman with a woven basket on her head; i feel glad that my dollars are going to the local people in a less developed country who picked these coffee beans.

in her book, “from modern production to imagined primitive,” paige west outlines the truth behind this pretty picture. that bag of coffee might have beans from at least five different countries: maybe some from papua new guinea or brazil, or vietnam, columbia, indonesia, perhaps ethiopia. and these workers? they are getting paid 16 cents an hour. a wage, which, according to west makes one bag of coffee worth about $1.40 in papua new guinea. so where does that extra $11.59 cost come from?

of course there’s the impact of the distances these beans have traveled. the umbrella figure for this fact is that our food travels, on average, between 1,500 and 2,500 miles before reaching our plate. while this figure is an oversimplification, being an exaggeration for some foods yet an underestimate for others, it rightly displays the incredible distances that our food travels in order to reach our plates. the carbon footprint is immense. moreover, according to waterfootprint.org, the water footprint is for global coffee consumption is 1.5 times the annual runoff of the rhine river – 110 billion cubic meters of water per year.

why has our food system developed this way if it is unsustainable, inequitable, and economically only profitable to large monopoly organizations? the answer is that it has developed organically according to the capitalist, colonialist model to which it belongs.

but just because something develops organically does not mean it is the best model, and it especially does not mean that it cannot be changed to work within the same system.

in fact, changing the model has the capacity to change the flawed system. that makes it our responsibility to change both.

the company freight farms is doing just that: by providing a scalable, local agricultural solution in the form of the leafy green machine. the leafy green machine features a series of vertical panels that hold hydroponic peat moss growing pods in which lettuce, hearty greens, herbs, flowers, and root vegetables will thrive.

these panels find their home in a re-used shipping container, insulated in order to complement the container’s advanced climate control system, and equipped with blue and red led light strips, using only the light frequencies that the plants need. accordingly, each container uses only about 125 kilowatt-hours per day. it also is highly conservative in its water use: due to the vertical nature of the hydroponic operation, the pods use only about 5 gallons of water per day — 90% less water than traditional farming techniques.

each leafy green machine is capable of producing between 60 and 100 pounds of greens per week and between 35 and 85 pounds of herbs for only 15 to 20 hours of labor per week. this yield is the rough equivalent of one acre’s worth of lettuce in traditional agriculture, according to the company. all of the systems controls are directly available through an app at all hours of the day and from all locations. the enclosed environment of the system protects it from pests and disease, so it produces a nearly perfect yield without the use of pesticides or herbicides.

the containers can be situated in a backyard, on a rooftop, or in a parking lot, offering an “acre in a box” that is accessible to anyone in any location, providing the freshest, most local produce possible.

the containers are in use in 30 different states and nine countries, supplying food to universities, restaurants, and local farmers’ markets.

in fact, nick pagan from clark university said, “on harvest days i deliver the lettuce around 10:30, lunch service starts at 11, so students are getting produce that was harvested just a half an hour ago.”

imagine regularly eating food that had been harvested 30 minutes before you ate it, as opposed to the average of 5-14 days during which your food is transported and stored post harvest. imagine having the choice to eat produce that did not travel 1,500 miles and contribute massive amounts of greenhouse gases in order to reach your plate. image supporting your local economy instead of exporting that extra $11.59 to large, inequitable corporations.

the leafy green machine provides a market solution to our flawed food system, and its success can inspire similar creative thinking and new businesses that will open up this market space and begin shifting the entire system in this sustainable, equitable, and economically beneficial direction.

engineering students at the george washington university in washington, d.c. are currently trying to answer this question by studying the california sea lion. sea lions are unique to all other animals in the way in which they swim. they achieve their propulsion via their arms, or fore flippers. they have a three joint flipper, similar to that of the human arm, which they clap together inward toward their body and create a jet which they use to thrust themselves forward. this form of propulsion does not produce a wake; this is called hydrodynamic quietness. this lack of a wake causes them to move very efficiently through the water.

hours of film of sea lions swimming and doing various maneuvers have been gathered at the local smithsonian national zoo. the film was then reviewed by following the same individual points on the flipper from one point in the clapping motion to the next frame by frame. this data was then used to mathematically describe the entire clapping motion. taking this data and coupling it with the use of advanced 3d mapping and 3d printing systems, prototypes of the flipper are able to be produced. building a model that integrates the three-joint sea lion flipper with various sensors and motors to independently move the joints gives the ability to study the fluid dynamics that surround the clapping motion.

studying the fluid dynamics and hydrodynamic forces of the flipper and learning to mimic this motion, could one day lead to a whole new type of aquatic vehicle. water vessels could be designed using these principles with a form of fore flipper as their main mode of propulsion. vehicles could be able to maneuver more quietly and not contribute noise pollution that is damaging to animals such as whales. they could be able to glide through the water more naturally, producing no wake and extend their range per fuel input greatly.

mit’s open agriculture initiative is drawing on the very societal changes that have distanced average citizens from traditional agriculture to close the gap in knowledge and control what we eat. as the principal investigator of the project, caleb harper, explains in his ted talk, the concept has two main components. the first is the “food computer,” an indoor controlled environment used to grow produce using a specific “climate recipe” of specifications tailored to each plant. these recipes come from the second – perhaps even more revolutionary – part of the project: an open-source platform where farming information and instructions can be shared online across the entire user community.

it’s still in its conceptual stages, but openag provides a glimpse of a potential future of food – one that takes advantage of the rapid changes that characterize our modern world. here’s what it brings to the table:

networking and data science can take food to a new level

mit’s media lab is a place, harper himself pointed out, “historically known not for anything about biology, but everything about digital life.” though it’s an untraditional source for a proposed solution to the global food crisis – something that raises a few eyebrows in the horticultural community – openag’s strong computer-based foundation is what sets it apart.

modern advances in computing power are so rapid they are often modeled as exponential. in the past 10 years, american social media usage has increased almost tenfold, according to pew research. the constant sharing of our experiences and ideas, using that increasingly affordable and powerful computer networking, is a telltale characteristic of today’s younger generations.

the idea of the climate recipe applies these patterns to food production. a food computer can manipulate variables such as humidity, temperature, oxygen, and carbon dioxide levels, and monitor each plant’s response to an extent not possible in outdoor farms. this yields a precise formula for how to obtain larger, tastier crops. with the correct equipment in place, this climate recipe can be shared and improved upon globally, allowing a dialogue between trained experts, students, and civilians about the food we all eat.

urbanization and population growth are at an all time high

according to the un’s 2014 world urbanization prospects report, 54 percent of the global population lives in urban areas, up from 30 percent in 1950. this figure is expected to increase to 66 percent by 2050. when openag states a mission to “create more farmers” they’re not talking about opposing this global trend by transplanting people back to rural areas – they hope to bring farms into cities.

one of openag’s food computers could bring a small-scale farm of sorts into the home, apartment, or classroom, with no outdoor space required. taking this a step further, openag has proposed larger models: the mid-sized “food server” could supply a restaurant, and the even bigger “food data center” could provide a distributor with supply locally, reducing costly transport.

feeding urban populations is a spatial problem

the efficiency of modern urban life comes with its own set of sustainability challenges, and when it comes to food, transportation is huge. an analysis by the natural resources defense council found that food transported into the state of california alone results in almost 250 thousand tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year, and an often-cited statistic from iowa state university states that food travels an average of 1,500 miles from farm to table.

it’s true that figures like these are estimates calculated from limited samples – but the important takeaway is that our food travels quite far to reach us and harms the environment on the way. if average people could grow almost any type of produce in a box in their own homes, the size of this issue could be significantly reduced.

taking food production indoors also could lift considerable weight from the environment when it comes to habitat loss. according to the world wildlife fund, about 50 percent of the habitable land on earth has been converted into farms, or 38 percent of its overall land area. indoor farming technologies such as those posited by openag and others already in action, such as urban farming company aerofarms, allow a more efficient use of space. additionally, vertical farming — the ability to expand farming in all directions of 3d space, not just along the ground — is gaining popularity for indoor farming operations.

what’s next?

with its technology foundation set, openag’s next challenge is to make the jump to the general market. according to its website, version 2 of the food computer is currently in production, though none of openag’s members were able to comment on when they believe their proposed cheaper, more user-friendly version will be available, or what exactly it will cost.

but it is possible for a determined individual to build and run a food computer today. until it’s available commercially, instructions for so-called “nerd farmers” to build their own are available online. this growing community has expanded to six continents, and visitors to the project’s forum number in the thousands.

as an area of the country critical to the agricultural sector of the u.s., the drought has become an increasingly important issue to californians — and the country as a whole. water use and availability is also a huge issue in arid regions of the world, as well as in areas that don’t have widely available water infrastructure.

in response to the crisis, i explored some of the innovative ways people are finding clean, potable water. here’s what i found:

water catchment

perhaps the easiest way to get access to water is to harvest whatever forms of condensation and precipitation are available in the surrounding environment — without, of course, pumping from underground resources. typically this means local rainwater catchment in the form of drains, canals, stormwater collection ponds, and reservoirs. some savvy homeowners even collect condensate from their air conditioning units using nothing more than a bucket and reuse that water in the garden.

one really cool innovation in the realm of water catchment is warka water, an invention by italian industrial designers arturo vittori and andreas vogler. these 30-foot-tall, vase-shaped towers named after a fig tree native to ethiopia integrate biomimicry through its design to extract gallons of water pulled literally out of the air.

water reuse/recycling

another way to increase access to water is to simply recycle water. and yes, the thought of bathing in — much less drinking — what used to be in someone’s toilet might ick you out at first, but we already have incredible technology that can be used to treat water of any quality. for example, singapore has a water management strategy that involves high-grade reclaimed water, produced from treated used water, which is then purified further using advanced membrane technologies and ultraviolet disinfection. this means that singapore’s reverse osmosis reclaimed newater is ultra clean and safe to drink.

(source: newater visitor centre)

most cities, however, don’t have extensive wastewater recycling facilities. what the typical homeowner can do, however, is install a gray water system that takes used water from sinks, showers and washing machines and puts it to use for toilet flushing or irrigation. since the water would become dirty and be flushed away anyway, it makes sense to reuse old water instead of using perfectly clean water for these purposes.

energy-efficient desalination

a view across a reverse osmosis desalination plant. (source: james grellier)

many cities across the west coast and eastern seaboard have turned to desalination — getting the salt out of water taken from the ocean — as a source of water. the current process of treating seawater is reverse osmosis, which uses polymer membranes to filter saltwater. however, this process requires a lot of water pressure, which therefore uses a lot of energy. to address this issue, some scientists have started working on graphene membrane technology, which are thinner and more porous versions of today’s reverse-osmosis filters. as mit news writes, the key to energy efficient membrane filtering is having very precise control over the size of the holes in the graphene sheet in order to hit the “sweet spot” where salt molecules are blocked but water molecules can pass through. the pressure needed to push water molecules through these membranes is much lower, meaning energy requirements are lower, too.

reducing water use/increasing efficiency

finally, it’s important to make the distinction between the goal of increasing water availability and conserving water through use reductions. while the former is absolutely crucial, especially in arid regions of the world, conservation-focused strategies are the easiest — and perhaps most cost-effective — ways for individuals to get involved in drought solutions. some common fixes are to switch out old fixtures with low-flow showerheads, high efficiency toilets and aerators on faucets. for california readers, dropcountr is an app that connects people and their utilities by presenting information on their current water consumption, showing them if their usage is above average, and helping them set a reasonable water budget.

dropcountr from dropcountr, inc. on vimeo.

another area where water conservation can happen is in your front and backyard. did you know that 30 percent of water used for lawns and outdoor landscaping is lost to evaporation? that means it makes a big impact when decorative grass is replaced with drought-resistant native plants. another low-tech shortcut to water-efficient gardening is to use a terra cotta olla irrigation pot. these pots are buried beneath the ground, with just the opening at the ground’s surface. it’s then filled with water, which gradually seeps through the pot’s micropores into the soil. the speed at which water seeps through to the soil is regulated by soil moisture tension created by nearby plants. this means that without any timers or sensors, the soil is kept moist and not over-watered. these pots are also efficient because not only do they collect rain, but little to no water is lost to evaporation.

an olla pot is used by burying it in the ground near plants to offer moisture as needed directly to the roots. (source: moccasinlanding)

some really cool upcoming apps, which came out of la futurethon, also might make conservation fun and easy: for example, terracotta and garden gnomy are future apps for sustainable landscaping and gardening that analyze your yard layout, keep a plant inventory and make it easy to reduce irrigation use. dewgood is an upcoming atmospheric water condenser and irrigation device that will pair with an app connecting users to resources and assisting them in removing turf from their yards, and add or take care of drought-tolerant native plants.

to recap, there are a lot of simple and interesting technological solutions to the drought crisis ranging from water catchment, water reuse/recycling, desalination and water conservation. to solve the problem, we’re going to need to make use of all these ideas, as well as encourage innovators to build upon these as well as implement new ones.

(photo at top: a dry and cracked riverbed in california. / source: national oceanic and atmospheric administration)

“the use of waste heat for power production would allow additional electricity generation without any added consumption of fossil fuels,” said bruce e. logan, evan pugh professor and kappe professor of environmental engineering. “thermally regenerative batteries are a carbon-neutral way to store and convert waste heat into electricity with potentially lower cost than solid-state devices.”

low-grade waste heat is an artifact of many energy-generating methods. in automobiles, waste heat generated in winter is diverted to run the vehicle heating system, but in the summer, that same waste heat must be dissipated to the environment. coal, nuclear and other power plants require high heat to produce electricity, but after producing electricity the excess waste heat is routed to cooling towers to dissipate. many industrial sites, geothermal sources or solar generating plants also create low-grade heat that is wasted.

the researchers want to take this waste heat and capture it to produce more power. other researchers have tried a variety of methods, but most produce too little power to be workable, or they cannot provide a continuous resource. logan and his team are using a thermally regenerated ammonia-based battery that consists of copper electrodes with ammonia added only to the anolyte — the electrolyte surrounding the anode.

“the battery will run until the reaction uses up the ammonia needed for complex formation in the electrolyte near the anode or depletes the copper ions in the electrolyte near the cathode,” said fang zhang, postdoctoral fellow in environmental engineering. “then the reaction stops.”

this type of battery would be useless as a constant source of electricity if the reaction were not regenerative. using low-grade waste heat from an outside source, the researchers distill ammonia from the effluent left in the battery anolyte and then recharge it into the original cathode chamber of the battery.

the chamber with the ammonia now becomes the anode chamber and copper is re-deposited on the electrode in the other chamber, now the cathode, but formerly the anode. the researchers switch ammonia back and forth between the two chambers, maintaining the amount of copper on the electrodes.

“here we present a highly efficient, inexpensive and scalable ammonia-based thermally regenerative battery where electrical current is produced from the formation of copper ammonia complex,” the researchers report in the current issue of energy and environmental science. they note that the ammonia liquid stream can convert the thermal energy to electrical energy in the battery. “when needed, the battery can be discharged so that the stored chemical energy is effectively converted to electrical power.”

one of the problems with previous methods was that the amount of energy produced in, for example, a system using salty and less salty water to generate electricity, was too small relative to the amount of water used.  the thermally regenerative ammonia battery system can convert about 29 percent of the chemical energy in the battery to electricity and can be greatly improved with future optimization.

the researchers produced a power density of about 60 watts per square meter over multiple cycles, which is six to 10 times higher than the power density produced by other liquid-based thermal-electric energy conversion systems. the researchers note that the current thermally regenerative ammonia battery is not optimized, so that tinkering with the battery could both produce more power and reduce the cost of operating the batteries.

the researchers were able to increase power density by increasing the number of batteries, so that this method is scalable to something that might be commercially attractive.

other researchers on this project were jia liu, postdoctoral fellow and wulin yang, graduate student, both in environmental engineering. the researchers have filed a preliminary patent on this work.

the king abdullah university of science and technology supported this work.

what sets her crops apart? well, for one they are grown year round in “a controlled agriculture environment.” this means while other local farmers in loudon county, virginia are unable to grow, the lettuce lady still provides her products to top washington, dc restaurants and chefs and local customers.

taylor told us she got the idea from a visit to disney world’s hydroponic gardens. “i never thought i’d go into farming, but i have found it, just right now, the place to be,” the californian raised taylor said.

“this is smart farming.”

– mary ellen taylor, aka the lettuce lady

endless summer harvest grows 4,000 plants a week using just 12,000 ft.2 of greenhouse space. that is the “equivalent of 12 acres of traditional farmland,” she said.

her hydroponic farm uses no soil and she is able to recycle 90% of the water used back through her well into the mixing tanks that produce the solution used to grow her crops.

endless summer harvest’s controlled environment hydroponics system could provide a way for farmers in climates unsuitable for growing crops to provide food for a growing planet.

visitors from around the world, especially in developing nations including afghanistan and botswana have visited her farm seeing it as a model for future use in their less irrigable home regions.

the lettuce lady hopes to double the amount of greenhouses at endless summer harvest from two to four within a year.

is this the future of farming?

_{learn more about white’s six-year-long journey to help change
the economics of rural villages through off-grid refrigeration in
his tedx talk from july, then check out our bloomberg west
segment on promethean power.}

editor’s pick: what if you had to boil your milk every time you wanted a bowl of cereal?

while american farmers have the luxury of reliable, 24-hour refrigeration systems, farmers in india find it virtually impossible to get milk to the market without dangerous levels of bacteria due to the country’s unreliable power source. as a result, families are forced to boil their milk before drinking it, which diminishes its nutritional value. sam white and sorin grama, founders of promethean power, are focused on developing a diesel-free solution to help farmers in off-grid areas chill their milk. 

_{originally submitted june 18, 2012}

promethean has developed a thermal energy storage platform that eliminates diesel generators for cold-storage applications in rural india. thermal energy is stored using proprietary phase-change materials encapsulated in a modular container, essentially a new type of battery that stores cold liquid rather than electrical energy. this thermal battery pack stores and releases large amounts of energy quickly to cool agricultural products immediately, thereby preserving freshness. we have a repeat customer with india’s largest private dairy.