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Nanotechnology for Green Innovation report, Canada, and the OECD’s Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials

Tuesday, June 18th, 2013

I will get to the report in a moment but since it led me on a magical mystery tour through the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and its new website and assorted organizational confusions, I thought I’d share those first.

February 2012 marks the last report from the OECD’s Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials that I can find. As well, the OECD appears to have changed its website recently (since Feb. 2012) and I find searching it less rewarding.

There’s more, it seems that the Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials either no longer exists or has been subsumed as part of the Working Party on Nanotechnology. I mourn the old nanomaterials working party as I found much valuable information there about the Canadian situation that was available nowhere else. Oddly, Industry Canada still has a webpage devoted to the OECD’s Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials but the OECD link on the Industry Canada leads you to a database,

The OECD Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials (WPMN ) was established in September, 2006 in order to foster international co-operation in health and environmental safety-related aspects of manufactured nanomaterials. Environment Canada represents the Government of Canada at the WPMN, supported by other interested federal departments and agencies, including Industry Canada, and stakeholders. For more information on the work of the WPMN, please visit the WPMN website or contact Environment Canada.

Nostalgia buffs can find all 37 of the Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials reports here on the Nanotechnology Industries Association website (save one) or here on the OECD’s Publications in the Series on the Safety of Manufactured Nanomaterials webpage.

A new ‘green’ nanotechnology and innovation report was announced in a June 18, 2013 news item on Nanowerk (Note: A link has been removed),

A new paper by the OECD Working Party on Nanotechnology (“Nanotechnology for Green Innovation”; pdf) brings together information collected through discussions and projects undertaken relevant to the development and use of nanotechnology for green innovation. It relies in particular on preliminary results from the WPN project on the Responsible Development of Nanotechnology and on conclusions from a symposium, organised by the OECD WPN together with the United States National Nanotechnology Initiative, which took place in March 2012 in Washington DC, United States, on Assessing the Economic Impact of Nanotechnology. [emphases mine]  It also draws on material from the four background papers that were developed for the symposium. The background papers were:

“Challenges for Governments in Evaluating the Return on Investment from Nanotechnology and its Broader Economic Impact” by Eleanor O’Rourke and Mark Morrison of the Institute of Nanotechnology, United Kingdom;

“Finance and Investor Models in Nanotechnology” by Tom Crawley, Pekka Koponen, Lauri Tolvas and Terhi Marttila of Spinverse, Finland;

“The Economic Contributions of Nanotechnology to Green and Sustainable Growth” by Philip Shapira and Jan Youtie, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, United States; and

“Models, Tool and Metrics Available to Assess the Economic Impact of Nanotechnology” by Katherine Bojczuk and Ben Walsh of Oakdene Hollins, United Kingdom.

The purpose of the paper is to provide background information for future work by the WPN on the application of nanotechnology to green innovation.

I wrote about the March 2012 symposium in a March 29, 2012 posting,

I was hoping for a bit more detail about how one would go about including nanotechnology-enabled products in this type of economic impact assessment but this is all I could find (from the news release),

In their paper, Youtie and Shapira cite several examples of green nanotechnology, discuss the potential impacts of the technology, and review forecasts that have been made.

…

I checked both Philip Shapira‘s webpage and Jan Youtie‘s at Georgia Tech to find that neither lists this latest work, which hopefully includes additional detail. I’m hopeful there’ll be a document published in the proceedings for this symposium and access will be possible.

So, I’m very happy to see this 2013 report and  I have three different ways to access it,

  1. OECD library page for Nanotechnology for Green Innovation
  2. http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/5k450q9j8p8q.pdf?expires=1371578116&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=F308B436A883BF6533E66C19182ECF17 which features a title page identifying this is as  an OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers No. 5 (this one lists 35 pp)
  3. http://search.oecd.org/officialdocuments/displaydocumentpdf/?cote=DSTI/STP/NANO%282013%293/FINAL&docLanguage=En which is identified with this Unclassified DSTI/STP/NANO(2013)3/FINAL and a publication date of June 13, 2013 (this one lists 34 pp)

The following comments are based on a very quick read through the report. Pulling together four papers and trying to create a cohesive and coherent single report after the fact is difficult and this report shows some of the stresses. One  of the problems is that 34 or 35 pp., depending on which version you’re reading, isn’t enough to cover the very broad topic indicated by the report’s title. I couldn’t find a clear general statement about government policies. For example, there are various countries with policies and there are trade blocks such as the European Union which also has policies. Additionally, there may be other jurisdictions. All of which contribute an environment which makes ‘green’ innovation nano or otherwise a challenge but no mention is made of this challenge. Further, I don’t recall seeing any mention of patents, which I’d expect would be a major talking point in a paper with innovation in its title. If there was mention of intellectual property, it made no impact on me, odd, especially where nanotechnology is concerned.

The report does have some good specifics and  it is worthwhile reading. For example, I found the section on lithium-ion batteries quite informative.

In any event, I’m not really the audience for this document, the “purpose of the paper is to provide background information for future work by the WPN on the application of nanotechnology to green innovation.”

ETA June 18, 2013 6:00 pm PDT: Here’s a link to the new OECD nanotechnology page, STInano

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Self-cleaning products dangerous?

Friday, June 14th, 2013

For anyone else out there who hates housecleaning, this is heartbreaking research. Personally, I’m not sure I can ever forgive Professor Jonathan Raff at Indian University for this (from a June 12, 2103 Indiana University news release; also on EurekAlert),

Research by Indiana University [IU] environmental scientists shows that air-pollution-removal technology used in “self-cleaning” paints and building surfaces may actually cause more problems than they solve.

The study finds that titanium dioxide coatings, seen as promising for their role in breaking down airborne pollutants on contact, are likely in real-world conditions to convert abundant ammonia to nitrogen oxide, the key precursor of harmful ozone pollution.

“As air quality standards become more stringent, people are going to be thinking about other technologies that can reduce pollution,” said Jonathan D. Raff, assistant professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IU Bloomington and an author of the study. “Our research suggests that this may not be one of them.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for this published study,

Photooxidation of Ammonia on TiO2 as a Source of NO and NO2 under Atmospheric Conditions by Mulu A. Kebede, Mychel E. Varner ‡, Nicole K. Scharko, R. Benny Gerber, and Jonathan D. Raff. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2013, 135 (23), pp 8606–8615 DOI: 10.1021/ja401846x Publication Date (Web): May 30, 2013

Copyright © 2013 American Chemical Society

This research is behind a paywall.

The news release goes on to explain what makes this latest discovery about titanium dioxide particularly relevant,

The findings are timely because the Environmental Protection Agency is developing stricter regulations for ground-level ozone, a primary component in photochemical smog. The pollution is linked to serious health problems, including breathing difficulties and heart and lung disease.

Ozone is produced by reactions involving nitrogen oxides (NOx), which come primarily from motor vehicle emissions, and volatile organic compounds resulting from industrial processes. Equipping cars with catalytic converters has been effective at reducing ozone in urban areas. But different technologies may be needed to meet tighter air-quality standards of the future.

The need has sparked interest in titanium dioxide, a common mineral that is used as a whitening agent in paints and surface coatings. The compound acts as a photocatalyst, breaking down nitrogen oxides, ammonia and other pollutants in the presence of sunlight. “Self-cleaning” surfaces coated with titanium dioxide can break down chemical grime that will otherwise adhere to urban buildings. News stories have celebrated “smog-eating” tiles and concrete surfaces coated with the compound.

But Raff and his colleagues show that, in normal environmental conditions, titanium dioxide also catalyzes the incomplete breakdown of ammonia into nitrogen oxides. Ammonia is an abundant constituent in motor vehicle emissions, and its conversion to nitrogen oxides could result in increases in harmful ozone concentrations.

“We show that uptake of atmospheric NH3 (ammonia) onto surfaces containing TiO2 (titanium dioxide) is not a permanent removal process, as previously thought, but rather a photochemical route for generating reactive oxides of nitrogen that play a role in air pollution and are associated with significant health effects,” the authors write.

Raff, who is also an adjunct professor of chemistry in the IU College of Arts and Sciences, said other studies missed the effect on ammonia because they investigated reactions that occur with high levels of emissions under industrial conditions, not the low levels and actual humidity levels typically present in urban environments.

The findings also call into question other suggestions for using titanium dioxide for environmental remediation — for example, to remove odor-causing organic compounds from emissions produced by confined livestock feeding operations. Titanium dioxide has also been suggested as a geo-engineering substance that could be injected into the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from the Earth and combat global warming.

Further studies in Raff’s lab are aimed at producing better understanding of the molecular processes involved when titanium dioxide catalyzes the breakdown of ammonia. The results could suggest approaches for developing more effective pollution-control equipment as well as improvements in industrial processes involving ammonia.

It’ll be interesting to see how that resolves itself. I imagine some of the civil society groups are going to get very excited about this research.

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Life-cycle assessment for electric vehicle lithium-ion batteries and nanotechnology is a risk analysis

Wednesday, May 29th, 2013

A May 29, 2013 news item on Azonano features a new study for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on nanoscale technology and lithium-ion (li-ion) batteries for electric vehicles,

Lithium (Li-ion) batteries used to power plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles show overall promise to “fuel” these vehicles and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but there are areas for improvement to reduce possible environmental and public health impacts, according to a “cradle to grave” study of advanced Li-ion batteries recently completed by Abt Associates for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

“While Li-ion batteries for electric vehicles are definitely a step in the right direction from traditional gasoline-fueled vehicles and nickel metal-hydride automotive batteries, some of the materials and methods used to manufacture them could be improved,” said Jay Smith, an Abt senior analyst and co-lead of the life-cycle assessment.

Smith said, for example, the study showed that the batteries that use cathodes with nickel and cobalt, as well as solvent-based electrode processing, show the highest potential for certain environmental and human health impacts. The environmental impacts, Smith explained, include resource depletion, global warming, and ecological toxicity—primarily resulting from the production, processing and use of cobalt and nickel metal compounds, which can cause adverse respiratory, pulmonary and neurological effects in those exposed.

There are viable ways to reduce these impacts, he said, including cathode material substitution, solvent-less electrode processing and recycling of metals from the batteries.

The May 28, 2013 Abt Associates news release, which originated the news item, describes some of the findings,

Among other findings, Shanika Amarakoon, an Abt associate who co-led the life-cycle assessment with Smith, said global warming and other environmental and health impacts were shown to be influenced by the electricity grids used to charge the batteries when driving the vehicles.
“These impacts are sensitive to local and regional grid mixes,” Amarakoon said.  “If the batteries in use are drawing power from the grids in the Midwest or South, much of the electricity will be coming from coal-fired plants.  If it’s in New England or California, the grids rely more on renewables and natural gas, which emit less greenhouse gases and other toxic pollutants.” However,” she added, “impacts from the processing and manufacture of these batteries should not be overlooked.”
In terms of battery performance, Smith said that “the nanotechnology applications that Abt assessed were single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), which are currently being researched for use as anodes as they show promise for improving the energy density and ultimate performance of the Li-ion batteries in vehicles.  What we found, however, is that the energy needed to produce the SWCNT anodes in these early stages of development is prohibitive. Over time, if researchers focus on reducing the energy intensity of the manufacturing process before commercialization, the environmental profile of the technology has the potential to improve dramatically.”

Abt’s Application of Life-Cycle Assessment to Nanoscale Technology: Lithium-ion Batteries for Electric Vehicles can be found here, all 126 pp.

This assessment was performed under the auspices of an interesting assortment of agencies (from the news release),

The research for the life-cycle assessment was undertaken through the Lithium-ion Batteries and Nanotechnology for Electric Vehicles Partnership, which was led by EPA’s Design for the Environment Program in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention and Toxics, and EPA’s National Risk Management Research Laboratory in the Office of Research and Development.  [emphasis mine] The Partnership also included industry partners (i.e., battery manufacturers, recyclers, and suppliers, and other industry groups), the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Lab, Arizona State University, and the Rochester Institute of Technology

I highlighted the National Risk Management Research Laboratory as it reminded me of the lithium-ion battery fires in airplanes reported in January 2013. I realize that cars and planes are not the same thing but lithium-ion batteries have some well defined problems especially since the summer of 2006 when there was a series of li-ion battery laptop fires. From Tracy V. Wilson’s What causes laptop batteries to overheat? article for How stuff works.com (Note: A link has been removed),

In conjunction with the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), Dell and Apple Computer announced large recalls of laptop batteries in the summer of 2006, followed by Toshiba and Lenovo. Sony manufactured all of the recalled batteries, and in October 2006, the company announced its own large-scale recall. Under the right circumstances, these batteries could overheat, potentially causing burns, an explosion or a fire.

Larry Greenemeier in a Jan. 17, 2013 article for Scientific American offers some details about the lithium-ion battery fires in airplanes and elsewhere,

Boeing’s Dreamliner has likely become a nightmare for the company, its airline customers and regulators worldwide. An inflight lithium-ion battery fire broke out Wednesday [Jan. 16, 2013] on an All Nippon Airways 787 over Japan, forcing an emergency landing. And another battery fire occurred last week aboard a Japan Airlines 787 at Boston’s Logan International Airport. Both battery failures resulted in release of flammable electrolytes, heat damage and smoke on the aircraft, according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

…

Lithium-ion batteries—used to power mobile phones, laptops and electric vehicles—have summoned plenty of controversy during their relatively brief existence. Introduced commercially in 1991, by the mid 2000s they had become infamous for causing fires in laptop computers.

More recently, the plug-in hybrid electric Chevy Volt’s lithium-ion battery packs burst into flames following several National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) tests to measure the vehicle’s ability to protect occupants from injury in a side collision. The NHTSA investigated and concluded in January 2012 that Chevy Volts and other electric vehicles do not pose a greater risk of fire than gasoline-powered vehicles.

Philip E. Ross in his Jan. 18, 2013 article about the airplane fires for IEEE’s (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Spectrum provides some insight into the fires,

It seems that the batteries heated up in a self-accelerating pattern called thermal runaway. Heat from the production of electricity speeds up the production of electricity, and… you’re off. This sort of things happens in a variety of reactions, not just in batteries, let alone the Li-ion kind. But thermal runaway is particularly grave in Li-ion batteries because they pack a lot more power than the tried-and-true metal-hydride ones, not to speak of Ye Olde lead-acid.

It’s because of this very quality that Li-ion batteries found their first application in small mobile devices, where power is critical and fires won’t cost anyone his life. It’s also why it took so long for the new tech to find its way into electric and hybrid-electric cars.

…

Perhaps it would have been wiser of Boeing to go for the safest possible Li-ion design, even if it didn’t have quite as much oomph as possible. That’s what today’s main-line electric-drive cars do, as our colleague, John Voelcker, points out.

“The cells in the 787 [Dreamliner], from Japanese company GS Yuasa, use a cobalt oxide (CoO2) chemistry, just as mobile-phone and laptop batteries do,” he writes in greencarreports.com. “That chemistry has the highest energy content, but it is also the most susceptible to overheating that can produce “thermal events” (which is to say, fires). Only one electric car has been built in volume using CoO2 cells, and that’s the Tesla Roadster. Only 2,500 of those cars will ever exist.” Most of today’s electric cars, Voelcker adds, use chemistries that trade some energy density for safety.

The Dreamliner (Boeing 787) is designed to be the lightest of airplanes and using a more energy dense but safer lithium-ion battery seems not to have been an acceptable trade-off.  Interestingly, Boeing according to Ross still had a backlog of orders after the fires.

I find that some of the discussion about risk and nanotechnology-enabled products oddly disconnected. There are the concerns about what happens at the nanoscale (environmental implications, etc.) but that discussion is divorced from some macroscale issues such as battery fires. Taken to absurd lengths, technology at the nanoscale could be considered safe while macroscale issues are completely ignored. It’s as if our institutions are not yet capable of managing multiple scales at once.

For more about an emphasis on scale and other minutiae (pun intended), there’s my May 28, 2013 posting about Steffen Foss Hansen’s plea to revise current European Union legislation to create more categories for nanotechnology regulation, amongst other things.

For more about airplanes and their efforts to get more energy efficient, there’s my May 27, 2013 posting about a biofuel study in Australia.

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Safe use of nanotechnology for environmental remediation June 5 – 7, 2013 conference/workshop

Friday, May 24th, 2013

The inaugural conference/national workshop on the safe use of nanotechnology for environmental remediation is being held at Southeastern Louisiana University from June 5 – 7, 2013. A Southeastern Louisiana University May 23, 2013 news release provides more detail,

An increasing number of hazardous waste disposal sites are using nanotechnology and nanomaterials in their environmental remediation efforts, leaving open questions about the safety of such techniques.

“While applications and results of nano-enabled strategies for environmental remediation are promising, there is still the challenge of ensuring such applications are both safe and sustainable,” said conference organizer Ephraim Massawe. “The federal government has established different projects coordinated by different agencies, called signature initiatives. We plan on generating information supportive of some of these federal initiatives.”

The event, “Nano-4_Rem_Anseers2013: Applications of Nanotechnolgoy for Safe and Sustainable Environmental Remediations,” [sic] is a cooperative endeavor involving the university and agencies and institutions, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Institute of Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The Louisiana Board of Regents is providing partial financial support.

The news release (which can also be viewed as a May 24, 2013 news item on Azonano) goes on to provide details about the keynote speakers,

Four keynote speakers are slated to address the three-day conference, which will be held on the Southeastern campus. Speakers and topics include:

– Patrick O’Shaughnessy, professor of occupational and environmental health in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Iowa, “Nanosafety: Current Issues and Guidance;”
– Dongye Zhao, Huff endowed professor of environmental engineering at Auburn University: “Application of Stabilized Nanoparticles for in situ Remediation of Contaminated Soil and Groundwater;”
– Souhail Al-Abed of the EPA Office of Research and Development, National Risk Management Research Laboratory in Cincinnati: “Nanotechnology and the Environment: an Overview of Sustainable and Safe Applications in Site Remediation.”

In addition, a representative of the National Nanotechnology Coordinating Office will speak at the workshop.

Massawe had this to add about federal initiatives (from the news release),

Massawe said at least 30 EPA Superfund sites across the nation are currently using nanomaterials in remediation operations.

I have written about Nano-4_Rem_aNssERs2013: Applications of Nanotechnology for Safe and Sustainable Environmental Remediations before in a Nov. 7, 2012 posting when it was first announced and where you will find links to some of my other posts on nanotechnology and environmental remediation. Rather than add links to yet a few my other postings on the topic, here’s a link to the Project for Emerging Nanotechnologies Nanoremediation Map. I’m not sure how exhaustive the listings are or how recent but it should give you some idea about the activities occurring in the US and around the world.

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NanoSustain published four case studies: zinc oxide, titanium dioxide, carbon nanotubes, and nanocellulose

Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

A May 17, 2013 news item on Nanowerk highlight a European Commission-funded project, NanoSustain and its publication of a fact sheet and four case studies,,

NanoSustain, a €2.5 million NMP small collaborative project (2010-2013) funded by the European Union under FP7, has published a fact sheet and four case studies addressing these issues.

How do nanotechnology-based products impact human health and the environment?
Can they be recycled?
Can they be safely disposed of?
How can you find out?

The March 20, 2013 NanoSustain news release, which originated the news item, goes on to explain,

… the EC-funded NanoSustain project has been developing new sustainable solutions through an investigation of the life-cycle of nanotechnology-based products, in particular the physical and chemical characteristics of materials, hazard and exposure aspects, and end-of-life disposal or recycling to determine the fate and impact of nanomaterials.

A summary of the different materials and products tested within NanoSustain:

• Case Study #1: Titanium dioxide for paints
• Case Study #2: Zinc oxide for glazing products
• Case Study #3: Carbon nanotubes epoxy resins for plastics
- for structural or electrical/antistatic applications
• Case Study #4: Nanocellulose for advanced paper applications

Information about the individual experimental approaches

Descriptions of the different techniques developed

How these techniques have been successfully applied in physical-chemical characterisation; life-cycle analysis; final disposal; recycling.

Getting access to the case case studies and the fact sheet requires filling out a form but once you’ve done that you get instant access to the materials.

Here’s some information from EuroSustain’s fact sheet,

Factsheets

Analytical Techniques

Development of sustainable solutions for nanotechnology-based products based on hazard characterization and LCA1 The primary goal of the NanoSustain project is to develop new technical solutions for the sustainable design and use, recycling and final treatment of selected nanotechnology-based products.

To achieve this the project has the following objectives: 1) to assess the hazard of selected nanomaterials based on a comprehensive data survey and generation concerning their physicochemical (PC) and toxicological properties, exposure probabilities, etc., and the adaptation, evaluation, validation and use of existing analytical, testing and life-cycle assessment (LCA) methods; 2) to assess the impact of selected products during their life cycle in relation to material and energy flows (LCA); 3) to assess possible exposure routes and risks associated with the handling of these materials, their transformation and final fate; and 4) to explore the feasibility and sustainability of new technical solutions for end-of=life processes, such as reuse/recycling, final treatment or disposal.

…

Within NanoSustain an assessment has been made of the PC properties, exposure and toxicity, energy and material inputs and outputs at relevant stages of a material or product’s life-cycle. This means: material production, processing, manufacturing, use, transportation, and end-of-life (recycling/disposal). At each stage potential risks to human health and the environment have also been assessed, through a number of experimental models and test systems using materials that would be expected to be released from products containing nanomaterials.

Four nanomaterials were investigated that either already feature in commercial products or are expected to be commercialized on a large scale: titanium dioxide (TiO2) in paint, zinc oxide (ZnO) as a coating for glass, multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) in epoxy resins, and nanocellulose in paper.

Detailed information on the nanomaterials have been summarized in internal project material datasheets (MDS), and will be made available as part of peer-reviewed publications on release studies and toxicological investigations. [emphases mine]

Having looked at the four case studies, each of which is two pages, I would describe them as teasers. There’s not a lot of information in them as to the results of the testing which makes sense when you see that they will be publishing in various publications.

I find the inclusion of titanium dioxide, zinc oxide and carbon nanotubes for life-cycle assessments easily understandable as they  have been integrated into many consumer products. However, it’s my understanding that nanocellulose has not reached that level of product integration. Still, given the number of times I’ve been told this is a ‘safe’ product, it’s interesting to see what NanoSustain has to say about its toxicity (from the NanoSustain’s nanocellulose case study),

Work in NanoSustain has provided new data and information on the physicochemical properties, potential human and environmental hazard and risk associated with relevant stages of the life-cycle of nanocellulose based products as well as on the overall energy and material input/output that may happen during manufacturing, use and disposal. Initial results indicate that the nanocellulose degrades efficiently under standard composting conditions, but does not in aquatic environments. Furthermore nanocellulose does not demonstrate any ecotoxicity. Unfortunately nanocellulose forms a gel when suspended in media for inhalation studies, and so no toxicology experiments could be performed (as for the other engineered nanomaterials studied in NanoSustain). Final results will be made available once published in peer-reviewed journals.

I have written many times about nanocellulose, a topic featuring some interesting and confusing nomenclature and taking this opportunity to highlight a couple of responses from folks who took the time to clarify things for me (from my Aug. 2, 2012 posting),

KarenS says:

Hi Maryse!

From my understanding, nanocrystaline cellulose (NCC), cellulose nanocrystals (CNC), cellulose whiskers (CW) and cellulose nanowhiskers (CNW) are all the same stuff: cylindrical rods of crystalline cellulose (diameter: 5-10 nm; length: 20-1000 nm). Cellulose nanofibers or nanofibrils (CNF), on the contrary, are less crystalline and are in the form of long fibers (diameter: 20-50 nm; length: up to several micrometers).

There is still a lot of confusion on the nomenclature of cellulose nanoparticles, but nice explanations (and pictures!) are given here (and also in other papers from the same conference):

http://www.tappi.org/Downloads/Conference-Papers/2012/12NANO/12NANO49.aspx

and there’s this from my Sept. 26, 2012 posting,

Gary Chinga Carrasco says:

The definition of cellulose nanofibrils as “diameter: 20-50 nm; length: up to several micrometers)” is somewhat simplified. For terminology on MFC terms you may want to take a look at: http://www.nanoscalereslett.com/content/6/1/417

Bringing this piece back to where I started, I look forward to seeing the NanoSustain case studies published with more details in the future.

Note: Since the folks at NanoSustain are likely using their form to collect data, I’m not linking back to the factsheet or nanocellulose case study as I would usually. So, if you want to look at the material, you do need to register via the form.

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Mop up the oil spills with nanosheets from Deakin University and The Conversation

Thursday, May 2nd, 2013

Researchers from Deakin University (Australia) have developed a new material, boron-based nanosheets, which can mop up oil spills more efficiently than current methods and are recyclable. From the May 1, 2013 news item on Nanowerk, (Note: A link has been removed)

In Nature Communications today (“Porous boron nitride nanosheets for effective water cleaning”), we showed how we produced, probably for the first time, nanosheets that could revolutionise oil spill clean ups and water purification.

Not only do our nanosheets absorb 33 times their weight in oil, they’re also recyclable.

Ordinarily there’d be a news release from Deakin University but these researchers appear to have taken a different approach posting on a website called The Conversation. This is a very interesting science communicaton initiative from Australia and I will be digressing for a moment. Here’s a description of the initiative from their Who We Are page,

The Conversation is an independent source of news and views, sourced from the academic and research community and delivered direct to the public.

Our team of professional editors work with university, CSIRO and research institute experts to unlock their knowledge for use by the wider public.

Access to independent, high-quality, authenticated, explanatory journalism underpins a functioning democracy. Our aim is to allow for better understanding of current affairs and complex issues. And hopefully allow for a better quality of public discourse and conversations.

We have introduced new protocols and controls to help rebuild trust in journalism. All authors and editors sign up to our Editorial Charter and Code of Ethics. And all contributors must abide by our Community Standards policy. We only allow authors to write on a subject on which they have proven expertise, which they must disclose alongside their article. Authors’ funding and potential conflicts of interest must be disclosed. Failure to do so carries a risk of being banned from contributing to the site.

Since our launch in March 2011, we’ve grown to become one of Australia’s largest independent news and commentary sites. Around 35% of our readers are from outside Australia.

We believe in open access and the free-flow of information. The Conversation is a free resource: free to read (we’ll never go behind a paywall), and free to share or republish under Creative Commons. All you need to do is follow our simple guidelines. We have also become an indispensable media resource: providing free content, ideas and talent to follow up for press, web, radio or TV.

…

They believe in open access and the free-flow of information as long as you don’t edit the article, etc. Here are five of the guidelines (from the Republishing guidelines page),

Republishing guidelines, for print and online

  1. Unless you have express permission from the author, you can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Canberra, ACT.” to “Canberra” or “here”). If you need to materially edit our content, please contact our External Relations Manager.
  2. You have to credit our authors and partner institutions — ideally in the byline. We prefer “Author Name, Institution” (for example, Qing Wang, Warwick Business School).
  3. You have to credit The Conversation — ideally at the top of the article and include our logo — with a link back to either our home page, The Conversation, or (preferably) the specific article URL on The Conversation website.
  4. If space is tight, you can run the first few lines of the article and then say: “Read the full article at The Conversation” with a link back to the article page on our site.
  5. If you’re republishing online, you must use our page view counter, link to us, and include links from our story. Our page view counter is a small pixel-ping image (invisible to the eye) that allows us to know when our content is republished, and gives our authors sense of the size of audience and which publications they’re reaching. It is a condition of our guidelines that you include our counter. If you use the “republish” button that accompanies each article then you’ll capture our page counter.
  6. ….

Since I usually cut and paste parts of articles and news releases and often intersperse with my own comments and I don’t have the technical skills to use their page view counter, I won’t be using anything directly from The Conversation. I view my role as a curator (bringing together pieces of information from disparate sources) and a ‘connector’. To encourage connections, I don’t usually include a full news release or article as I suggest my readers look at the original or seek out the other sources I’ve included if they want more information.

Back to the boron nitride nanosheets and the news item on Nanowerk,

We found that porous boron nitride nanosheets have a couple of properties that make them particularly suitable for absorbing organic (carbon-based) contaminants, such as oil or dyes.
…

The nanosheets are made of a few layers of boron nitride atomic planes, and these sheets have a large number of holes.

It’s these holes that increase the surface area of the nanosheets to a huge 1,425m2 a gram.
This means one gram of porous boron nitride nanosheets has the same surface area as nearly 5.5 tennis courts – so plenty of surface for absorption.

Another advantage is that the saturated boron nitride nanosheets can be cleaned for reuse by simply heating in air for two hours.

The absorbed oil is burned off, leaving the nanosheets clean and free to absorb again.

To make our porous nanosheets, boron oxide powder and guanidine hydrochloride are mixed in methane and heated at 1,100C for several hours in nitrogen gas.

The news item on Nanowerk is illustrated with images and provides more detail as does the May 1, 2013 article (Don’t cry over spilled oil – use nanosheets) on The Conversation.

For those who’d like to read the published research, here’s a link to and a citation for it,

Porous boron nitride nanosheets for effective water cleaning by Weiwei Lei, David Portehault, Dan Liu, Si Qin, & Ying Chen. Nature Communications 4, Article number: 1777 doi:10.1038/ncomms2818 Published 30 April 2013

The article is behind a paywall.

Interestingly scientists in China have developed an entirely different material with similar properties for mopping up oil spills as per my Feb. 27, 2013 posting titled, Bacterial cellulose could suck up pollutants from oil spills.

ETA May 6, 2013: Dexter Johnson has commented on an outstanding issue with the Deakin University research and other such initiatives: a lack of commercialization efforts. From his May 4, 2013 posting on his Nanoclast blog (found on the IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers] website), Note: A link has been removed,

In fact, there are a variety of nanomaterials for these applications [oil spill remediation and water purification]—so many of them that there are catalogues to guide you through them.  But not so fast. As yet, no one is bothering to commercialize them so that they are available for the next oil spill.

Dexter provides worthwhile context and some provocative comments on how to ‘encourage’ commercialization of nanotechnology-enabled oil spill remediation/water purification  products.

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US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) releases Application of Life-Cycle Assessment to Nanoscale Technology: Lithium-ion Batteries for Electric Vehicles

Tuesday, April 30th, 2013

There’s more about the Application of Life-Cycle Assessment to Nanoscale Technology: Lithium-ion Batteries for Electric Vehicles (final report) in the Apr. 30, 2013 news item on Nanowerk (Note: Links were removed),

The final report for the life-cycle assessment (LCA) of current and emerging energy systems used in plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles conducted by the DfE [Design for the Environment]/ORD [Office of Research and Development] Li-ion Batteries and Nanotechnology Partnership is now available. The LCA results will help to promote the responsible development of these emerging energy systems, including nanotechnology innovations in advanced batteries, leading to reduced overall environmental impacts and the reduced use and release of more toxic materials.

This partnership was led by EPA’s Design for the Environment (DfE) Program, in the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, and the National Risk Management Research Laboratory, in EPA’s Office of Research and Development.

US EPA’s Partnership for “Application of Life-Cycle Assessment to Nanoscale Technology: Lithium-ion Batteries for Electric Vehicles” webspace describes the project and the report,

The partnership conducted a screening-level life-cycle assessment (LCA) of currently manufactured lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery technologies for electric vehicles, and a next generation battery component (anode) that uses single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) technology.

A quantitative environmental LCA of Li-ion batteries was conducted using primary data from both battery manufacturers and recyclers–and the nanotechnology anode currently being researched for next-generation batteries.

This type of study had not been previously conducted, and was needed to help grow the advanced-vehicle battery industry in a more environmentally responsible and efficient way. The LCA results are expected to mitigate current and future impacts and risks by helping battery manufacturers and suppliers identify which materials and processes are likely to pose the greatest impacts or potential risks to public health or the environment throughout the life cycle of their products. The study identifies opportunities for environmental improvement, and can inform design changes that will result in the use of less toxic materials and reduced overall environmental impacts, and increased energy efficiency.

The opportunities for improving the environmental profile of Li-ion batteries for plug-in and electric vehicles identified in the draft LCA study have the potential to drive a significant reduction of potential environmental impacts and risks, given that advanced batteries are an emerging and growing technology.

The study also demonstrates how the life-cycle impacts of an emerging technology and novel application of nanomaterials (i.e., the SWCNT anode) can be assessed before the technology is mature, and provides a benchmark for future life-cycle assessments of this technology.

For anyone who’s interested the final report (all 126 pp) of the LCA is available here.

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Brewing up silver nanoparticles

Wednesday, April 24th, 2013

The last time I featured green tea was in the context of couture in this June 8, 2012 posting,

First, a June 7, 2012 article by Jane Wakefield about fashion and technology on the BBC News website that features a designer, Suzanne Lee, who grows clothing. I’m glad to see Lee is still active (I first mentioned her work with bacteria and green tea in a July 13, 2010 posting). From Wakefield’s 2012 article,

“I had a conversation with a biologist who raised the idea of growing a garment in a laboratory,” she [Biocouture designer, Suzanne Lee] told the BBC.

In her workshop in London, she is doing just that.

Using a recipe of green tea, sugar, bacteria and yeast she is able to ‘grow’ a material which she describes as a kind of “vegetable leather”.

It turns out there are other uses for green tea, aside from its function in couture or as a beverage with health benefits, according to an Apr. 24, 2013 news item on Nanowerk (Note: A link has been removed),

Already renowned for its beneficial effects on human health, green tea could have a new role — along with other natural plant-based substances — in a healthier, more sustainable production of the most widely used family of nanoparticles, scientists say. Published in ACS [American Chemical Society] Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, their Perspective article (“Greener Techniques for the Synthesis of Silver Nanoparticles using Plant Extracts, Enzymes, Bacteria, Biodegradable Polymers and Microwaves”) concludes that greener methods for making silver nanoparticles are becoming available.

The Apr. 24, 2013 ACS PressPak news release, which originated the news item,  offers a brief description of the researchers’ article,

The article describes how extracts from plants — such as green tea plants, sunflowers, coffee, fruit and peppers — have emerged as possible substitutes that can replace toxic substances normally used to make the nanoparticles. In addition, extracts from bacteria and fungi, as well as natural polymers, like starches, could serve as substitutes. “These newer techniques for greener AgNP synthesis using biorenewable materials appear promising as they do not have any toxic materials deployed during the production process,” the scientists say.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Greener Techniques for the Synthesis of Silver Nanoparticles using Plant Extracts, Enzymes, Bacteria, Biodegradable Polymers and Microwaves by Deepika Hebbalalu, Jacob Lalley, Mallikarjuna N Nadagouda, and Rajender Singh Varma. ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng., Just Accepted Manuscript DOI: 10.1021/sc4000362 Publication Date (Web): March 28, 2013
Copyright © 2013 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

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PGClear and remediating soil contaminated by chlorinated compounds

Thursday, April 18th, 2013

The story twists and turns a bit and some of the details are a little indistinct but it seems there’s new technology, PGClear, has been developed for cleaning up water and soil. From the Apr. 16, 2013 news item on Nanowerk,

Researchers from Rice University [Texas], DuPont Central Research and Development and Stanford University [California] have announced a full-scale field test of an innovative process that gently but quickly destroys some of the world’s most pervasive and problematic pollutants. The technology, called PGClear, originated from basic scientific research at Rice during a 10-year, federally funded initiative to use nanotechnology to clean the environment.

PGClear uses a combination of palladium and gold metal to break down hazardous compounds like vinyl chloride, trichloroethene (TCE) and chloroform into nontoxic byproducts.

“Chlorinated compounds were widely used as solvents for many decades, and they are common groundwater contaminants the world over,” said Rice’s Michael Wong, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and the lead researcher on the PGClear project. “These compounds are also extremely difficult to treat inexpensively with conventional technology. My lab began its work to solve this problem more than a decade ago.”

The Apr. 15, 2013 Rice University news release, which originated the news item, provides more detail about Wong’s work and how it came to be applied to remediation of chlorine-based contaminants (Note: Links have been removed),

Wong began working on the catalytic remediation technology shortly after arriving at Rice in 2001, the same year Rice won a grant from the National Science Foundation for the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN). CBEN, a 10-year, $25 million effort, was the world’s first academic research center dedicated to studying the interaction of nanomaterials with living organisms and ecosystems. CBEN was one of the first six U.S. academic research centers funded by the National Nanotechnology Initiative.

“Prior research had shown that palladium was an effective catalyst for breaking down TCE, but palladium is expensive, so it was thought to be impractical,” Wong said. “At CBEN, we used nanotechnology to design particles in which every atom of palladium was used to catalyze the reaction. We also found that adding a tiny bit of gold enhanced the reaction.”

DuPont contacted Wong about the award-winning research in 2007 and proposed developing a scalable process to use the palladium-gold catalysts to treat other chlorinated pollutants like chloroform and vinyl chloride. With additional support from the World Gold Council in London, researchers from Rice and DuPont worked to refine the catalyst and the process. They also worked with the South African mineral research organization MINTEK, which produced the catalytic pellets for the first PGClear unit. Gold and palladium make up only about 1 percent of material in each of the purple-black pellets.

Rice has supplied a video of the researchers discussing their work with palladium-gold pellets,

Here’s the plan for the unit that will be used by Dupont (from the Rice University news release),

The first large-scale PGClear unit, which is designed to treat groundwater contaminated with chloroform, is scheduled for installation at a DuPont site in Louisville, Ky., in June [2013?]. The 6-by-8-foot unit contains valves and pipes that will carry groundwater to a series of tubes that each contain thousands of pellets of palladium-gold (PG) catalyst. The pellets, which are about the size of a grain of rice, spur a chemical reaction that breaks down chloroform into nontoxic methane and chloride salt. [emphasis mine]

“The palladium-gold catalyst has so far performed well for remediating groundwater samples collected at DuPont,” said Brad Nave, director of the DuPont Remediation Project. “While the project is not yet full-scale, our next step will subject the technology to the rigors of real-world field conditions. Rice, Stanford and DuPont have been working on the details of the field pilot for several years, and we’re looking forward to a successful test.”

While it’s good to note that the pollutants are broken down into nontoxic materials, it would have been interesting to find out what happens to the pellets over time (presumably they become less effective and need to be replaced with new pellets while the old ones are disposed of) and to find out how the groundwater is being captured for purification.

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Solar cells made even more leaflike with inclusion of nanocellulose fibers

Tuesday, March 26th, 2013

Researchers at the US Georgia  Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech)  and Purdue University (Indiana) have used cellulose nanocrystals (CNC), which is also known as nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC), to create solar cells that have greater efficiency and can be recycled. From the Mar. 26, 2013 news item on Nanowerk,

Georgia Institute of Technology and Purdue University researchers have developed efficient solar cells using natural substrates derived from plants such as trees. Just as importantly, by fabricating them on cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) substrates, the solar cells can be quickly recycled in water at the end of their lifecycle.

The Georgia Tech Mar. 25, 2013 news release, which originated the news item,

The researchers report that the organic solar cells reach a power conversion efficiency of 2.7 percent, an unprecedented figure for cells on substrates derived from renewable raw materials. The CNC substrates on which the solar cells are fabricated are optically transparent, enabling light to pass through them before being absorbed by a very thin layer of an organic semiconductor. During the recycling process, the solar cells are simply immersed in water at room temperature. Within only minutes, the CNC substrate dissolves and the solar cell can be separated easily into its major components.

Georgia Tech College of Engineering Professor Bernard Kippelen led the study and says his team’s project opens the door for a truly recyclable, sustainable and renewable solar cell technology.

“The development and performance of organic substrates in solar technology continues to improve, providing engineers with a good indication of future applications,” said Kippelen, who is also the director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics (COPE). “But organic solar cells must be recyclable. Otherwise we are simply solving one problem, less dependence on fossil fuels, while creating another, a technology that produces energy from renewable sources but is not disposable at the end of its lifecycle.”

To date, organic solar cells have been typically fabricated on glass or plastic. Neither is easily recyclable, and petroleum-based substrates are not very eco-friendly. For instance, if cells fabricated on glass were to break during manufacturing or installation, the useless materials would be difficult to dispose of. Paper substrates are better for the environment, but have shown limited performance because of high surface roughness or porosity. However, cellulose nanomaterials made from wood are green, renewable and sustainable. The substrates have a low surface roughness of only about two nanometers.

“Our next steps will be to work toward improving the power conversion efficiency over 10 percent, levels similar to solar cells fabricated on glass or petroleum-based substrates,” said Kippelen. The group plans to achieve this by optimizing the optical properties of the solar cell’s electrode.

The news release also notes the impact that using cellulose nanomaterials could have economically,

There’s also another positive impact of using natural products to create cellulose nanomaterials. The nation’s forest product industry projects that tens of millions of tons of them could be produced once large-scale production begins, potentially in the next five years.

One might almost  suspect that the forest products industry is experiencing financial difficulty.

The researchers’ paper was published by Scientific Reports, an open access journal from the Nature Publishing Group,

Recyclable organic solar cells on cellulose nanocrystal substrates by Yinhua Zhou, Canek Fuentes-Hernandez, Talha M. Khan, Jen-Chieh Liu, James Hsu, Jae Won Shim, Amir Dindar, Jeffrey P. Youngblood, Robert J. Moon, & Bernard Kippelen. Scientific Reports  3, Article number: 1536  doi:10.1038/srep01536 Published 25 March 2013

In closing, the news release notes that a provisional patent has been filed at the US Patent Office.And one final note, I have previously commented on how confusing the reported power conversion rates are. You’ll find a recent comment in my Mar. 8, 2013 posting about Ted Sargent’s work with colloidal quantum dots and solar cells.

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