Environmental Lab

A multidisciplinary science team representing 11 institutions from the United States, Canada, and France used advanced ocean technologies to make the discovery. Scientists used autonomous and remotely operated underwater vehicles resulting in 65 square miles (170 square kilometers) of seafloor mapped at one-meter scale resolution, an area approximately the size...

A groundbreaking asphalt pavement formulated with recycled plastic at Highway 99 in California was able to withstand heavy truck traffic, extreme weather conditions such as the winter of late 2022 to early 2023, and a heavy flooding in January this year. The asphalt mixture technology came from a research at...

With the increasing concern about microplastics and their impact on the environment, research efforts at the status quo have been centered on how plastic pollutants can damage biological organisms. Efforts to understand such are aimed to improve data on microplastic pollution treatment. Microplastics–from the word itself, are tiny particles of...

A senior student from the University of Maryland (UMD), Sarah Na, discovered the ability of fermented food waste to produce abundant biogas— which can be used for renewable energy. In a 10-week lab study at Bioenergy and Bioprocessing Technology Lab at the UMD, Na was able to evaluate the ability...

A nanotechnology company from Estonia in  Europe named UP Catalyst has successfully developed a new electrode created from Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) that demonstrated increased performance in sodium-ion batteries. Their work utilized carbon nanotubes (CNTs) that resulted in a significant increase in the cyclability of sodium-ion batteries. Their electrode retained 93.75%...

With the increasing concerns of climate change, many countries gained increasing interest in sustainable water management. Thus, including monitoring and treatment of wastewater and its existing systems. One of the parameters in wastewater handling includes Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD). BOD is central to measuring the amount of oxygen consumed by...

Electronic waste or often referred to as e-waste is discarded electric appliances. These waste materials generated more than 50 to 60 million tons yearly which accounts for 2-3% of annual global waste. Such poses detrimental consequences to human health and the environment due to toxic materials that are within e-waste...

A recently published report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provided the need to severely reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 in order to meet the 1.5 degrees celsius limit to slow down global warming. In doing so, large-scale adoption of renewable energy like solar and...

A new low-cost mobile pollution detector called Flatburn has completed its development to provide consumers more access to tracking air quality widely. The device developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Senseable City Lab will be an open-source tool that can be created via 3D printing or by ordering...

Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, commonly known as PFAS, are a group of man-made chemical that is prominent in a variety of industrial and consumer products due to their unique properties, such as resistance to heat, water, and oil. Currently, PFAS raises a growing concern as the substances do not break...

Hydrogen is one of the most abundant molecules in the universe. On Earth, this element is mainly derived from water (H₂O) when separated to produce hydrocarbon compounds (fossil fuels), which can be used as an energy source. Current trend in energy and renewable energy production pushes hydrogen as a clean...

In a collaboration with NASA, the University of Copenhagen, and involving the French National Institute of Agricultural Research (INRAE), a newly developed monitoring method was able to capture the characteristics of an estimated 9.9 billion trees in sub-Saharan Africa, including the quantity of their stored carbon estimated at 0.84 billion...

Contrary to mainstream concerns raised over the practice of Aquaculture, researchers from the University of Melbourne identified 12 potential ecological benefits of aquaculture to the environment that are often not given due attention. Researchers led by Kathy Overton explained that the negative impacts of aquaculture have overshadowed the positive application...