Trains in China have been transformed in recent years as the country has embraced high-speed rail and expanded its network to more than 40,000 km of tracks. The country has more high-speed rail than the rest of the world combined, but the breakthroughs don’t stop there. A study published in the launch issue of the journal High-Speed Railway shows how satellite-based train state perception – for example, using China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) could revolutionize railway signaling.

How does train signaling work?

To understand the benefits of using satellite navigation methods to keep track of trains, it’s useful to consider how railway signaling works today. The governing principle of railway signaling is that no two trains should occupy the same portion of the track. And there are two approaches to managing train movements – fixed block and moving block signaling.

In both cases, the block length (the portion of track reserved for each train) is defined by the stopping distance of the fastest service using that line. And keep in mind that trains in China can take kilometers to come to a standstill when traveling at high speeds.

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Fixed block signaling systems only allow trains to proceed when the next block has become vacant, whereas moving block approaches make sure, dynamically, that there’s sufficient space ahead and behind to accommodate the braking of all units on the line.

Today, the amount of trackside equipment has grown to provide not just signaling data, but also includes systems to monitor train integrity – in other words, whether the front and the back are still attached. There’s other kit too, such as railway infrared hot box detectors that can determine whether wheel bearings are overheating and stop trains before mechanical failures occur.

A #Fuxing #bullettrain, with a designed speed of 350 km/h, departed on Tuesday morning from the Southwest Chinese city of #Guiyang, marking the operation of the Guiyang-Libo section of the Guiyang-Nanning High-speed #Railway. @VisitGuiyang https://t.co/XUSMHTOEiH

— Enterprising China (@sinoprise) August 9, 2023

Key to the implementation of today’s railway management systems is the placement of so-called balises (pronounced /ba-leases/ and named after the French word for ‘marker’), which stand proud a couple of inches above the sleeper below. If you’ve traveled on trains in China and elsewhere in the world, you’ll likely have seen the yellow- or orange-colored units in between the rails.

In their simplest state, balises are kind of like contactless payment points for trains. But rather than record transactions, these track-located transponders – which are powered by looms underneath the locomotive – provide information to the train on its whereabouts and details on the upcoming section of track.

Train transponders: Balises standing proud on a section of track in Europe.

For example, while the train keeps track of its location by counting wheel rotations, this calculation can be checked against the ground truth telegraphed by each balise. This is necessary as wheels slip and wear causes a reduction in diameter that would – if left unchecked – underestimate the distance traveled on long journeys.

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In addition, the beacons tell the train its permitted speed limit for that block of track, as well as information on the geometry and gradient of the upcoming section. Also, balises placed in sequence inform the train of its direction of travel.

However, there are cost implications of having to install and maintain infrastructure over thousands of kilometers of tracks. And to reduce the quantity and complexity of the track-side equipment that’s involved in supporting a modern railway, such as trains running in China and on high-speed networks in other countries, operators are considering approaches that are increasingly train-centric.

In their study, the researchers based at Beijing Jiaotong and Wuhan Universities – with expertise in computer and information technology, and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) approaches – consider the idea of so-called virtual balises.

Trains in China

Leveraging satellite positioning data gathered from BDS, which was constructed to provide independence from GPS, trains in China receive balise information based on their location. The advantage, as the Beijing and Wuhan teams point out, is that existing train control system frameworks could remain the same, as the information formats, etc, would be unchanged. But you could reduce the amount of physical trackside infrastructure that’s required.

Satellite positioning data could also be used for train integrity monitoring, to ensure that the front and back of the formation are where you’d expect them to be. And, based on field tests, the teams conclude that satellite systems could be key technologies in raising the capabilities of train-borne navigation.

Also, trains in China are by no means the only modes of transport to jump on this trend. Buses, trams, and trains elsewhere can be seen fitted with rooftop antennas that have active GPS/GNSS capabilities. But what’s striking about the development of intelligent high-speed rail in China is how it’s competing with short-haul flights, and – by all accounts – winning that competition.

And more trains and fewer flights is important to curb carbon dioxide emissions associated with transportation. On TechHQ we’ve written about the steps that aircraft manufacturers and operators will need to take to make aviation more sustainable. And those plans are based on continued growth in demand for flights, but China is showing that high-speed trains can reduce the environmental impact of aviation – at least when routes are competitive with short-haul flights.

High-speed trains in China can carry hundreds of passengers at a time, sometimes even more. The extra-long version of the Fuxing Hao Series Bullet Train can reportedly accommodate 1,283 passengers in 17 cars. And, if the concept of virtual balises takes off, satellite positioning could reduce the cost of operations and add to the appeal of high-speed rail.

The post What does BeiDou satellite study tell us about trains in China? appeared first on TechHQ.

In 2019, NASA funded a project to sow the seeds for an all-electric aircraft platform that it hoped would put commercial aviation on a more sustainable flight path. At the time, analysts were forecasting that air travel was on track to increase by 90% in the US over the next 20 years. And the aviation industry’s contribution to global emissions – based on Boston Consulting Group analysis – could balloon from single-digit percentages up to as much as 20% by 2050. Sustainable aviation needed some bright ideas.

What’s the flight path to sustainable aviation?

Four years later, the USD $6 million NASA project – dubbed CHEETA, reflecting how its members form a Center for Cryogenic High-Efficiency Electrical Technologies for Aircraft – has cleared the bar set by phase one’s concept stage. And it’s now time for the partners – which include nine academic institutions, Boeing, GE, and the Air Force Research Lab, all based in the US – to develop prototypes of their designs.

At the core of CHEETA’s sustainable aviation plan is the use of cryogenic hydrogen. “Because hydrogen takes up a lot of volume, it’s best kept cold in a liquid state,” said Phillip Ansell, lead researcher on the NASA program and director of the new Center for Sustainable Aviation at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “Instead of thinking of that as a barrier, we saw it as an opportunity to leverage those unique characteristics.”

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Superconductivity at room temperature has had a rough ride recently, but the approach, which reduces the energy losses in electric circuits, already has an industrial track record at low temperatures. “We saw a great deal of promise in using the 20 Kelvin cryogenic temperature of liquid hydrogen to enable the use of superconducting technology,” Ansell goes on to explain.

And it’s not just organizations in the US that seem keen on this idea. European aviation giant Airbus is also looking to combine liquid hydrogen and the efficiency gains of superconducting low-temperature circuits. Airbus announced a three-year demonstrator program (ASCEND) in 2021, which has the goal of increasing power density in the propulsion chain while keeping the mass of the distribution system low.

The power and stored energy requirements of air travel, particularly over long-haul routes, make sustainable aviation a tough problem to solve. If you plot the maximum power versus stored energy requirements of different modes of transport on a graph, EVs such as the Tesla Model S and Toyota’s Prius would be on the bottom left – with parameters that can be achieved using batteries.

However, wide-bodied airliners such as the Airbus A380 – which need to carry large numbers of passengers to make the economics of flying add up – are all the way up on the top right. Sustainable aviation needs to address both the need for large amounts of power for take-off and cope with the large distances currently traveled without refueling.

CHEETA still has to prove itself on the scale of a commercial airliner, but the design concept – which uses hydrogen-fed electricity-generating fuel cells to power electric rotors – is off to a promising start. “We were able to reduce the electrical system losses to below 2 percent, so the whole system is over 98 percent efficient from the output of the fuel cell to turning the rotor of the electric machine,” Ansell reports.

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There’s a raft of projects globally looking at hydrogen as a replacement for jet fuel. Hydrogen burns without the carbon emissions of current jet fuel, and produces just water as a product of combustion. But it’s a very small molecule that’s difficult to contain, and critics may point to how fuel cells in vehicles have been slow to take off.

That being said, there are multiple reasons to believe that sustainable aviation based on hydrogen will succeed despite the struggles experienced in the automotive sector. As mentioned, power density and energy storage requirements make it hard to see how batteries will suit all but the smallest of aircraft, making hydrogen-powered fuel cells a more compelling prospect in aerospace.

And the number of refueling stations required are orders of magnitude less than for road transport. There are in the region of 100,000 gas stations for vehicles in the US, which would be a massive infrastructure challenge for hydrogen. However, considering major airports, you only have around 100 facilities to focus on.

Plus, as reported on by TechHQ, airports can use ground vehicles as a pathfinder for building out hydrogen refueling operations. The area around Toulouse in France, which includes a major Airbus manufacturing facility, has a pilot-scale hydrolyser to supply airport buses. And the longer-term plan is to scale this up to provide green fuel for light aircraft.

@LanzaTech have begun their pre-application consultation on their plans to develop a Sustainable Aviation Fuel (#SAF) facility in Port Talbot.

Find out more about the project and share your views here: https://t.co/bsOrdLCT4u pic.twitter.com/iN5IecMnz8

— Neath Port Talbot Council (@NPTCouncil) August 15, 2023

The global pandemic hit the aviation industry hard, but it is now bouncing back in a leaner and more fuel-efficient form. Older planes were retired as part of cost-cutting during Covid. And the industry has long been adept at making marginal gains on performance that have dampened its emissions despite rising numbers of passengers. But it won’t be able to decouple emissions from a boom in air travel without ditching fossil fuels for good.

There are lots of good news stories about sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), which can even be made from food waste, and gives airlines a drop-in replacement. But the use of SAF by airlines globally is currently tiny, and it’s not a zero-emission solution. SAF is said by the International Air Transport Association to reduce CO2 emissions by 80%, as the CO2 absorbed by plants is recycled – for example, when SAF is derived from biomass.

Also, there’s a chicken and egg problem of aviation customers not wanting to pay high prices, but SAF suppliers needing to have a larger market to bring down costs. Given the relatively quick win that SAF offers, it feels likely that biofuels will provide some form of bridge until new technologies, such as those being pursued by CHEETA and other projects, are commercialized.

China, India, and growth in SAF

Experts point to the feasibility of China and India becoming major suppliers of SAF, as the demand for airline travel is expected to grow dramatically in both countries. Producing SAF could utilize concentrations of municipal waste and agricultural residues, as well as creating jobs and driving economic growth.

Considering China, the country is a global force in renewable energy, and producing biofuels to support a path towards sustainable aviation – as well as bolstering energy security – would be a logical move.

What’s also clear is how demand for aviation has weathered developments in communications. Video conferencing capabilities have never been as accomplished as they are today, yet business travel – a profitable revenue stream for airlines – has rebounded. And researchers have shown that the appetite for travel has remained strong over the past 200 years despite the various breakthroughs in communication, such as growth of the postal service, fax machines, and the internet.

This appetite for travel gives confidence to developers of sustainable aviation that passengers will be ready and waiting for future net-zero flights, which cannot come soon enough for the planet.

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The planet would be happier if people bought used electronic devices rather than succumbing to the temptation of new products. But there’s an undeniable joy in buying something new. And device makers with supreme marketing teams know that. However, what if you could give a buy-like-new boost to purchasing refurbished smartphones and other electronics?

On TechHQ we’ve written about how R2V3 – the latest version of the sustainable electronic reuse and recycling standard – provides a ‘trust mark’ to firms looking to dispose of IT assets. But the wheels of the circular electronic economy are only going to pick up speed if more consumers are happy to shop for remanufactured and refurbished devices.

Making buying refurbished smartphones feel like new

And that’s where electronics marketplaces such as Back Market fit in, by making the purchasing of refurbished smartphones – to name the most popular category of used device – feel like buying new.

Device refurbishers and electronics re-manufacturers are doing a great job of breathing new life into products and components that are no longer needed by their original owners. And it’s worth reminding that the amount of resources saved by extending the life of products such as phones and laptops is huge.

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A detailed 181-page report commissioned by ADEME, the French agency for ecological transition, lays out the environmental impact of choosing a refurbished device over a new equivalent – examining smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers. Using lifecycle analysis methods, researchers crunched the numbers on the environmental burden presented by different usage scenarios.

Putting devices back on the market still leaves a footprint – used products need to be transported for inspection and re-selling, and screens and batteries may need to be replaced – to give a few examples of where resources are still consumed. But the scale of the environmental impact is tiny relative to the energy and materials that are involved in manufacturing new products.

The ADEME report found that purchasing a refurbished smartphone and using it for 2 years, instead of purchasing a new smartphone and using it for 3 years, reduced the ecological load by 86% – examining the material input per unit of service (MIPS). Carbon dioxide emissions were 87% lower, and the benefits of extending device lifetimes add up across all environmental measures.

Latest from our most comprehensive refurbished report
->Refurbished smartphone sales grew 5% globally but China saw a 17% YoY decline.
->Apple captured 49% of the global refurbished smartphone market in 2022 followed by Samsung at 26%.https://t.co/xt5XaNjMVA pic.twitter.com/2CciP2rrri

— Tarun Pathak (@Tarunpathak) April 24, 2023

What’s more, refurbished devices in excellent condition are indistinguishable from new products. The last hurdle to overcome in convincing shoppers to opt for used over new devices is the buying process. And for sales of refurbished smartphones and other electronic goods to boom, this has to compete with the experience of selecting and purchasing a new product.

Marketplaces for refurbished electronics such as Back Market, which brings together buyers and sellers globally, understand this and are rising to the challenge. Shoppers have 30 days to return purchased devices – for example, if they change their mind about an item. Devices are guaranteed for 12 months, and shoppers have the same payment options that they are used to when buying new.

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“The obsession with buying new is going to diminish over time,” Katy Medlock, General Manager for Back Market in the UK, told TechHQ. “All of our markets are showing the enthusiasm for refurbishment.” Medlock points to the role that marketplaces have in educating consumers on not just the benefits of buying a used device, but emphasizing how the user experience (UX) has developed.

Back Market has 8 million customers worldwide and has recently launched a trade-in service that allows device owners to get an offer on phones, tablets, laptops, and gaming consoles from expert refurbishers. And having operations at scale, providing a badge of trust to buyers and sellers, is great news for the circular electronics economy.

Right to repair movement

At the same time, legislative wheels are turning and putting pressure on electronics firms to design products that are repairable and make it possible for customers to buy parts. “Having a reliable working device is no longer a nice to have; it’s a need,” Medlock adds.

Right to repair not only lowers the environmental burden of electronic goods, it makes devices more affordable and available to all. Education has moved online in a big way, and being without a laptop means missing out on lessons. Also, accessing services from banking to managing your energy supplier to booking travel and accommodation is moving to a digital-first model.

Refurbished smartphones, tablets, and other internet-enabled devices keep people connected without having to pay a premium for the latest shiny new thing. There are also supply chain considerations. Giving consumers and businesses other channels to purchase devices builds resilience.

And in some cases, it may be the only way to find parts. In the automotive sector, scrap dealers have embraced the digital age, and the so-called reverse manufacturing of cars and other vehicles is becoming an increasingly slick operation. Vehicles are barcoded as they arrive, booked onto a database, stripped, inspected – with parts photographed – and saleable items prepared for online bids, all within a few hours.

There’s money to be made in keeping useful items out of landfill, and when it’s profitable to do the right thing for the environment, the planet stands a fighting chance of being saved. Sectors such as aviation and fast fashion have come under scrutiny, and companies are realizing that they can no longer bank on sales without demonstrating how there are addressing the environmental impact of the products and services that they provide.

That ecological burden applies to electronics too, but when shopping for refurbished smartphones, laptops, and other products lights up the brain in the same way as buying new – thanks to UX-focused marketplaces – resources are saved for another day.

The post Refurbished smartphones get buy-like-new boost appeared first on TechHQ.

• Cycling has been shown to increase happiness in UK cities.
• Cycing in cities has been promoted and encouraged for years in the UK.
• There’s at least some evidence that cycling in cities, rather than driving to and from work, can boost people’s productivity

The UK has lived in what it would be fair to call “interesting times” since 2016. The year of Brexit (known elsewhere as the year of Trump) brought chaos, political stagnation, economic confusion, and eventually a mass exodus of workers from the European Union as a legal break from the union took effect.

That was followed by Covid, with soaring death rates as the government, as it transpired, broke its own lockdown rules and partied while people around the country could not attend funerals for the ones they’d loved and lost.

The Queen, who had been on the throne for over seventy years, passed away.

Rocketing fuel prices, partly as a result of Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and partly because of an ideological refusal by the government to rein in energy company profits, even when asked to do so by the energy companies themselves added economic terror to everyone under 10 and over 50 as food or heat became a genuine question in the winter, and the rise in food poverty meant there were for the first time in half a century more charity-run food banks in the UK than there were McDonald’s restaurants.

And during the course of the last seven years, the UK has had five Prime Ministers, without once changing the party in power. One of those Prime Ministers lasted just 44 days and crashed the economy, while another has since resigned from parliament altogether ahead of being found to have lied both to the nation and the House of Commons, knowingly, about the debacle of Covid parties and lockdown rule-breaking.

All of this is not intended to paint the UK as a burning dumpster-fire hellscape straight out of a Trump speech. It’s simply by way of illustrating that when you discover there’s a productivity crisis in UK cities, there should be no sense in which it comes as a surprise. It would in fact be remarkable if there were not a productivity crisis after a time like that. The country’s been through a lot – and so have its workers.

So, what solutions have been suggested to such a productivity crisis? Massive investment in jobs and infrastructure, with a pathway from education to rewarding, taxpaying, house-affording work?

Well, yes, but inflation makes that difficult, and besides, the UK government has its hands full with a supposed crisis on its sea-border with France right now.

So, then… what’s the solution to the productivity crisis in UK cities?

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Cycling.

No wait, come back. Recent research has revealed that cycling can, at least partially, tackle productivity slumps in UK cities.

Cycling in cities boosts happiness.

According to the research, the greater the number of cyclists you see on the roads in your region, the happier in general terms the region is likely to be.

Regions such as the South East and South West of England came out on top as being the happiest of all areas of Britain. Those areas have also been revealed to have higher life expectancies and less congestion on the roads. And one of the common factors between those regions is… a higher proportion of people cycling in the cities in those areas than elsewhere.

A coincidence, you say?

“One of us! One of us!” Would you like to be stuck in this?

Well, certainly, a healthy degree of scepticism regarding cause and effect pairs is always wise, but actually, it looks as though cycling beats the odds, especially when we take into account European cities that have high percentages of people committing to cycling to and from work, such as Amsterdam and Copenhagen (48% and 50% respectively), and a higher quality of life – Amsterdam is 6th and Copenhagen is 10th on the Quality of Life Index 2023.

London, meanwhile, lies a measly 65th on the list.

So, does the pursuit of happiness lead us to a bicycle? E-bike engineers Swytch Technology decided to find out with a first of its kind study to look at the link between cycling and happiness. And the results point to a categorical connection, with 15,356,000 Brits reporting that their mental health improves when walking or cycling for regular periods – which most people in cities would probably pay for if it came labelled as a therapy.

Cycling advocacy schemes in UK cities.

It’s no secret that the UK Government and local councils have tried to push cycling as the “go to” form of transport, particularly in cities, where road congestion is high, with Cycle to Work and Vision to Cycle schemes.

According to Swytch’s study, the schemes are working, with 6.3 million people saying that they plan to not own a car within the next five years. 4 million of those surveyed revealed that their preferred method of transport qualified as micromobility tools, including e-bikes and e-scooters.

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Already, 3.8 million Brits now cycle or use an e-mode of transport to get to their place of work, a steady increase that continues each year. Over 9 million have reported that they no longer use a car to commute – and that can only grow as controversial schemes to charge motorists in outlying suburbs for driving into cities expand, as a way of tackling greenhouse gases and an urban air quality crisis. The British attitude to travel is certainly shifting from fifth gear back into more sustainable modes of transport.

Environmental fines are making driving in cities less attractive than it has been.

So, with more and more Brits jumping on their saddles and choosing to cycle as a way to commute, the question is – why do British towns and cities struggle to match the quality of life and mental health levels of their European counterparts? According to Swytch’s study, it could be down to those daily commutes from hell in the UK. The study found that 5.5 million Brits said their commutes were the most tiring part of their whole day.

Cycling in UK cities – honestly, less of a death-trap.

That might seem incredible to readers in the US, but it’s worth remembering that British cities have been evolving more or less since Roman times, and while there may be significantly less to cope with in terms of actual distance travelled, it is a trope that in the UK, chaos, carnage and bureaucracy will always expand to fit every inch of space provided.

When we consider that, in addition, 8.2 million Brits get queasy just thinking of using public transport despite the fact that it’s significantly more available there than it is in the US, it suggests that the route to better happiness levels and improved quality of life could be getting active and getting in a cycle lane.

Changes to make it easier to cycle in cities could boost productivity in the workforce.

An active commute, such as cycling, jogging, or walking, rather than a sedentary commute (cars, trains, buses), may be beneficial for both mental and physical health.

Being active may also have significant benefits to someone’s productivity. Swytch discovered that 4.83 million of those surveyed experienced a boost in productivity levels since they began cycling or walking to work. With a possible “productivity crisis” seizing the UK, a healthy change to daily commutes may be the answer to promoting improved productivity and happiness in the workplace.

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Yes, the Cycle to Work scheme was introduced to lower congestion and encourage better physical health, but it may have profound impacts on a person’s mental wellbeing, as well as creating a more energized, engaged workforce.

The question remains – would it work in Manhattan?

The revolution will be two-wheeled. Psychedelic sections will not be mandatory. Fun, but not mandatory.

The post Cycling to solve productivity crisis in UK cities? appeared first on TechHQ.

Nature has no shortage of lessons for device makers looking to make better products with a host of properties that come easily in the natural world. Many thousands of years of evolution have yielded computing systems such as the human brain, which can operate on the power of a dim lightbulb. And Circuits of Life – a UK-based project featuring experts in computational biology and other disciplines – is taking inspiration from the protein-based electronics necessary for life on Earth and aims to build key components to order.

On TechHQ we’ve written about how slime mold has an incredible ability to solve mazes and perform optimizations that would challenge conventional computers. And nature turns out to be rich in computational capabilities.

In his book ‘Quantum Supremacy’, Michio Kaku points out that plants have quantum computing-like properties. For example, leaves are incredibly efficient in photosynthesizing light into chemical energy – much more so than classical physics would suggest.

And Kaku describes to readers how photons of light incident on the leaf surface are channeled counterintuitively like golf balls being hit in all directions yet still finding their way to the hole. Considering leaves as quantum solvers may feel peculiar, but biology is no stranger to properties that have device appeal.

Circuits of life as a molecular toolkit

“The flow of electrons within protein-based circuitry is essential to life, underpinning cellular energy generation and photosynthesis,” writes the Circuits of Life team, introducing its latest findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

In the paper, Ross Anderson and his co-authors describe how to make conductive, biodegradable wires from designed proteins, which could – the researchers believe – open up a new era of environmentally friendly programmable bioelectronics.

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The molecular wires, which are comparable in size to features found on silicon chips, are said to be compatible with conventional electronic components made from copper or iron. And, thanks to their protein origins, these nanostructures may also provide a bridge to the biological machinery responsible for generating energy in all living organisms.

Circuits of Life got the go-ahead in 2022 when the proposal to create and comprehend the way that nature builds its electronics was awarded GBP 4.9 million in funding, as part of the BBSRC’s flagship Strategic Longer and Larger (sLoLa) grant scheme. And the support provides five years of funding to build completely new protein-based circuitry, catalysts, and light-harvesting assemblies.

For example, it’s thought that the dynamic nature of proteins could help lower the energy barrier to substrate entry and product exit – offering catalytic support to bioreactions. Artificial bio-inspired electron-conducting circuitry could also lead to novel sensors for diagnosing disease and detecting environmental pollutants.

@uwaterloo Scientists create 'artificial leaf' that turns carbon dioxide into fuel.The "artificial leaf" technology mimics photosynthesis by taking carbon dioxide and converting it into methanol and oxygenhttps://t.co/OjQ34YiLND pic.twitter.com/7QmgkXGdX5

— R+T PARK (@RTPARKUW) November 4, 2019

Nature’s ability to transport electrons is fundamental to cellular respiration – the method by which living organisms obtain energy from food – and photosynthesis. And understanding in more detail how proteins and other related structures enable these bioengineering marvels has benefits for cleantech and building better medical devices.

Artificial leaves capable of turning carbon dioxide into fuel could solve the dual problem of providing green energy and consuming products that would otherwise contribute to global warming.

Bioelectronic medicine – exploring novel neural interfaces

In medicine, there’s great interest in being able to selectively modulate the autonomic nervous system. Neural engineering studies have indicated how it’s possible to act on the internal state of the body and compensate for damaged or dysfunctional elements.

“For decades, several devices known as neural prostheses have used electrical pulses to communicate with the nervous system to improve health and save lives,” writes Marina Cracchiolo and colleagues from the BioRobotics Institute of Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, based in Italy. “These devices act by substituting or modifying the activity of a dysfunctional or injured nerve or a neural circuit, which in turn directly controls muscles or sensory organs.”

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However, circuits of life – such as the computer-simulated building blocks proposed by Anderson and co-workers in the UK – could zoom in and take bioelectronic medicine to a whole new level. Biocompatible, miniaturized devices raise the prospect of targeting individual nerves to modulate and decipher neural signaling patterns, paving the way for advances in bioelectronic medicine.

Galvani Bioelectronics – a joint venture between pharmaceuticals firm GSK and Google X spinout Verily – is an example of one med-tech developer aiming to transform patient lives through precision neuromodulation. And it’s clear that being able to lean on not just conventional electronics, but also to learn from how nature manages electron flow will pay dividends.

Returning to the idea of circuits of life – bioelectronics inspired by nature – computers play a major role in proposing how to build nanoscale protein wires for long-range electron transfer. The first step is to devise a modular protein platform for creating well-folded variants that can then be extended as part of a computational design strategy.

Techniques such as NMR spectroscopy and cryogenic electron microscopy allow workers to visualize their creations and gather structural insight that can’t be simulated in the digital world. And physical experiments provide confidence in the fidelity of the design process.

“To fully unlock the diverse functional repertoire of the natural oxidoreductases, it will be necessary to integrate molecular dynamics simulations and continuum electrostatics calculations, and other prediction tools, into the design process to define and modulate biophysical properties,” concludes the Circuits of Life team in their write-up.

The group’s comments point to the direction of travel in the project, which still has plenty more to offer the field on top of its early breakthrough in creating a microscopic toolkit of ‘green’ tuneable electrical components.

The post Circuits of life – what can tech learn from nature? appeared first on TechHQ.

• Sources indicate that Tesla is looking at potential sites in Southern India and Gujarat for a gigafactory.
• The ambitious plans will include an annual production capacity of approximately half a million EVs.
• However, there are significant challenges for Tesla to overcome.

Tesla’s long-awaited entry into India has gained momentum recently, after CEO Elon Musk met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June. So much so that local media are reporting a possible gigafactory in the country as Tesla representatives have recently met with India’s commerce minister.

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Even Musk expressed his company’s keenness to establish a presence in India “as soon as humanly possible” — an indicator strong enough for the world to know that Tesla would reattempt its entry into the Indian market, this time with better government support. 

Early last year, India turned down a demand by Tesla for tax breaks to import electric cars. The Narendra Modi government wanted the US EV giant to manufacture in India as a precondition to easing duties. Tesla wasn’t happy with the requirement and eventually shelved its Indian debut.

More than a year later, local reports indicated that Tesla would likely begin operations in India with either the Model 3 or Model Y. The news came after Tesla representatives met India’s commerce minister late last month to discuss plans to build a factory to produce what the company has described as “an all-new US$24,000 car.”

Speaking with Reuters, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said that Tesla has expressed an interest in building a factory in India that would produce low-cost electric vehicles (EVs), both for the local market and for export. 

Most recently, sources have told Business Today TV that the EV giant is set on creating a significant export hub in India, with a plan to target the Asian Pacific and African markets. 

Sources indicate that Tesla is looking at potential sites in Southern India and Gujarat. “An initial proposal submitted by the company reveals ambitious plans to construct a gigafactory in India. This state-of-the-art facility is envisaged to have an annual production capacity of approximately half a million EVs,” Business Today said.

Interestingly, following reassurances from Modi himself, Tesla’s expansion will go beyond manufacturing operations. The Business Today report said Tesla aims to establish a comprehensive charging infrastructure throughout the country, addressing one of the critical concerns for the widespread adoption of EVs.

During Modi’s trip to the US in June, Musk shared that he has plans to visit India next year. “We will be able to announce something in the future. It is quite likely there will be a significant investment in India,” Musk said, adding that he had had an excellent conversation with the Prime Minister.

Musk also shared his confidence that Tesla will be in India, and that he had no plans to delay the necessary moves. 

Tesla in India means intensified competition

Given Tesla’s position as a pioneer in the EV market, the US carmaker’s entry into India will intensify the competition in the local battery electric vehicles (BEVs) market, according to GlobalData. To top it off, GlobalData reckons that by setting up a manufacturing facility, Tesla will be able to maintain price parity with other players in the mid-range EV segment.

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“Tesla’s entry is expected to force current EV makers to rethink their vehicle offerings, as it offers a wide range of technologically advanced features in their cars, whereas, in India, those can only be found on high-end models. This will surely change the automotive sector, and we can see changes in technology advancement and added features in new models,” said Sumit Das, Senior Analyst at GlobalData.

Moreover, GlobalData also believes that the recent discovery of the third largest lithium-ion reservoir in Jammu and Kashmir, and Rajasthan states, amplified the necessity of establishing EV manufacturing plants for global OEMs in India. 

Source: Twitter

“Tesla is one of them, and looking at the long-term market attractiveness, setting up a manufacturing facility in India will help the company penetrate the market and leverage the Li-ion reserves,” Gorantala Sravan Kumar, Associate Project Manager at GlobalData, said.

The research firm concluded that foreign players entering the market had changed the face of the Indian market with its vast offerings in terms of features and technology. However, GlobalData believes the impact can only be seen if Tesla can place and market its product in a competitive price segment.

Tesla’s ambitious plan in India will rely on the tax or duty waivers provided. There are even talks that Musk’s hopes to set up an EV factory in India may take another significant setback – and for the same reasons. The Indian Finance Ministry is still not considering providing any tax or duty waivers to Tesla.

According to Reuters, Revenue Secretary Sanjay Malhotra said the finance ministry of India has no plans to grant any duty or tax exemptions to the American automaker.

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Tesla’s entry into the Indian EV market holds great potential for the company and the country. Still, significant challenges, such as charging infrastructure and pricing, need to be dealt with.

The post Tesla restarts talks on India expansion appeared first on TechHQ.

Soybeans are big business. Soybean production has risen from just under 27 million tonnes at the beginning of the 1960s to over 370 million tonnes today. And the bulk of those soybeans are used as livestock feed. But that could all change in the future if molecular farming takes off, as developers have shown that animal proteins can be produced directly from the soybeans themselves. And it’s another example of how agritech is transforming the food industry.

Meet the molecular farmers – plant-based agritech

Using plants to grow animal-protein is taking off as indicated by a growing ecosystem of biotech firms.

• Bright Biotech
• Forte Protein
• Kyomei
• Miruku
• Moolec
• Mozza
• Nobell Foods
• Tiamat

Plants as small factories

Moolec, which last year became the first molecular farming foodtech listed on the Nasdaq, highlights how the commercialization of molecular farming is progressing. The plant-based technological platform works by introducing real animal genes directly into seeds. And the foodtech breakthrough enables plants to function as small factories by growing animal proteins within main food crops – for example, in yellow soybeans and peas.

Moolec has hit the headlines most recently for growing soybeans that were rich in pork protein. And the results were four times higher than the firm had expected based on earlier experiments. In the latest announcement, Moolec said that the animal protein reached a high expression level up to 26.6% of total soluble protein in soy seeds.

A regular soybean (left) and one grown by a molecular farming host plant that’s been designed to produce animal protein. Image credit: Moolec.

Moolec’s soybeans carry a distinct pink color, which reveals the animal protein that’s been grown by plants in the field. And in safflower plants, which the company has engineered to produce a nutritional oil (gamma-linoleic acid), the company is reporting expression levels of around 60%, up 10% on initial expectations.

As well as using the plants to produce so-called neutraceuticals, Moolec is using safflower as a host for plant-based cheese replacements. And the project has advanced beyond the research stage to move into scale-up operations. “In early January, 25 tonnes of SPC2 (Safflower Chymosin) were harvested from the production campaign 2022/2023,” writes the firm in its Q3 FY 2023 business update.

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One of the big benefits of molecular farming is that the growing infrastructure is already there. Farmers have been growing crops for generations and can continue to use existing skills and equipment. The agritech element – although disruptive as molecular farming enables producers to skip the livestock stage of animal protein production – complements existing workflows and benefits from operations already available at scale.

Producing animal protein in the lab, on the other hand, requires a complete rethink of traditional farming practices – and implies additional cost and energy. For example, precision fermentation and cultured meat have sprung out of the pharmaceutical industry. But medicines are typically much more expensive than food.

However, disrupting conventional agribusinesses from within – or, more accurately, on the land using agritech – doesn’t have to carry the same cost penalties. And, in fact, there are multiple savings to be had.

Making a pitch to investors, Moolec’s senior management team points out that compared with conventional animal-based food production, molecular farming requires 35x less land usage. Carbon dioxide emissions are 60x less, and the water footprint is reduced too. And these numbers, which apply to any meat-free diet, not just one rich in molecular-farmed plant produce, point to opportunities for more eco-friendly foods.

A new vertical in food – alternative proteins

Supermarket aisles are the ultimate testing ground for food producers. Competition is fierce, particularly in established categories where shoppers have long discovered their favorite brands. And getting consumers to switch from one brand to another is expensive for companies – just ask Pepsi!

So when a new vertical in food opens up, it’s no surprise to see a rush to win market share. And alternative proteins is a rapidly rising food vertical with huge growth potential. Consumers are warming to plant burgers for various reasons. And Moolec’s hope is that plant-grown animal proteins will make meat-free products tastier and more appealing.

The larger the plant-based market gets, the more alternative proteins – including those produced by yellow soybeans – will be consumed in place of regular meat products.

At a high level, Moolec sees itself as an ingredients supplier – providing seeds to contracted growers and plant-grown animal protein to clients. The firm believes that the total addressable market for alternative protein ingredients could be worth over $70 billion by 2025.

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And of that share, Moolec estimates that it could service around $350 million in plant-derived diary ingredients and $4.5 billion across nutritional oils and meat replacement segments. Also, Moolec isn’t the only company using agritech to open up new business opportunities.

Strawberries turn out to be a star attraction for deploying fruit-picking robots, and applying machine learning image recognition to select optimally ripe crops to reduce food waste.

Foodtech is an exciting area for developers to bring solutions that take pressure off scarce resources and reduce the global environmental footprint associated with protein production. And next time you bite into a soybean, who knows what flavors will be in there – molecular farming and agritech takes Jelly Belly BeanBoozling to a whole new level.

And did we mention that beans can play a role in quantum computing too?

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How many commercial-scale PV and wind power plants will China need to achieve its carbon neutrality goal by 2060? According to a new study – ‘Accelerating the energy transition towards photovoltaic and wind in China’ – published this week in the journal Nature, the answer is 3,844. And the calculations, performed by experts in China, Japan, and Europe, put numbers to the renewable energy scale-up required.

China renewable energy facts

Today, China is already the global leader in wind and solar farm capacity. Figures collated by Global Energy Monitor – a non-profit on a mission to develop and share information in support of the worldwide movement for clean energy – show that China has well over double the installed wind capacity of the US.

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And when it comes to active PV installations, Global Energy Monitor’s solar power tracker indicates that more than half of the world’s operating capacity is located in China. Combining wind and solar, China’s current renewable energy capacity is in excess of 500 GW, which may sound like a lot, but is still just a fraction of what’s required long term.

For example, the study’s authors forecast that – based on China’s 14th Five-Year Plan for a Modern Energy System – the country’s capacity for renewable energy generation will likely reach somewhere between 5 and 9.5 PWh per year. Whereas achieving carbon neutrality in China by 2060 will require scaling up renewable energy from wind and solar sources to as much as 15 PWh per year.

And this mismatch points to the need for much greater investment in PV and wind power in the country, from current levels of around US $77 billion to US $426 billion in the 2050s. Home to 18% of the world’s population, China’s share of global carbon dioxide emissions has risen to 28%.

But given the resources available, it’s feasible for the country to lead the way in the global clean energy transition – especially given its manufacturing expertise in producing PV panels and wind turbines.

China dominates the solar industry and has leadership across each stage of the manufacturing process, from the preparation of polysilicon ingots to wafer slicing, cell fabrication, and module assembly.

Top wind turbine manufacturers (onshore + offshore)

1. Goldwind, China
2. Vestas, Denmark
3. GE Renewable Energy, US/France
4. Envision, China
5. Siemens Gemesa, Spain
6. Mingyang, China
7. Windey, China
8. Nordex, Germany
9. SANY, China
10. CRRC Wind Power, China

[Source: BloombergNEF]

Ranking global wind turbine manufacturers, the majority of the top 10 firms are Chinese companies. And, subject to materials availability, these industrial strengths certainly put China and renewable energy on the same page – particularly in key categories of wind and solar, which experts see as being the most versatile solutions.

“Among renewables, PV and wind power have wider ranges of application than hydropower, generate less detrimental effects on food and ecosystems than bioenergy, and probably entail lower costs than carbon capture and storage,” write authors of the study published this week in the journal Nature.

Shipshape: workers check solar panels built on a fishing lake in China. Image credit: AFP.

The researchers considered a wide range of factors – resource limitations, administrative boundaries, land suitability, restriction of land use, ground slope, land cover, latitude, longitude, terrestrial and marine ecological conservation, water depth at offshore wind stations, shipping routes, solar irradiance, wind power density, and air temperature – to visualize the optimum renewable energy mix in China.

And, according to the group, the ideal combination of utility-scale facilities (> 10 MW capacity) corresponds to 2,767 solar farms, and 1077 wind plants, including 11 offshore developments.

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Wind and solar are complementary, with solar peaking during the day and wind at night. And, over the longer term, in summer and winter, respectively.

Large-scale conversion to renewable energy has, in the past, raised fears of grid instability and high-energy storage cost due to the uncertainty of wind and solar. But simulations – this time considering scenarios for the continental US between 2050 and 2055 – reveal that grid reliability and 100% clean energy penetration are not incompatible.

“Solutions are obtained without higher-cost stationary battery storage by prioritizing storage of heat in soil and water; cold in water and ice; and electricity in phase-change materials, pumped hydro, hydropower, and hydrogen,” wrote Mark Jacobson of the University of California, Berkeley, US, in a 2015 study.

Agrivoltaic trend

In terms of land use, deserts, grasslands, and oceans should provide most of the space for renewable energy expansion in China. On TechHQ we’ve written previously about how solar, animal farming, and crops can co-exist – a field dubbed agrivoltaics. For example, solar panels can provide shade for animals, while livestock contribute by keeping surrounding plants under control so that PVs receive maximum irradiation.

And there are examples already on China’s mainland, such as in Guizhou province (in the southwest of the country), where farmers harvest Sichuan peppers in fields shared with solar panels that offer shelter from the hot sun.

Large scale project: employees work on wind turbine hubs at a factory in Lianyungang, in China’s eastern Jiangsu province on February 28, 2023. Image credit: AFP.

Increased renewable energy capacity would give China greater energy security and some of the costs of development would be offset against savings from reduced fossil fuel purchases. However, modeling does assume investment in building ultra-high-voltage transmission lines to provide efficient energy distribution – boosting capacity and reducing electricity losses – across the vast territory.

Also, because facilities will be distributed widely across the country and not just concentrated in China’s richer regions, there’s potential for wind and solar infrastructure to play a role in increasing per-capita income from $29,000 to $34,400 in North China and from $29,100 to $30,600 in Northwest China – based on research estimates. Renewables can bring development to desert and marginal lands that otherwise have little in the way of revenue opportunities for residents.

Studies also point to the value of collecting geospatial data. Advances in satellite imaging are making it possible to position solar arrays in locations that offer the brightest prospects for clean energy generation.

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Ideally, it’s best to reuse, repurpose, or re-engineer devices to save on the burden of manufacturing – the biggest contribution to IT’s carbon footprint. And tech recycling is the final slingshot that puts valuable materials back into the circular electronics economy.

In principle, rather than starting from scratch, it should be much easier and less energy-intensive to utilize the constituents of waste electronics as feedstock for brand new devices. But that’s only cost-effective if materials types can be readily identified to enable efficient sorting.

Tech recycling wish-list

And for tech recycling, that means coming up with a fast and automatic method capable of accurately classifying materials into top-level bins such as glass, paper, plastic, wood, textiles, and metal. Plus, the solution needs to dive deeper and be able to subclassify those materials into their specific types – for example, by identifying plastics as polyvinylchloride, polyoxymethylene, acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene, polyamide, polyethylene, and polytetrafluoroethylene.

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Even in modern facilities, many steps supporting the circular electronics economy remain manual tasks. And fundamentally, that’s down to the design of popular gadgets such as mobiles and laptops. There are some exceptions – one example is Fairphone’s range of smartphones, which has consistently scored highly for repairability thanks to a modular design philosophy.

The European Commission is certainly making its position clear to appliance firms with its Ecodesign Directive, which builds a regulative framework for more environmentally sustainable and circular products. US lawmakers are also calling for manufacturers to produce hardware that’s easier to repair and disassemble. And while that may help in the future, goods entering tech recycling facilities today often need to be puzzled over by dexterous workers to salvage parts.

But it’s an activity that’s worthwhile, both for the planet and financially. For example, even if a laptop can’t be reused intact, parts harvesting can yield a workable screen, memory, keyboard, and other components. And if you are shopping for parts, sites like Ebay can be a goldmine for reclaimed tech put on sale by IT asset disposition (ITAD) providers.

Firms submitting IT hardware for reuse and repurposing should look for industry certification such as R2V3. Tech recycling standards mandate that ITAD providers pay particular attention to data wiping, to avoid sensitive information being inadvertently sold to purchasers of used HDDs and other non-volatile memory.

How to sort materials for recycling?

Unwanted devices will arrive at electronics recycling facilities by truck, and equipment is first unloaded and then sent either for reuse or recycling. Workers on the recycled materials stream need to be on the lookout for hazardous materials – for example, toner can explode when processed and ignite plastics – to keep everything running smoothly.

Giant industrial shredders gobble up molded plastics and metallic parts and are separated using a variety of techniques. Magnets are an attractive option for removing steel, and applying an electrostatic charge can help to sort aluminum from plastic. But fine-grained separation soon becomes more complex.

What we do #recycling #laptops #computing #gadgets #create #opportunities #community #inclusion #Online #volunteers #charity pic.twitter.com/8wgkgTCW1N

— Free I.T. Stafford (@freeITstafford) July 24, 2023

And the problem here is that the value of materials produced by tech recyclers is linked to the purity of those output streams. Simple classification methods are limited to detecting just a few categories of waste. But optical techniques such as image processing and spectroscopic approaches widen the range of recycled materials that can be correctly identified.

However, issues remain. Image-based waste classification methods are sensitive to background lighting, camera angles, geometry, and color. Staining can also influence how materials reflect light and disrupt certain kinds of spectroscopic measurements. But researchers in China may have found a winning approach that uses laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) to identify and classify recyclable waste.

“This method has accurate, reliable, fast detection results, and can achieve automatic detection,” comments Lei Yang, who’s based at Hefei University of Technology and is lead author of the study. The team’s setup uses a 1064 nm pulsed Nd: YAG laser to etch a tiny cloud of material from a target site, and light interacting with the sample is collected by a fiber-coupled lens that transmits the optical signal to a spectrometer for analysis.

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Different materials will have different spectra and the group uses machine learning data treatments to remove noise and redundant information. Several laser blasts are fired at the same spot before the measurement is made to make sure that the reading corresponds to the underlying core material and isn’t corrupted by surface contaminants or coatings.

One of the big advantages of the LIBS approach for tech recycling and broadening the reuse of materials is that classification measurements don’t require any preprocessing of the waste being analyzed. And the researchers believe that the technique represents a crucial step towards improved waste management.

To maximize performance, the group used machine learning algorithms to analyze the spectral data. And random forest was found to be the most accurate classification model – an ensemble approach that combines the prediction of multiple decision trees. Using the random forest algorithm together with complementary statistical methods, the pulsed-laser technique was more than 98% accurate in sub-classifying metals and plastics, outperforming conventional methods.

Device producers such as Samsung, LG, Apple, and others are drawing attention to the use of recycled materials in their latest designs. But the amounts of post-consumer materials being sourced will need to increase to start making a measurable difference. And having higher purity tech recycling streams will give manufactures a practical alternative to using virgin materials, reducing the carbon footprint of future electronics.

The post Lasers solve tech recycling puzzle in a flash appeared first on TechHQ.

In investment circles, the theory of efficient markets says that stock prices reflect all information that’s available to traders. And this hypothesis relates to makers of electronic devices just as it applies to any asset. But sparks of the circular smartphone economy point to a golden opportunity that’s still being overlooked by many industry players.

Buried treasure

Low rates of e-waste collection and recycling mean that billions of dollars’ worth of high-value, recoverable materials, including gold and other precious metals, are being thrown away each year. It’s well reported that embedded in 1 million cell phones are 24 kg of gold, 16,000 kg of copper, 350 kg of silver, and 14 kg of palladium. Plus, the concentration of those materials is hundreds of times higher than in the original ores.

And while dipping waste electronics into an innovative chemical soup (a process that The Royal Mint, in partnership with Excir, has shown can retrieve gold in seconds) has its merits – repair and reuse are more profitable, especially for the planet.

Much of the environmental burden associated with electronic goods occurs during manufacturing, and the longer that products can be kept in service, the fewer new items that need to be made. Trailblazers paving the way for a truly circular smartphone economy include Fairphone, which is based in The Netherlands and has a presence in Taiwan and China.

10 out of 10 for repairability

In June 2023, the European Commission proposed new rules to make phones and tablets more durable, energy efficient and easier to repair. The legislation emphasizes the need to make electronic devices longer-lasting. And Fairphone shows what’s already possible today on that front – putting mainstream manufacturers to shame and demonstrating the feasibility of a circular smartphone economy.

The firm’s current device, dubbed Fairphone 4, received a top score of 10 out of 10 for repairability from iFixit’s celebrated teardown team. “For years now, Fairphone has been making very repairable smartphones. They always receive top marks on our repairability scale, and in many ways they are a beacon to the rest of the industry – an example of how to create a truly repairable smartphone,” comments Taylor Dixon, a teardown engineer at iFixit.

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Software support, particularly security updates, is another consideration. And Ecodesign regulations in the EU mandate operating system support for at least five years after the product has been placed on the market. And again, Fairphone has valuable experience to share. The circular smartphone economy pioneer finally stopped software support for its Fairphone 2 model in March 2023, more than seven years after the launch of the product.

“This is an incredibly bittersweet moment: the Fairphone 2 has far surpassed our initial hopes to offer three to five years of software support, but in an ideal world, we would be able to support our devices indefinitely,” writes Agnès Crepet – Head of Software Longevity & IT at the Dutch firm – in a blog post to users of the device, which was released in 2015. “The Fairphone 2 makes it clear how far we have come, and how far we still have to go.”

Congratulations @clementlevard on your CNRS Bronze Medal! Timely talk on critical metals and circular economy. Thought for the day: 70 kg of raw materials needed for one 120g smartphone!! @cerege @edurable_cerege pic.twitter.com/vsmE3qMO1T

— Danielle Slomberg (@d_slomberg) October 18, 2019

Other mobile phone providers with aspirations to bolster the circular smartphone economy include HMD Global – which was founded in 2016 by former Nokia executives and has a licensing agreement to use the Nokia brand for its mobile phones. The company, which is based in 50 locations around the world, has recently launched Circular – a mobile subscription service with a difference.

Recognizing that subscribers keeping their phones for longer is better for the planet, Circular rewards customers with credits that ramp up in years two and three and can be used to make a donation to one of the environmental and charitable causes it has partnered with. Projects include tree planting and supporting the generation of clean electricity using solar and wind power. But they are the icing on the cake.

The bigger deal about the subscription scheme – and why it adds to the smartphone circular economy – is that, according to HMD Global, Circular devices are always reused when possible. Mobile phones either get a second life with another subscriber, are donated to charity (if more than three years old and still in working order), or are recycled. And before passing on the device, any information is erased, which brings the discussion to data security and standards for reuse and recycling.

Sustainable electronics: R2V3 reuse & recycling standard

July 1, 2023, was notable as it marked the official start date of R2V3 – the latest version of the sustainable electronic reuse and recycling standard, which represents a ‘trust mark’ for firms looking to dispose of IT assets. Data security is one of 10 core requirements, and the update includes detailed process requirements on data sanitization.

R2V3 sets the standard for responsible reuse and recycling practices for the management and processing of used electronics worldwide. And the auditing and certification process is designed to give customers confidence that operators will manage used electronic equipment, including smartphones, responsibly – considering the environment, the health and safety of workers, and that, as mentioned, all data on all devices is secure and effectively destroyed.

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It’s clear that foundations for a truly circular smartphone economy are coming together. And providers such as Fairphone deserve praise for their efforts. The company is the first and only smartphone producer to integrate Fairtrade gold into its supply chain. Plus, customers can see the origin of other materials – for example, tungsten ore and various plastics – that go into their devices using an interactive smartphone supply chain map.

At the same time, there’s so much room for improvement. Putting a positive spin on things, it shows that there are huge gains to be made in reducing the environmental burden of smartphones and other popular electronic devices.

On its environment page, Apple writes that, on average, shipping an item by sea rather than by air reduces transportation-related emissions by 95%. And any customers buying its Mac Studio, Studio Display, and AirPods (3rd generation) products will be in possession of ocean-transported devices. But what about the millions of iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, and other top-selling Apple products?

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