[object Object], [object Object], [object Object] et al.

Analytical chemistry • 2026

Accurate and sensitive detection of biomarkers in complex biofluids is critical for early disease diagnosis and clinical monitoring but remains challenging due to nonspecific interference from abundant proteins and reducing agents. Here, we present a novel self-powered, anti-interference photoelectrochemical (PEC) immunosensor that combines a ferroelectric hybrid photoanode with a platinum-doped peptide hydrogel (Pt-PH) biocathode. The photoanode was fabricated by in situ transformation of TiO 2 nanorod arrays into ferroelectric BaTiO 3 (BTO), followed by electrostatic self-assembly of sulfur-doped carbon nitride (SCN) quantum dots, forming an SCN/BTO/TiO 2 ferroelectric hybrid. The spontaneous polarization of ferroelectric BTO induces an internal electric field, enhancing charge separation and visible-light-driven photocurrent generation. The biocathode employs nitrogen-doped graphene (NG) as a conductive scaffold, coated with a Pt-PH layer derived from the short-peptide Fmoc-FEFKF doped with Pt nanoparticles, providing a highly hydrated antifouling interface that effectively suppresses nonspecific protein adsorption. The split-type configuration further minimizes interference from reducing agents in real biofluids. Using neuron-specific enolase as a model biomarker, the PEC immunosensor achieves sensitive, selective, and stable detection directly in physiological samples without external bias. This work offers a promising strategy for developing next-generation self-powered PEC biosensors with reliable antifouling performance for clinical diagnostics.

Antoine Champetier

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science • 2021

The pollination of crops by domesticated bees and wild pollinators is easily and often imagined as an accidental but essential process in agriculture. The notion that pollinators are overlooked despite their essential role in food production is widespread among the general public, as well as in policy debates concerning all issues related to pollinators, ranging from regulation of pesticides to conservation of habitat for wild bees, to support of beekeeping as an industry or as a hobby. Meade was the first to formalize this notion by making pollination a canonical example of beneficial externality in economics and arguing that subsidies should be established to ensure that honeybees are provided in optimal numbers to pollinate crops. In the first two decades of the 21st century, the same argument, but this time focusing on wild pollinators, has been proposed and supported by a large and growing literature in conservation ecology. However, a thorough review of contributions on the economics of pollination reveals several misconceptions behind the appealing fable of pollination externalities. The most striking rebuttal of Meade’s argument comes from the study of pollination markets, where beekeepers and crop growers engage in voluntary transactions called pollination contracts. A small economics literature formalizes the issue of incentives solved by these transactions and provides a detailed empirical analysis of many complex aspects, such as the establishment of standards for the monitoring of bee densities or the impact of seasonality of blooms and bee population dynamics on pollination prices. Outside pollination markets, economists have made rather sparse and partial contributions to several other important issues related to pollination in agriculture, such as valuation of pollination services, conservation of wild pollinators, and regulation of pesticides that impact pollinators. On these topics, studies have largely been published in non-economics journals and economists stand to make valuable contributions by applying and popularizing the concepts of incentive design, information costs, and other key insights of environmental economics in the study of pollination.

Futoshi Nakamura

Environmental Science • 2014

The word “riparian” is derived from the Latin word “riparius,” meaning of or belonging to the bank of a river. “Riparian zone” refers to a broader zone spanning from the riverbank to the floodplains; it occasionally includes hill slopes that may influence the stream ecosystem. The term can also be used to describe wetlands and lakeshores. In this article, however, the discussion is confined to areas associated with stream/river courses, although some principles are applicable to other riparian ecosystems and their management. A riparian zone extends from headwater streams to lowland rivers (longitudinally), from surface waters to groundwater (vertically), and from stream banks to hillside slopes (transversely). A riparian zone consists of diverse, dynamic, and complex biophysical landscape elements that provide essential habitats for various terrestrial and aquatic organisms in all or specific stages of their life cycles. Thus, biodiversity in a riparian zone is generally higher than in upland ecosystems, and riparian habitat specialists increase the entire regional biodiversity (gamma diversity) at the watershed scale. Ecological functions (or ecosystem services) of the riparian zone have been studied since the early 1970s. Appropriate riparian buffer width has also been discussed with respect to creating guidelines for stream conservation. Currently, a riparian zone is defined as an aquatic and terrestrial interface or ecotone, emphasizing its ecological functions. Productive riparian forests have been harvested for timber production in headwater basins and deforested by farmland development and cattle grazing in alluvial floodplains. Additionally, riparian forests have been removed for channelization and road construction, which decreases buffering and shading effects. As a result, sediment, fertilizers, pesticides, and other contaminants pollute streams and rivers, which also experience increases in water temperature. These abiotic changes collectively exert detrimental effects on fish and other aquatic organisms. Today, the riparian zone is recognized as a key ecotone for watershed management; therefore, the conservation and restoration of these zones are discussed in the context of ecosystem management at the landscape level.

Peter Convey

Environmental Science • 2019

Antarctica originally formed part of the southern supercontinent, Gondwana, and its fossil record shows that the continent hosted cool temperate and even subtropical forests, dinosaurs, early mammals, and many other biota, despite lying at high southern paleolatitudes for over 100 My. The Antarctica of today is a continent of extremes, inspiring awe, trepidation, and superlatives from those privileged to experience it. It is certainly a forbidding place, more than twice the area of Australia, distant and isolated from other southern continents, with around 0.2 percent of its area ever exposed from permanent ice and snow and covered on average with ice more than 2 kilometers thick. In winter, the surface of an area of ocean of approximately the same size as the continent freezes around it, and throughout the year ice is one of the major drivers of physical and biological processes in the Southern Ocean. Antarctica is also distinct among the Earth’s continents, being the only one not to have ever had a natural human population, and only being discovered and explored over the last one to two centuries. Even now, the human population is limited to the temporary residents of national research stations (about five thousand in summer and one thousand in winter), augmented by thirty to forty thousand mostly ship-based tourist visitors in the austral summer. At least to human perception, the environments of the polar regions are challenging to life. Organisms that live on land in Antarctica today must survive chronic, highly variable and extreme environmental stresses, in particular low temperatures, desiccation, high winds, and a harsh radiation climate. At latitudes beyond the Antarctic Circle, extreme seasonality is driven by the sun remaining permanently below the horizon for up to several months during winter and, conversely, above the horizon in summer. In winter terrestrial habitats experience extremely low air temperatures, typically −40 to −60°C or lower (the lowest instrumentally recorded temperature on Earth is −89.2°C, at Vostok Station on the Antarctic polar plateau). As well as its extreme climate, parts of Antarctica, in particular the Antarctic Peninsula region, have been facing rates of regional climate change in recent decades that are the most rapid in the Southern Hemisphere, as well as the consequences of the anthropogenically caused stratospheric ozone hole. These provide both further challenges to the organisms native to the continent and its surrounding oceans, and a test-bed or proxy for understanding the consequences of change for organisms and ecosystems globally. Terrestrial ecosystems and biodiversity, the primary focus of this chapter, are generally depauperate, primarily comprised of cryptic and microscopic groups that are often overlooked except by specialists. Antarctic marine ecosystems, in contrast and despite also facing extreme seasonality and chronic exposure to near-freezing temperatures, can be highly diverse and comprise considerable biomass, possibly second only to tropical coral reefs.

Kimberly M. Meitzen

Environmental Science • 2015

Geography is the study of the earth, including the physical environment, humans, natural and cultural places/regions, and the complex relationships among human-environment interactions. Geography is relevant to the environmental sciences for many reasons but particularly for its focus on distributions of various environmental- and human-related interactions and the factors controlling such distributions over varied spatial and temporal scales. Geography as an applied discipline provides many field-based and geospatial computational methods, techniques, and tools for analyzing local to global earth surface interactions. Environmental science benefits from these contributions. Geography inherently spans the physical and social sciences, commonly integrating aspects of each as they influence one another. This selection of resources focuses on the subdisciplines of geography that are distinctly environmental, including applied and basic process-based physical geography, human-environmental interactions, geographic information sciences, and considerations of scale. Physical geography is the study of the natural environment and all the components and processes that interact across the earth’s surface to influence the distribution and development of natural phenomena, including weather, climate, landforms, soils, plants, and animals. Physical geography is traditionally subdivided by the three major research areas: climatology, geomorphology, and biogeography. Climatology is the study of weather and climate processes and energy fluxes and the factors that control spatial and temporal variations in temperature and precipitation; such controls range from local topographic influences to global wind and ocean current circulation patterns, to human-influenced climate change. Geomorphology is the study of landforms and the processes (water, wind, ice, tectonics, etc.) that shape different erosional and depositional features of the earth surface. Geomorphology includes (but is not limited to) the study of rivers, mountains, coasts, glaciers, and many other earth surface features and landscapes. Biogeography is the study of the distributions of plants and animals (avian, terrestrial, marine, and freshwater organisms), their interactions within an ecosystem or landscape, and the factors controlling their presence and resilience. Climatology, geomorphology, and biogeography can all be examined across a range of spatial and temporal scales, and there is often an emphasis on explaining and quantifying how natural phenomena within these disciplines change over space and time and how they are influenced directly and indirectly by humans. Human-environmental geography includes natural hazards, environmental management, nature-society interactions, and the global environment. Geographic information sciences include GIS (geographic information systems) and remote sensing technologies designed for studying the earth surface environment. Although not a distinct subdiscipline, the concept of scale and the spatial and temporal dimensions of scale are a central tenet of most geography research. Global environmental change, as influenced by physical and human influences and interactions, is a more recent area of study within geography that is rapidly evolving.

Jean-Louis Weber

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science • 2018

Environmental accounting is an attempt to broaden the scope of the accounting frameworks used to assess economic performance, to take stock of elements that are not recorded in public or private accounting books. These gaps occur because the various costs of using nature are not captured, being considered, in many cases, as externalities that can be forwarded to others or postponed. Positive externalities—the natural resource—are depleted with no recording in National Accounts (while companies do record them as depreciation elements). Depletion of renewable resource results in degradation of the environment, which adds to negative externalities resulting from pollution and fragmentation of cyclic and living systems. Degradation, or its financial counterpart in depreciation, is not recorded at all. Therefore, the indicators of production, income, consumption, saving, investment, and debts on which many economic decisions are taken are flawed, or at least incomplete and sometimes misleading, when immediate benefits are in fact losses in the long run, when we consume the reproductive functions of our capital. Although national accounting has been an important driving force in change, environmental accounting encompasses all accounting frameworks including national accounts, financial accounting standards, and accounts established to assess the costs and benefits of plans and projects. There are several approaches to economic environmental accounting at the national level. Of these approaches, one purpose is the calculation of genuine economic welfare by taking into account losses from environmental damage caused by economic activity and gains from unrecorded services provided by Nature. Here, particular attention is given to the calculation of a “Green GDP” or “Adjusted National Income” and/or “Genuine Savings” as well as natural assets value and depletion. A different view considers the damages caused to renewable natural capital and the resulting maintenance and restoration costs. Besides approaches based on benefits and costs, more descriptive accounts in physical units are produced with the purpose of assessing resource use efficiency. With regard to natural assets, the focus can be on assets directly used by the economy, or more broadly, on ecosystem capacity to deliver services, ecosystem resilience, and its possible degradation. These different approaches are not necessarily contradictory, although controversies can be noted in the literature. The discussion focuses on issues such as the legitimacy of combining values obtained with shadow prices (needed to value the elements that are not priced by the market) with the transaction values recorded in the national accounts, the relative importance of accounts in monetary vs. physical units, and ultimately, the goals for environmental accounting. These goals include assessing the sustainability of the economy in terms of conservation (or increase) of the net income flow and total economic wealth (the weak sustainability paradigm), in relation to the sustainability of the ecosystem, which supports livelihoods and well-being in the broader sense ( strong sustainability ). In 2012, the UN Statistical Commission adopted an international statistical standard called, the “System of Environmental-Economic Accounting Central Framework” (SEEA CF). The SEEA CF covers only items for which enough experience exists to be proposed for implementation by national statistical offices. A second volume on SEEA-Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EEA) was added in 2013 to supplement the SEEA CF with a research agenda and the development of tests. Experiments of the SEEA-EEA are developing at the initiative of the World Bank (WAVES), UN Environment Programme (VANTAGE, ProEcoServ), or the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) (SEEA-Ecosystem Natural Capital Accounts-Quick Start Package [ENCA-QSP]). Beside the SEEA and in relation to it, other environmental accounting frameworks have been developed for specific purposes, including material flow accounting (MFA), which is now a regular framework at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to report on the Green Growth strategy, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines for the the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), reporting greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration. Can be considered as well the Ecological Footprint accounts, which aim at raising awareness that our resource use is above what the planet can deliver, or the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of 2005, which presents tables and an overall assessment in an accounting style. Environmental accounting is also a subject of interest for business, both as a way to assess impacts—costs and benefits of projects—and to define new accounting standards to assess their long term performance and risks.

Ellen Wohl

Environmental Science • 2016

Environmental scientist activist is not an established phrase. Here it designates individuals who begin their careers as professional scientists and become concerned about the loss of natural ecosystems or species, or environmental degradation and associated health effects. This concern gives rise to activism on behalf of environmental protection and enhancing public awareness of environmental issues. For some, activism takes the form of writing for a popular audience. Others become widely recognized figures who appear in documentary films or television shows. Some of the scientist activists are associated with a particular environment, such as Eugenie Clark and Sylvia Earle as advocates for protection of marine ecosystems. Others are noted for their expertise and activism in relation to a specific issue, such as Theo Colborn, Sandra Steingraber, and Devra Davis for environmental contamination or Hansen for climate change. Dian Fossey and Birutė Galdikas are associated with particular groups of animals—gorillas and chimpanzees, respectively. Others, such as Aldo Leopold and E. O. Wilson, are associated with a broader spectrum of environmental issues. Some of the individuals in this article speak out primarily based on their own research, whereas others have only a brief research career and draw from a wider base of published studies. Scientist activists are largely a 20th- and 21st-century phenomenon. Although scientifically trained individuals such as George Perkins Marsh argued for environmental preservation during the 19th century, environmental advocacy by professional scientists became more widespread during the 20th century. This likely reflects the rapid increase in the number of professional scientists since World War II, as well as widespread environmental degradation. As more scientists trained in chemistry, biology, and other environmental disciplines become aware of the threats facing ecosystems, wild organisms, and human health, the urge to communicate this awareness drives environmental activism. Two themes emerge: the fundamental reliance of humans on natural ecosystems and ecosystem services, and the shared traits of humans and other organisms. From Leopold’s articulation of the land ethic, to Wilson’s arguments for protecting biodiversity, the scientists who have become activists argue for the critical importance of protecting functional ecosystems in order to insure human survival. In addition, humans have traditionally distinguished themselves from other species based on traits such as communication, construction and use of tools, learned behavior, and distinctive personalities. As biologists including Fossey, Galdikas, and Schaller have documented the same traits in other species and raised public awareness of these traits, many people have begun to rethink the intrinsic right of other species to exist.

Paul A. Keddy

Environmental Science • 2016

Wetlands have always influenced humans. Early civilizations first arose along the edges of rivers in the fertile soils of floodplains. Wetlands also produce many benefits for humans—along with fertile soils for agriculture, they provide food such as fish and water birds, and, of course, freshwater. Additionally, wetlands have other vital roles that are less obvious. They produce oxygen, store carbon, and process nitrogen. Since wetlands form at the interface of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, they possess features of both. They are often overlooked in standard books, since terrestrial ecologists focus on drier habitats, while limnologists focus on deep water. Shallow water, and seasonally flooded areas, fall comfortably into neither category. All wetlands share one causal factor: flooding. While wetlands may be highly variable in appearance and species composition, flooding produces distinctive soil processes and adaptations of the biota. Thus wetlands and water are inseparable. This treatment will first introduce you to some basic overviews that explain what a wetland is, what different kinds of wetlands exist, and some key processes that occur within them (General Guides and Introductions). Then we will turn to causal factors: flooding creates wetlands, so it receives a full section. Then we will consider how nutrient availability modifies wetlands. Other Casual Factors, such as salinity, competition, herbivory, and roads, are combined into a third section. Having provided this foundation, we will look at the global distributions (Geography of Wetlands). By this point, you will know what a wetland is, where they occur, and the main factors that affect their abundance and composition. We will then explore two more specialized topics. First, monographs are identified that apply to particular regions of the Earth (Regional Monographs). Second, we look at aquatic plants; they are a relatively small group with important implications for the understanding of wetlands as a whole (Aquatic Plants). We close with a section on conservation of wetlands. Two general obstacles must be met in coming to grips with the scientific literature in this field. First, much of the work on wetlands is scattered across ecological journals and may not even appear under key word searches for wetland; instead, material may appear under a term such as bog, fen, shoreline, lake, floodplain, pothole, playa, peatland, or mire (or a dozen other terms). Second, this discipline seems to have attracted a large number of conference symposia, the findings of which are recorded often in expensive books with a haphazard collection of papers, written by a haphazard collection of people, with no unifying theme whatsoever except that all deal with wet areas. Hence, the need is pressing for a few general principles to structure one’s knowledge. Here we focus on general causal factors and their relative importance.

David Benson, Andrew Jordan

Environmental Science • 2017

Although manifestly not a state, the European Union (EU) has evolved from its origins as a trade-based economic organization to become a supra-national political body that regulates across multiple policy sectors in a state-like manner. Nowhere is this regulatory influence more pronounced than in relation to the environment, where the EU now effectively determines the national policy of its member states in areas as diverse as air quality, water pollution, habitat protection, and genetically modified organisms. Countries outside of the EU are also increasingly influenced by its policy norms. Indeed, the EU is widely recognized as an international environmental policy entrepreneur, particularly in relation to climate policy. What is even more remarkable is that this broad environmental acquis communautaire, or corpus of policy and law, has been assembled in the space of just four decades. Up until the early 1970s, environmental concerns were primarily governed at the national and/or sub-national levels in Europe. Environmental measures that were adopted by the European Economic Commission (EEC) were overtly aimed at trade harmonization within a common market. As new, and more costly, regulatory measures were adopted, conflicts erupted with member states. These battles continued into the 1990s, with member states invoking the principle of subsidiarity to slow down the pace of integration. By the 2000s, EU policy had reached a state of maturity. Despite attempts by more economically liberal governments and industrial actors to roll back policy expansion, the EU sought to shift the emphasis of policymaking toward more holistic responses to sustainable development issues. Economic austerity has, to an extent, slowed the pace of policy expansion but the future of the sector is likely to witness greater experimentation with novel policy instruments and a gradual merging of environmental, climate and energy policy objectives. In this respect, EU environmental policy remains a work in progress. A growing literature on these topics has emerged since the late 20th century. Firstly, several key texts have been published to provide an overview of the sector. Secondly, the literature has also focused more specifically on political decision-making, including the institutional aspects of policymaking. Thirdly, scholars have researched individual policies or policy subsectors, often using them to understand integration through time. Fourthly, empirical work has formed the basis of theory testing or theory building, using perspectives imported from comparative (national) politics and European integration. Finally, research has engaged with the process of environmental governing across multiple institutional levels, including understanding the implementation of measures and how member states are being Europeanized. This overview of the published literature is structured according to these strands.

Douglas Sheflin

Environmental Science • 2025

What follows is a partial list of major works in the field of environmental history that identify key figures and detail their impacts on US history. The bulk of these entries are relatively recent, given the newness of the field, and they benefit from borrowing elements of social, political, economic, and cultural history to better explain these individuals and their contexts. These studies also profit from the turn in historical writing generally away from traditional, linear biographies to a more narrative style that focuses on contextualizing individuals and explaining their impact with more sensitivity to why and how they carried such influence during their lives and as part of their legacies. This bibliography is separated into public and private figures, with the former emphasizing studies that investigate the role of American politicians, particularly executives, and employees of the federal government and the latter instead focused on private figures and non-governmental actors, including several activists and organizations devoted to environmental justice. This shift in attention toward individual and non-state actors reflects trends in the discipline more broadly. It especially demonstrates the impact that social history has had on how environmental historians investigate the past. For example, recent studies of prominent figures casts a much wider net in emphasizing the role of women and people of color, and their influence on issues like conservation and the establishment of national parks. Historiography has also tended to move away from government-led conservation and preservation policies and reforms to address the growth of environmentalism in the postwar period. This shift is also reflected in the growing body of work detailing issues related to climate change and environmental justice. Much of that recent work investigates movements rather than individuals, as the tendency is to look broadly at the community or organization or agency before then conducting studies of prominent figures. This does provide some benefit, though, because one consistent theme for most of the works on this list is an attempt by the author to contextualize individuals and connect them to broader communities and conversations. The ability to then draw those connections provides opportunities to better understand the periods and eras during which these figures had an impact. As a result, most of these works excel at finding balance between emphasis on the individual and attention to his or her impact on US history more broadly.

Mark F. Miller, Kelly J. Chandler, Linda S. Birnbaum

Environmental Science • 2020

Each day people are exposed to a wide variety of agents and stressors that have the potential to impact human health and well-being. Environmental health is the study of those environmental factors and how they may contribute to human health and disease. An individual’s environment is one of the most important contributors to one’s overall wellness and quality of life. Environmental factors play a role in at least 85 percent of all human diseases. More importantly, an individual’s environment is the most easily modified aspect of one’s overall health. Understanding the impact of the external environment, how it interacts with biological processes, and what can be done to eliminate or mitigate negative effects provides better protection for human populations from deleterious health outcomes. Traditionally, science has looked at environmental factors by using a risk-based approach. In this model, information on an agent’s potential to cause harm, as depicted by a dose-response relationship for a given adverse effect, is integrated with an individual’s potential to be exposed to that hazard in order to characterize the likelihood and severity of health risk. As we move into a new era of environmental-health research, scientists are thinking about environmental impacts on human health in new ways. It’s no longer as simple as “the dose makes the poison,” where high doses of a chemical are bad and lower doses are not as bad. While there are still many instances of high-concentration exposures to toxic heavy metals, pesticides, or other substances, a new understanding of how low-level exposures contribute to the development of common disorders such as diabetes, developmental delays, and other modern epidemics is changing the traditional paradigm of toxicology. Timing of exposure during fetal and early-childhood development, mixture effects from combined exposures, impacts on genetic and epigenetic gene regulation, and individual human susceptibilities can result in increased disease incidence or severity. Further, these effects are seen not only in exposed individuals, but also in their direct offspring and potentially subsequent generations. The study of environmental health provides opportunities to mitigate or prevent a wide range of human disease and disability from an individual, community, and policy perspective. We can’t change our genes, but we can change our environment, behaviors, and exposures. This article describes the ways we are exposed to stressors in our environment, the primary fields that contribute to our understanding of environmental health, and some emerging issues that require 21st-century approaches to promoting healthy environments and preventing human disease.

Saleem Ali, Rebecca Pincus

Environmental Science • 2015

Environmental issues inherently transcend geopolitical boundaries, and the need for international mechanisms to address planetary problems has become increasingly salient. International environmental agreements have grown exponentially since the 1970s. According to a recent estimate from the United Nations Environment Programme, world leaders have signed up to over 500 internationally recognized agreements, including 61 atmosphere related; 155 biodiversity related; 179 related to chemicals, hazardous substances, and waste; 46 land conventions; and 196 conventions that are broadly related to issues dealing with water. Following trade, environment is now the most common area of global rule making. Global environmental agreements are formulated, ratified, and implemented through a highly complex set of circumstances that often defy systematic inquiry. The key protagonists in the environmental treaty-making system include governmental leaders and special-interest groups (such as environmental organizations, industry associations, and scientific organizations). Our aim in this article is to provide sources that cover this full panorama of stakeholders rather than particular legalistic treatises (which are better covered within the International Law category of Oxford Bibliographies in an entry by Ole Kristian Fauchald on Multilateral Environmental Agreements). The coverage provided here focuses on the process by which environmental science has been operationalized in the treaty-making process.

Michael Paul Nelson, Leslie A. Ryan

Environmental Science • 2015

Environmental ethics focuses on questions concerning how we ought to inhabit the world; what constitutes a good life or a good society; and who, where, or what merits moral standing. The field emerged most significantly in the 1960s from an increasing awareness of the global environmental condition, although its multiple roots stretch back through the conservation legacy of Roosevelt and Leopold, the transcendentalism of Thoreau and Muir, a growing wilderness movement, insights from the ecological sciences and their precursors, and 19th-century Arcadian sentiments. The field of environmental ethics emerged as a reaction to the perception of growing environmental crises, such as the transformation of Australian forests into pine plantations, rivers afire in the industrialized regions of the United States, the pressure of population growth on natural resources, and the preservation of wild lands. In the United States these concerns led to legislative action such as the Wilderness Act (1964) and the formulation of several key pieces of legislation reflecting concern for environmental health and well-being, such as the Clean Water Act (1972) the Endangered Species Act (1973), and the establishment of both Earth Day and the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. These events and others have most frequently been read through the lens of Western philosophy, with Aristotle, Hume, Spinoza, and others serving as theoretical guides, and Western science functioning as both source of and solution to environmental problems. Contributions from non-Western cultures illuminate other forms of relating to the land, based on very different metaphysical understandings. There is often a fine line, for example, between the animate and inanimate, or communal and individual—a line of moral considerability found in other cultures that some Western philosophers seek to blur. Rather than establishing separate categories for non-Western environmental ethics, or those offered by feminists, we have focused on the arguments and investigations within the field. Through creating constellations of individuals with similar concerns, we have created a taxonomy of discourse on selected topics. This article opens with general overviews of environmental ethics in single-author monographs and edited anthologies. Foundational texts from philosophy, science, and the humanities provide an interdisciplinary context for the concepts explored in sections on the human place in nature, moral consideration, putting environmental ethics into practice, and issues of and for the future.

Michael H. Unsworth

Environmental Science • 2017

In this article, environmental physics is defined as the branch of physics concerned with the measurement and analysis of interactions between organisms and their environment. Most commonly, the organisms are plants and animals, and the environment is the atmospheric or soil environment in which they are surrounded. The term physics is derived from the Greek word meaning “knowledge of nature.” Its precursor, natural philosophy, dating back to the ancient Greeks, involved quantitative reasoning and explanations of natural processes. University departments of natural philosophy existed until well into the 20th century (e.g., at the University of Edinburgh, this author’s alma mater), so environmental physics has a well-established ancient heritage. Physics uses observations, experiments, and mathematical analyses to find quantitative physical laws that apply at all scales. The study of environmental physics requires an understanding of (mostly) classical physics but frequently also draws on knowledge of environmental physiology, that is, how living organisms function and respond to the environment. Environmental physics is often concerned with analyzing interactions in which the environment modifies an organism’s responses, and those responses modify the surrounding environment through feedback processes. Consequently, progress in environmental physics is often made through collaboration between physicists, biologists, atmospheric scientists, and soil scientists.

Mira S. Olson

Environmental Science • 2015

Environmental engineering is the application of science and engineering principles to the design of environmental protection and remediation strategies using physical, chemical, and biological treatment methods, all within a regulatory framework. Environmental engineers aim to minimize the adverse effects of human activities on the natural environment. While environmental engineering is often defined by Core Disciplines, it can better be described as a field of study dedicated to three primary objectives. The first is to clean and protect the environment from pollution: think of this as “fixing the past.” Before environmental regulations were introduced, chemicals were released directly into the environment, and there remain tens of thousands of contaminated sites throughout the world. In order to protect human health and the integrity of the environment, engineers study the transport and fate of pollutants through natural systems (see Environmental Transport Modeling) and design treatment systems to restore contaminated sites (see Remediation of Contaminated Sites). The second goal is to control waste streams generated as a result of human activities. The treatment of dirty effluents represents environmental engineers “dealing with the present,” or managing human-generated wastes and byproducts so that they are not released in a way that threatens the integrity of the environment; relevant core disciplines include Wastewater Treatment, Air Pollution Control, and Solid and Hazardous Waste Treatment. Recent advances focus on minimizing waste generation by reusing, recycling, and recovering resources. The third goal is to provide and ensure safe water, air, and land for future generations of humans and organisms. Pollution avoidance and future resource protection can be viewed as “planning for the future.” In addition to ensuring clean ambient air, water, and soil, and providing safe drinking water (see Water Supply and Treatment) for all people, this ambitious goal is encouraging groundbreaking work in sustainable development and green engineering. While there is a significant degree of overlap between environmental science and environmental engineering, one of the primary distinctions is that environmental engineers bridge natural systems with engineered systems and the built environment. Environmental scientists aim to understand natural systems and cycles in the environment. Both scientists and engineers work to understand the influence of human activities on these systems and cycles. Environmental engineers utilize this knowledge to design and implement strategies for minimizing the adverse effects of human activities on the integrity of water, air, and land resources. Addressing these objectives requires fundamental knowledge in a diverse set of disciplines—including, for example, chemistry, biology, physics, hydrology, geology, ecology, atmospheric science, risk assessment, life cycle assessment, toxicology, epidemiology, economics, social science, civil engineering, chemical engineering, and industrial ecology—as well as a broad understanding of governing regulations, economic drivers, and social influences. In this way, environmental engineering overlaps with many other fields of study, including environmental science.

Liz Fisher

Environmental Science • 2018

Environmental law is the law of environmental problems. It is a subject that can be traced back to ancient civilizations but has primarily developed since the 1960s as a response to democratic demands to deal with environmental degradation. It is a vast subject covering a range of topics, and what the boundaries of the subject are is often open to debate. For non-lawyers reading environmental-law scholarship and material, there are six important points to keep in mind. First, the subject is jurisdiction based. Any inquiry into environmental law needs to be accompanied with an understanding of the legal system that the inquiry relates to. The environmental law of the United States is distinct from the environmental law of Thailand and even from the environmental law of Canada. There is a large body of international environmental law, but given the nature of international law, it does not legally bind in the way national law does, and it does not exist in an automatic hierarchy with national law. Second, environmental law is “applied law” and thus often involves the application of basic legal concepts to environmental problems. Environmental law in most jurisdictions is primarily made up of legislation, and thus knowing about the legal principles of legislation is important. The role of the courts will also be important in adjudicating on legal disputes. Third, there are common themes across all jurisdictions (e.g., Environmental Law and Tragedies of the Commons and the respective roles of Science and Environmental Law and Public Participation and Access to Justice) and common legal techniques (e.g., Environmental Principles and Regulatory Strategies and Environmental Governance) and legal processes (e.g., the Role of Courts and regulatory Enforcement). It is these common themes that are often the focus of scholarly attention and debate. This article has been structured with this in mind. Research within the field will be more successful if questions are as focused as they can be in relation to themes and jurisdictions. Fourth, this is a fast-moving area of law, and the environmental-law regime of a jurisdiction can change quickly. The law of a decade ago may not be the law now. Fifth, given the social and environmental complexity of environmental problems, the subject is heavily influenced by writings from other disciplines, particularly writings that relate to environmental problems and how a state should respond to them. Sixth, there is no obvious “canon” of environmental-law scholarship due to the jurisdiction-based, fast-paced, and diverse nature of the subject.

Kyle W. Knight

Environmental Science • 2018

Having emerged in the 1970s as public awareness of and concern for environmental problems increased, environmental sociology’s main goal is to understand the interconnections between human societies and the natural (or biophysical) environment. Environmental sociology has been described as comprising four major areas of research. First, environmental sociologists study the social causes of environmental problems. Along these lines, scholars have developed an array of theoretical frameworks to explain how various social factors, including demographic, social, cultural, political, economic, and technological dynamics, generate environmental impacts and problems, and they have conducted many empirical studies on a wide range of environmental indicators to assess hypotheses derived from these theories. Second, environmental sociology is concerned with how the natural environment influences and impacts society. Early environmental sociologists strongly emphasized the dependence of human societies on the natural environment and stressed that the field should consider how the environment shapes society in addition to how society impacts the environment. Research in this area tackles issues such as the social consequences of natural disasters and the inequitable distribution of environmental hazards along racial and socioeconomic lines. Third, environmental sociology examines social reactions and responses to environmental threats and problems. Research in this area focuses on understanding patterns and trends in environmental attitudes and behaviors (e.g., recycling) as well as various aspects of the environmental movement. Fourth, environmental sociologists are concerned with understanding social processes and dynamics that could advance environmental reform and sustainability. In general, environmental sociology has tended to focus more on explaining how society causes environmental problems while paying less attention to potential solutions, but a shift has taken place in recent decades. The development, discussion, and empirical assessment of theories of environmental reform, analyses of potential solutions to environmental crises, and drafting of conceptual frameworks for sustainability have become important foci of scholarly activity in environmental sociology. Another major area of research, one that cuts across the preceding four, is the human dimensions of global climate change, which has become one of the main substantive issues studied by environmental sociologists. In this article, important scholarly works in each of these five areas are highlighted and briefly discussed, along with a selection of the most relevant textbooks, handbooks and collections, encyclopedia and review articles that provide general overviews of the field, and academic journals that publish environmental sociology research.

Kay Yeoman, Beatrix Fahnert, David Lea-Smith et al.

Microbial Biotechnology • 2020

This chapter details the interplay of biotechnology with food and drink production. Humans have had a long and rich history of using microbes for food and beverage production. The technique of preservation allows microbial growth, which helps with pH changes, gas production, gastronomic value, shelf life, and the texture of the food. The chapter also explains that microbes can be used to make components for food production, including amino acids, enzymes, oils, and polysaccharides. Moreover, microorganisms also play a role in the production of food supplements, such as vitamins and pigments. Essentially, different microbes can be used to make biomass for consumption. However, there are issues with safety and acceptability.

Kay Yeoman, Beatrix Fahnert, David Lea-Smith et al.

Microbial Biotechnology • 2020

This chapter covers the usage and application of extremophiles in biotechnology. Even though microorganisms can survive and grow in extreme environments, individual organisms have a minimum and maximum level that supports growth, and an optimum level, where growth is fastest. The chapter explains that pH value affects the charge and dissociation of biological molecules and therefore their availability for any biochemical reactions. It then looks into how extremophile adaptations can have applications in biotechnology, presenting a figure of how extremozymes can be used to process various sustainable feedstock materials. Additionally, extremophile adaptations can be responsible for contaminating and impairing industrial processes.

Kay Yeoman, Beatrix Fahnert, David Lea-Smith et al.

Microbial Biotechnology • 2020

This chapter examines the significance of environmental biotechnology. It cites that according to the International Society for Environmental Biotechnology, environmental biotechnology is the development, use, and regulation of biological systems for the bioremediation of contaminated environments and environment friendly processes. The chapter then highlights the role microbes play in wastewater treatment and anaerobic digestion. Due to the rapidly urbanizing global population, the importance of biotechnology for minimizing the impact of human activity on the natural environment has grown increasingly important. The chapter also provides an overview of the process of bioleaching, bioscrubbing, and bioaugmentation in correlation with the role of microorganisms in each process.

• 2018

<div class="section abstract"> <div class="htmlview paragraph">This Technical Information Report (TIR) will review the global industry battery size standards for xEV vehicles to provide guidance on available cell sizes for engineers developing battery powered vehicles. The TIR will include a review of the sizes and standards that are currently being developed or used for cylindrical cells, pouch (or polymer) cells, and for prismatic can cells. The lithium-ion cell will be the focus of this survey, but module and pack level size standards, where available, will also be included.</div> </div>

• 2020

<div class="section abstract"> <div class="htmlview paragraph">This SAE Recommended Practice defines a standardized test method to determine the expected service life, in cycles, of electric vehicle battery modules. It is based on a set of nominal or baseline operating conditions in order to characterize the expected degradation in electrical performance as a function of life and to identify relevant failure mechanisms where possible. Accelerated aging is not included in the scope of this procedure, although the time compression resulting from continuous testing may unintentionally accelerate battery degradation unless test conditions are carefully controlled. The process used to define a test matrix of accelerated aging conditions based on failure mechanisms, and to establish statistical confidence levels for the results, is considered beyond the scope of this document.</div> <div class="htmlview paragraph">Because the intent is to use standard testing conditions whenever possible, results from the evaluation of different technologies should be comparable. End-of-life is determined based on module capacity and power ratings. This may result in a measured cycle life different than that which would be determined based on actual capacity; however, this approach permits a battery manufacturer to make necessary tradeoffs between power and energy in establishing ratings for a battery module. This approach is considered appropriate for a mature design or production battery. It should be noted that the procedure defined in this document is functionally identical to the USABC Baseline Life Cycle Test Procedure.</div> </div>

• 2017

<div class="section abstract"> <div class="htmlview paragraph">This SAE Battery Identification and Cross Contamination Prevention document is intended to provide information that may be applicable to all types of Rechargeable Energy Storage System (RESS) devices. It is important to develop a system that can facilitate sorting by chemistry. The recycler is interested in the chemistry of the RESS. This is true for the recyclers of Lead Acid, Lithium Ion, Nickel Cadmium etc.</div> <div class="htmlview paragraph">Thus recyclers of RESS will receive RESS from automotive, commercial, and industrial applications. These RESS have the potential to be contaminated with a RESS of an incompatible chemistry. It is recognized that mitigation methods to reduce or eliminate the introduction of incompatible chemistries into a given recycling stream would also benefit safety and the environment.</div> </div>

• 2008

<div class="section abstract"> <div class="htmlview paragraph">This SAE Information Report describes common practices for design of battery systems for vehicles that utilize a rechargeable battery to provide or recover all or some traction energy for an electric drive system. It includes product description, physical requirements, electrical requirements, environmental requirements, safety requirements, storage and shipment characteristics, and labeling requirements. It also covers termination, retention, venting system, thermal management, and other features. This document does describe guidelines in proper packaging of the battery to meet the crash performance criteria detailed in SAE J1766. Also described are the normal and abnormal conditions that may be encountered in operation of a battery pack system</div> </div>

• 2021

<div class="section abstract"> <div class="htmlview paragraph">This document contains definitions currently used in the automotive industry as they relate to energy storage and batteries for starting, lighting, and ignition applications, as well as for hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) and electric vehicles (EVs). It is intended that this document be a resource for those writing other battery, HEV, and EV documents, specifications, standards, or recommended practices. The use of the term “battery” in this document can be assumed to be a rechargeable battery (secondary battery). The terminology may be applied to other industries if desired.</div></div>

Xuechen Zhou, Zhangxin Wang, Razi Epsztein et al.

Science Advances • 2020

A fundamental study elucidates the mechanisms underlying selective ion transport through desalination membranes. State-of-the-art desalination membranes exhibit high water-salt selectivity, but their ability to discriminate between ions is limited. Elucidating the fundamental mechanisms underlying ion transport and selectivity in subnanometer pores is therefore imperative for the development of ion-selective membranes. Here, we compare the overall energy barrier for salt transport and energy barriers for individual ion transport, showing that cations and anions traverse the membrane pore in an independent manner. Supported by density functional theory simulations, we demonstrate that electrostatic interactions between permeating counterion and fixed charges on the membrane substantially hinder intrapore diffusion. Furthermore, using quartz crystal microbalance, we break down the contributions of partitioning at the pore mouth and intrapore diffusion to the overall energy barrier for salt transport. Overall, our results indicate that intrapore diffusion governs salt transport through subnanometer pores due to ion-pore wall interactions, providing the scientific base for the design of membranes with high ion-ion selectivity.

H. Lotfy, Jan Staš, H. Roubík

Environmental Science and Pollution Research • 2022

Due to current water stress, there is a problem with hygiene and sanitation in many parts of the world. According to predictions from the United Nations, more than 2.7 billion people will be challenged by water scarcity by the middle of the century. The water industry is increasingly interested in desalination of the sea, ocean, and brackish water. Desalination processes are widely classified as thermal or membrane technologies. In the Middle East, thermal desalination remains the primary technology of choice, but membrane processes, for example reverse osmosis (RO), have evolved rapidly and in many other parts of the world are currently even surpassing thermal processes. The purpose of this paper is to review the renewable energy source, the technology, desalination systems, and their possible integration with renewable energy resources and their cost. This article suggests that the most practical renewable desalination techniques to be used are the solar photovoltaic integrated RO desalination process, the hybrid solar photovoltaic-wind integrated RO desalination process, the hybrid solar photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) integrated RO desalination process, and the hybrid solar photovoltaic-thermal effect distillation (PVT-MED) desalination process. However, intensive research is still required to minimize the cost, reduce the heat loss, enhance the performance, and increase the productivity.

Lin Li, Nan He, Bo Jiang et al.

Advanced Functional Materials • 2021

The emerging solar desalination by interfacial evaporation shows great potential for alleviating the global freshwater crisis. However, salt deposition on the whole evaporation surface during steam generation leads to a deterioration in the evaporation rate and long‐term stability. Herein, it is demonstrated that a hydrogel‐based 3D structure can serve as an efficient and stable solar evaporator by salt localized crystallization for high‐salinity brine desalination. Under the function of micron‐grade brine transport management and edge‐preferential crystallization promoted by this novel design, this 3D hydrogel evaporator exhibits a superior salt‐resistant property without salt deposition on the photothermal surface even in 20 wt% brine for continuous 24‐h illumination. Moreover, by virtue of the synergistic effect of the promising 3D structure and excellent water transport of hydrogel, the proposed evaporator possesses an excellent evaporation performance achieving 2.07 kg m−2 h−1 on average in a high‐salinity brine (from 10 to 25 wt% NaCl) under 1 sun irradiation, among the best values reported in the literature. With stable and efficient evaporation performance out of high‐salinity brine, this design holds great potential for its applications in sustainable solar desalination.

Zhen-Yuan Wang, Zhangxin Wang, Shihong Lin et al.

Nature Communications • 2018

Nanofiltration (NF) membranes with ultrahigh permeance and high rejection are highly beneficial for efficient desalination and wastewater treatment. Improving water permeance while maintaining the high rejection of state-of-the-art thin film composite (TFC) NF membranes remains a great challenge. Herein, we report the fabrication of a TFC NF membrane with a crumpled polyamide (PA) layer via interfacial polymerization on a single-walled carbon nanotubes/polyether sulfone composite support loaded with nanoparticles as a sacrificial templating material, using metal-organic framework nanoparticles (ZIF-8) as an example. The nanoparticles, which can be removed by water dissolution after interfacial polymerization, facilitate the formation of a rough PA active layer with crumpled nanostructure. The NF membrane obtained thereby exhibits high permeance up to 53.5 l m−2h−1 bar−1 with a rejection above 95% for Na2SO4, yielding an overall desalination performance superior to state-of-the-art NF membranes reported so far. Our work provides a simple avenue to fabricate advanced PA NF membranes with outstanding performance.Nanofiltration membranes are important for water desalination technologies, but designing membranes that achieve both high permeance and high salt rejection remains challenging. Here, the authors use sacrificial nanoparticles in the membrane fabrication process, leading to crumpled structures with ultrahigh permeance.

Xingyi Zhou, Fei Zhao, Youhong Guo et al.

Energy & Environmental Science • 2018

Solar desalination is a promising method for large-scale water purification by utilizing sustainable energy. However, current high-rate solar evaporation often relies on optical concentration due to the diffusion of natural sunlight, which leads to inadequate energy supply. Here we demonstrate a hydrogel-based solar evaporator that is capable of generating vapor at a high rate of ∼2.5 kg m−2 h−1 under one sun irradiation (1 kW m−2), among the best values reported in the literature. Such highly efficient solar evaporation is achieved by a hybrid hydrogel composed of a hydrophilic polymer framework (polyvinyl alcohol, PVA) and solar absorber (reduced graphene oxide, rGO), which has internal capillary channels. The PVA can greatly facilitate the water evaporation owing to the reduced water evaporation enthalpy in the hydrogel network. The rGO penetrating into the polymeric network enables efficient energy utilization. The capillary channels sustain an adequate water supply for continuous solar vapor generation at a high rate. This hydrogel-based solar evaporator also exhibits promising antifouling properties, enabling long-term water desalination without recycling. The high-efficiency hydrogel-based solar vapor generators open significant opportunities to enhance solar water evaporation performance and reduce the cost of solar desalination systems.

A. A. Abu El-Maaty, M. Awad, G. Sultan et al.

Energies • 2023

Solar desalination systems are a promising solution to the water scarcity problem since the majority of the earth’s water resources are salty. With the increasing focus on desalination research, many innovative methods are being developed to extract salts from saline water. Energy consumption is a significant concern in desalination, and renewable energy, particularly solar energy, is considered a viable alternative to fossil fuel energy. In this review, we will focus on direct and indirect solar desalination methods, specifically traditional direct solar desalination methods such as solar still and humidification dehumidification (HDH) desalination systems. We will also briefly discuss a recent advancement in the desalination method known as the fogging process, which is a development of the HDH desalination system.

Yudi Kuang, Chaoji Chen, Shuaiming He et al.

Advanced Materials • 2019

Emerging solar desalination by interfacial evaporation shows great potential in response to global water scarcity because of its high solar‐to‐vapor efficiency, low environmental impact, and off‐grid capability. However, solute accumulation at the heating interface has severely impacted the performance and long‐term stability of current solar evaporation systems. Here, a self‐regenerating solar evaporator featuring excellent antifouling properties using a rationally designed artificial channel‐array in a natural wood substrate is reported. Upon solar evaporation, salt concentration gradients are formed between the millimeter‐sized drilled channels (with a low salt concentration) and the microsized natural wood channels (with a high salt concentration) due to their different hydraulic conductivities. The concentration gradients allow spontaneous interchannel salt exchange through the 1–2 µm pits, leading to the dilution of salt in the microsized wood channels. The drilled channels with high hydraulic conductivities thus function as salt‐rejection pathways, which can rapidly exchange the salt with the bulk solution, enabling the real‐time self‐regeneration of the evaporator. Compared to other salt‐rejection designs, the solar evaporator exhibits the highest efficiency (≈75%) in a highly concentrated salt solution (20 wt% NaCl) under 1 sun irradiation, as well as long‐term stability (over 100 h of continuous operation).

Sagar D. Shelare, Ravinder Kumar, Trupti Gajbhiye et al.

Energies • 2023

The availability of fresh water in many parts of the world has been dwindling as a result of both climate change and population increase. The worldwide transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy sources is driven by the rising need for energy. As freshwater supplies dwindle worldwide, many desalination facilities will have to be built. One such energy source that is being investigated is geothermal energy. Conventional procedures are increasing in efficiency and decreasing in cost, while new desalination technologies are emerging. This article gives an outline of the global applications of geothermal energy. It offers a particular scenario for desalination using a geothermal source, which has the potential to be both energy- and pollution-free. Discussed in depth are the advantages of geothermal desalination over other methods, the current state of geothermal desalination across the world, the process of selecting desalination technologies, and the difficulties inherent in implementing desalination systems powered by geothermal sources.

Baoping Zhang, Pak Wai Wong, Jiaxin Guo et al.

Nature Communications • 2022

Owing to its 100% theoretical salt rejection capability, membrane distillation (MD) has emerged as a promising seawater desalination approach to address freshwater scarcity. Ideal MD requires high vapor permeate flux established by cross-membrane temperature gradient (∆T) and excellent membrane durability. However, it’s difficult to maintain constant ∆T owing to inherent heat loss at feedwater side resulting from continuous water-to-vapor transition and prevent wetting transition-induced membrane fouling and scaling. Here, we develop a Ti3C2Tx MXene-engineered membrane that imparts efficient localized photothermal effect and strong water-repellency, achieving significant boost in freshwater production rate and stability. In addition to photothermal effect that circumvents heat loss, high electrically conductive Ti3C2Tx MXene also allows for self-assembly of uniform hierarchical polymeric nanospheres on its surface via electrostatic spraying, transforming intrinsic hydrophilicity into superhydrophobicity. This interfacial engineering renders energy-efficient and hypersaline-stable photothermal membrane distillation with a high water production rate under one sun irradiation. Membrane distillation is susceptible to thermal inefficiency and membrane wetting issues during seawater desalination. Here, authors design a MXene-engineered membrane that imparts efficient localized photothermal effect and strong water repellency, achieving sustainable freshwater production.

Pan Liu, Yi-bo Hu, Xiaoyan Li et al.

Angewandte Chemie International Edition • 2022

Interfacial photo-vapor conversion has been suggested as a cost-effective and sustainable technology for seawater desalination. However, the conversion performance was still limited by some drawbacks, like salt accumulation and poor mechanical stability. Herein, a scalable MoS2-based porous hydrogel (SMoS2-PH) with good mechanical stability and salt resistance was successfully constructed through a crosslinking foaming polymerization method. With the high porosity (92.63%), the SMoS2-PH performed an impressive evaporation rate of 3.297 kg·m-2·h-1 and photothermal conversion efficiency of 93.4% under 1-sun illumination. Most importantly, the SMoS2-PH could maintain high and stable photothermal properties for 15 days on the surface of seawater. We believe that the excellent salt resistance, the high photothermal conversion efficiency, the ease of scale preparation method and the available commercial MoS2 make the SMoS2-PH a promising device for full-scale seawater desalination.

Y. Wen, Ruobin Dai, Xuesong Li et al.

Science Advances • 2022

While reverse osmosis (RO) is the leading technology to address the global challenge of water scarcity through desalination and potable reuse of wastewater, current RO membranes fall short in rejecting certain harmful constituents from seawater (e.g., boron) and wastewater [e.g., N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA)]. In this study, we develop an ultraselective polyamide (PA) membrane by enhancing interfacial polymerization with amphiphilic metal-organic framework (MOF) nanoflakes. These MOF nanoflakes horizontally align at the water/hexane interface to accelerate the transport of diamine monomers across the interface and retain gas bubbles and heat of the reaction in the interfacial reaction zone. These mechanisms synergistically lead to the formation of a crumpled and ultrathin PA nanofilm with an intrinsic thickness of ~5 nm and a high cross-linking degree of ~98%. The resulting PA membrane delivers exceptional desalination performance that is beyond the existing upper bound of permselectivity and exhibited very high rejection (>90%) of boron and NDMA unmatched by state-of-the-art RO membranes.

Hao Li, Weixin Zhang, Jiawei Liu et al.

Advanced Functional Materials • 2023

Hydrogel‐based solar evaporators (HSEs) emerged as energy‐efficient designs for water purification due to the reduced vaporization enthalpy in the hydrated polymeric network. However, it remains challenging for HSEs to achieve stable performance in desalination, partly due to the tradeoff between desired evaporation dynamics and salt tolerance. Here, composite hydrogels with tunable self‐assembled nanofiber networks are exploited for the engineering of solar evaporators with both high evaporation performance and resistance to salt accumulation. The nanofibrous hydrogel solar evaporators (NHSEs) present an intrinsic open network with high porosity, above 90%, enabling continuous water channels for efficient mass transfer. Theoretical modeling captures the complex nexus between microstructures and evaporation performance by coupling water transfer, thermal conduction, and vaporization enthalpy during evaporation. The mechanistic understanding and engineering tuning of the composites lead to an optimum configuration of NHSEs, which demonstrate a stable evaporation rate of 2.85 kg m−2 h−1 during continuous desalination in 20% brine. The outstanding performance of NHSEs and the underlying design principles may facilitate further development of practical desalination systems.

Lei Bi, Enrico Traversa

ECS Meeting Abstracts • 2015

Solid oxide electrolysis cells (SOECs) are considered as an effective way of converting renewable energies to chemical energy in the form of hydrogen. Using this conversion as energy storage, we can solve the site-specific and intermittent problems for renewable energies, such as solar and wind energy. During the SOEC working condition, H 2 O is split into H 2 and O 2 by applying voltage. Compared with low temperature electrolysis cells, SOECs that work at high temperatures can save electricity with the compensation from heat sources [1]. However, conventional SOECs using oxygen-ion conducting electrolytes have several problems. First, the working temperature is quite high due to the use of yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) as electrolyte, which possesses adequate conductivity only at high temperatures. Second, the produced H 2 is mixed with H 2 O, needing further separation. Third, the Ni-based fuel electrode materials trend to be oxidized by H 2 O during operation. To solve these problems, proton-conducting oxides are proposed as alternative electrolytes that show several advantages and can avoid the mentioned problems occurring for conventional oxygen-ion SOECs [2]. However, current proton-conducting SOECs focus on the use of BaCeO 3 -based electrolytes, which have been demonstrated to be unstable in the presence of water. In this talk, chemically stable BaZrO 3 -based electrolyte material used for proton-conducting SOECs is presented. Proton-conducting SOECs with BaZrO 3 -based electrolyte show a good chemical stability, together with reasonable cell performance and a superior long-term stability. The possibility of applying proton-conducting SOECs for synthesizing CH 4 by co-electrolyzing CO 2 and H 2 O will be also discussed. Reference 1. A. Hauch, S. D. Ebbesen, S. H. Jensen and M. Mogensen, J. Mater. Chem. , 2008, 18 , 2331-2340. 2. Lei Bi, Samir Boulfrad and Enrico Traversa, Chem. Soc. Rev. , 2014, 43 , 8255-8270.

, Sothearoth Heng

• 2022

One way to achieve carbon neutrality and sustainable future energy scenarios is through the valorization of CO2 into valuable chemicals using solid oxide electrolysis cells (SOECs). However, the electrochemical performance and sulfur tolerance of cathode materials used for SOECs under a gas feed containing H2S species still requires further development. In this study, we successfully synthesized in-situ exsolved Co nanoparticles decorated on the La0.3Sr0.7Ti0.9Co0.1O3-x (LSTC) perovskite oxide (ex-LSTC) under a reductive atmosphere at high temperatures. The electrolyte-supported single cell with the ex-LSTC cathode exhibited remarkable electrocatalytic activity toward CO2 and H2O co-electrolysis with a maximum current density of approximately 705 mA/cm2 and a low ASR of approximately 0.42 Ω/cm2 at 900 °C and 1.1 V. The in-situ exsolved Co nanoparticles anchored onto the LSTC backbone demonstrated excellent stability when exposed to a CO2 and H2O gas feed containing 25 ppm H2S species over an operational duration of 100 hours. Additionally, the microstructural morphology of the ex-LSTC cathode remained unchanged. Furthermore, the formation of trace amounts of sulfur impurities was negligible after treating with the H2S-containing feed, indicating highly improved sulfur tolerance and performance, which can be attributed to a larger number of exsolved Co nanoparticles and oxygen vacancies that facilitate sulfur poisoning mitigation. The findings of this study demonstrate that the in-situ exsolved LSTC can serve as a promising high-performance and sulfur-tolerant material for practical applications, particularly under direct H2S-containing flue gas streams emitted from industrial facilities.

• 2017

<div class="section abstract"> <div class="htmlview paragraph">Electric and alternative fueled vehicles present different hazards for first and second responders than conventional gasoline internal combustion engines. Hydrogen vehicles (H2V) including Fuel Cell Vehicles (FCVs) involved in incidents may present unique hazards associated with the fuel storage and high voltage systems.</div> <div class="htmlview paragraph">The electrical hazards associated with the high voltage systems of hybrid-electric vehicles and FCVs are already addressed in the parent document, SAE J2990. This Recommended Practice therefore addresses electric issues by reference to SAE J2990 and supplements SAE J2990 to address the potential consequences associated with hydrogen vehicle incidents and suggest common procedures to help protect emergency responders, tow and/or recovery, storage, repair, and salvage personnel after an incident has occurred. Industry design standards and tools were studied and where appropriate, suggested for responsible organizations to implement.</div> </div>