heating tagged posts

Degrading wood with fungi — rather than burning it — could be a new way to heat indoor spaces. Credit: jirawat thawornpipatdej/Shutterstock.com

In colder weather, people have long been warming up around campfires and woodstoves. Lately, this idea of burning wood or other biomass for heat has surged in popularity as an alternative to using fossil fuels. Now, in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, scientists report a step toward a “greener” way to generate heat with biomass. Rather than burning it, which releases pollutants, they let fungi break it down to release heat.

The benefit of biomass, which consists of plant material and animal waste, is that there is no shortage...

Other teams have come up with similar devices before, although no one was able to create something that didn’t rely on exotic materials or a complex fabrication process. IBS team stayed away from carbon nanotubes and gold and looked at a more utilitarian option for their build material: thin slivers of silver nanowires ∼150 nm in diameter and ∼30 μm in length (a human hair ranges from 17 – 181 µm). The nanowires were mixed into a liquid elastic material which is both soft and stretchy when dry.

To ensure that the material remains tight on the target area while heating, the team devised a 2D interlocking coil pattern for the mesh structure. To make the mesh, the liquid mixture was poured into a shaped mold...