• Ineos wants UK to approve test shale site to prove fracking is safe

    The firm has made the offer following the UK’s increasing concerns about the mounting costs of energy and its energy security in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. There have been calls to step up local fracking production in order to help phase out imports of Russian oil completely by the end of the year. Currently, reserves are privatised so any oil that is produced is priced according to the global markets and therefore does not contribute to the UK’s energy security. Sir Jim Ratcliffe, Ineos founder and chairman, said: “The UK is in the midst of an energy crisis with ever increasing prices driving people into fuel poverty whilst giving huge sums of money to oppressive regimes. “It’s a ridiculous situation with so much gas under our feet and we are today offering to drill a…

  • ‘Distractions ahead’ for Twitter as Musk refuses to join board

    In a note posted to Twitter on Sunday, chief executive Parag Agrawal shared Musk's decision and warned of more drama with “distractions ahead”. Agrawal wrote that the company’s board held many discussions with Musk, but did not elaborate further on the reason for the Tesla CEO’s decision. Agrawal said the planned appointment was due to become effective on Saturday, in a move which would have then prevented the world’s wealthiest person from becoming a beneficial owner of more than 14.9 per cent of Twitter’s common stock. The conclusion that many observers are drawing from these developments is that Musk's future intention may be to acquire more Twitter stock. In his Twitter note reflecting on Musk’s decision, Agrawal said: “I believe this is for the best. There will be distractions…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Gearing up for green steel: how the sector plans to decarbonise

    Steel is the world’s largest materials industry and is ubiquitous in everything from car bodies to construction and wind turbines. Therefore, its cost-effective decarbonisation is integral to the global net-zero agenda, as well as for individual companies that have themselves set similar ambitions. Last year a breakthrough proved it’s technologically possible to decarbonise the versatile alloy. HYBRIT, a consortium consisting of Vattenfall, steel producer SSAB and miner LKAB, produced the first ever fossil-fuel free steel using green hydrogen. HYBRIT’s aspiration isn’t unique. Driven by the SteelZero initiative, set up in 2020 by The Climate Group to drive action to decarbonise the sector, key industry stakeholders have made a flurry of commitments and investments to reach this milestone…

  • Could engineers work in the metaverse?

    The machine room of a virtual gas turbine is an odd place for inspiration, but it’s where engineers Ken and Steve had a lightbulb moment. Or rather their avatars did – as they met in a virtual replica of an industrial plant – and realised they could spot a dodgy pump, tackle logistics and chit chat, although they and the plant in question were hundreds of miles away in real life. This synthetic world was a proof-of-concept project created for engineering clients by Capgemini – but went way beyond expectations, says Mike Dwyer, director of digital engineering at the technology consultancy. This is the metaverse – not as you know it in the gaming worlds of ‘Fortnite’ or shopping at Walmart – but a place for engineers and technologists to work together in real-time, with facts and figures at…

  • The strangest NFTs

    The Verge website provides a definition that the layman (like myself) can understand: NFTs are designed to give you something that can’t be copied. You have ownership of the work, though the artist can still retain the copyright and reproduction rights, just like with physical artwork. To put it in terms of physical art collecting: anyone can buy a Monet print. But only one person can own the original. These trendy forms of ethereal blockchain can really be anything digital – some of the most popular NFTs are digital forms of artwork. And some sell for massive amounts of money: the most expensive to date was The Merge, a digital artwork created by anonymous digital artist ‘Pak’. It was sold on 6 December 2021 for $91.8 million on the NFT trading platform Nifty Gateway. Now, artists and…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • E&T Innovation Awards: F1 culture keeps cabinets chilled

    E&T: First of all, could you outline the problem that this technology was intended to counter. A lot of energy was going into supermarket refrigeration units, wasn’t it? Matthew Burke: That is correct. In a typical supermarket about 50 per cent of its energy consumption is for refrigeration. And you’ll be familiar in supermarkets when you buy milk and dairy products that the fridge is generally open-fronted so that you’ve got easy access to browse products. They work on the basis of a cold air curtain that blows cold air from the top of the fridge to the bottom, which is retrieved and recooled and that process is repeated – so that cold air curtain provides a separation between the store ambient conditions and the product that’s sitting on the fridge shelves. One of the issues is that the…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • ‘It’s a big thing when a machine goes down’: Ben Findlay, CEO, Machine Compare

    Having seen the problem first-hand during his two-decade stint in the paper industry, Ben Findlay wanted to explore how to recirculate surplus and unseen industrial spare parts in a sustainable way that could be monetised via an e-commerce platform. “The scale of the challenge is vast. Doesn’t matter if you measure it in pounds, euros or dollars. It’s billions.” More specifically, “we know that any mid-sized manufacturing site – regardless of sector – is usually carrying around €250,000 worth of spare parts that they can’t use and are still in the original box. There’s this culture in engineering that ‘stock is good’. But it’s a waste too. We also know that they scrap around €100,000 of these per year, per site, to make space for new parts coming in. Our job is to try to make sure that surplus…

  • Gadgets: Obsbot Tiny 4K, RealMe GT 2 Pro, Garmin Instinct 2 and more

    Obsbot Tiny 4K A remarkable webcam with a built-in gimbal and tracking software, so it pans, tilts and zooms to follow you around. Pace up and down and it follows, or give a presentation, or lead a yoga class. You can even use gestures to zoom. 4K video quality and dual omni-directional mics with noise reduction. £205 obsbot.com   Realme GT 2 Pro The disruptive young brand’s new flagship phone has a back panel made from a biopolymer, reducing carbon emissions while giving a pleasing paper-like feel. In fact, it’s the world’s first TCO 9.0 certified smartphone, for its sustainable design and construction. £699 realme.com   Audio-Technica ATH-GDL3 ...

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Letters to the editor: volume 17, issue 4

    Options for Plastic Waste I found the article on the export of plastic waste for recycling in the March 2022 issue of E&T of interest, particularly as in Coventry, where I live, there is currently a strike by household waste collection lorry drivers. In common with other cities, Coventry has a waste incineration plant that provides heat energy for electrical generation and heating of civic buildings. Flue gases are treated to minimise pollution and the bottom ash has metals recovered by magnetic and eddy current processes before being used for road building or landfill cover. As the waste contains non-recyclable plastic waste the incineration process cannot be considered entirely carbon-neutral. Councils separately collect recyclable material, aiming to meet imposed targets. Much of this…

  • UK pledges £375m to fund green hydrogen and clean energy technologies

    A wide-ranging energy strategy was announced yesterday (Thursday April 7) which made new commitments on boosting nuclear, wind, solar and hydrogen as part of efforts to lower the UK’s carbon emissions and shore up energy security. The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said the new financial package includes £240m to support the production of “clean” hydrogen. Hydrogen is a potentially zero-carbon fuel source, although if it is derived from fossil fuels it can actually be more carbon intensive than using gas. This is because there are two approaches to producing hydrogen: blue hydrogen (produced by splitting natural gas into hydrogen and carbon dioxide) and green hydrogen (produced by splitting water via electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen). Green hydrogen…

  • Deep sleep phases encouraged using wearable headband

    Many people, especially the elderly, suffer from abnormal sleep. In particular, the deep sleep phases become shorter and shallower with age. Experts say deep sleep is important for the regeneration of the brain and memory and has a positive influence on the cardiovascular system. Researchers have shown that the brain waves characterising deep sleep - so-called slow waves - can be improved by playing precisely timed sounds through earphones while sleeping. While this works well in a sleep laboratory under controlled conditions, there has so far been no at-home solution that can be used longer than just one night. Now researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a mobile system that people can use at home, which aims to promote deep sleep through auditory brain stimulation. The SleepLoop…

  • Western countries release emergency fuel reserves in efforts to wean off Russian oil

    The release is the largest of its kind in IEA history and followed a unanimous agreement between the countries to try to ease the significant strains in oil markets resulting from Russia’s actions. Around half of the release comes from the US alone, which has made just over 60,000 barrels available as part of the larger release from its strategic petroleum reserve that President Joe Biden announced last week. Japan also made a sizeable 15,000-barrel contribution, with France, Germany, Italy, Korea, the UK and Spain all releasing between 4000 and 7000 barrels each. The commitments submitted by members reached 120 million barrels in total to be released over a six month period. “The unprecedented decision to launch two emergency oil stock releases just a month apart, and on a scale larger…

  • Engineered crystals could help computers run on less power

    Computers are being built smaller and more powerful, but they require a great deal of energy to operate. Experts have said that the total amount of energy the US dedicates to computing has risen over the last decade and it is quickly approaching that of other major sectors, such as transport. But engineers at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, have reported a breakthrough in the design of a component of transistors – the tiny electrical switches that form the building blocks of computers – that could significantly reduce their energy consumption without sacrificing speed, size, or performance. According to the researchers, the component called the gate oxide, “plays a key role” in switching the transistor on and off. “We have been able to show that our gate-oxide technology…

  • Book review: ‘The Digital Closet’ by Alexander Monea

    The information tools and platforms that we use on a daily basis are supposedly neutral, but this is far from the truth, especially for those within the LGBTQIA+ community, digital media scholar Alexander Monea argues in his new book ‘ The Digital Close t’ (The MIT Press, $29.95, ISBN 9780262046770). Indeed, Monea’s latest offering examines the heteronormativity of the computer vision-powered content filters that currently detect and block ‘pornographic’ images online. He argues that this bias creeps into our digital discourse, and in return polices sexuality and marginalises LGBTQIA+ users. This book is thoroughly researched and richly sourced, with Monea digging deep into statistics, data and case studies to back up his argument. For example, he includes the story of how eBay purged all…

  • Book review: ‘Freedom to Think’ by Susie Alegre

    ‘Freedom to Think: The Long Struggle to Liberate Our Minds’ (Atlantic Books, ISBN: 9781838951528, £20) is the latest in a flurry of books warning that our present technological landscape is putting control of our very thoughts and behaviour up for sale. It finds a niche in this crowded market thanks to author Susie Alegre’s expertise in human rights law, specifically in digital human rights. The right to freedom of thought (distinct from free expression) is a cornerstone of human rights. The right to something so private, so internal, is easy to take for granted. The Cambridge Analytica scandal was an unwelcome reminder that companies, political parties, intelligence agencies, and other organisations are only too enthusiastic to intrude on the privacy of our minds and ‘rearrange the furniture…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • UK’s Energy Security Strategy focuses on renewables and nuclear

    The new commitments are focused on boosting nuclear, wind, solar and hydrogen, as well as new licences for oil and gas exploration. The Energy Security Strategy could see up to 95 per cent of the UK’s electricity generated through low carbon means by 2030, the government said. The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) claims the Strategy could create over 40,000 more jobs in clean industries in the short term, with up to 480,000 jobs by 2030. The Strategy will see a significant acceleration of nuclear, with an ambition of up to 24GW generating capacity by 2050, representing around 25 per cent of our projected electricity demand. Small Modular Reactors from the likes of Rolls Royce could form a key part of this pipeline. It will also see the creation of a new government…

  • First phase of 4G rollout on London Underground complete

    In June 2021, Transport for London (TfL) awarded the mobile infrastructure firm with a 20-year concession deal to build the network itself and then make it available via wholesale for mobile network operators (MNO) to harness. The deal followed a successful trial on the Jubilee Line (eastern half of the line), which saw TfL install a neutral host distributed antenna system (DAS) that was supported by hundreds of kilometres of fibre-optic cable laid in tunnels for data capacity. All four MNOs (Vodafone, Three, EE and O2) took part in the trial, but so far only EE and Three UK have agreed to harness the final network. Billy D’Arcy, CEO of BAI Communications UK, said the delivery “will provide a massive boost to the passenger experience and marks an important next step on the project’s journey…

  • View from India: The circular path to net-zero supply chains

    The supply chain by its very nature, leaves behind a trail of wastage. A circular supply chain would mean that the waste could be treated for reuse or remanufactured, providing a source of revenue. It probably makes sense for supply chains to alter their outlook and look at circularity for environmental reasons. However, a circular approach needs to be integrated into the supply chain right from the early stage. This topic was discussed at the recent UK India Webinar on Digital Manufacturing and Connected Supply Chains . “Circularity is essential for India to achieve its net zero target. The remnants of the supply chain can be repurposed and this function as an allied industry to the supply chain. Waste to repurpose systems need to be put in place. This could create new economic opportunities…

  • Sponsored: Celebrating the best in UK manufacturing, engineering excellence and innovation

    M&E Week covers the entire product lifecycle from design, engineering, manufacturing and maintenance and seeks to celebrate the sector sharing successes and future insight, raising critical discussion and is a destination for professionals to source products and services in order to keep them competitive. The week hosts a series of digital sessions plus 4 Live co-located events on the 8-9 June 2022 at the NEC in Birmingham - Design Engineering Expo, Engineering Expo, Manufacturing Expo and Maintec. Together the events showcase end-to-end manufacturing and engineering solutions, to encourage business and knowledge sharing across a range of sectors including Aerospace, Automotive, Food and beverage, Motorsport, Energy & renewables, Pharmaceuticals, Space and FMCG. CPD accredited educational…

  • Broadband cables to be routed through water pipes in new trial

    The trial has the potential to connect up to 8,500 homes and businesses to faster broadband and the technology will also be used to power new 5G masts to connect people in hard-to-reach areas. Civil works, in particular installing new ducts and poles, can make up as much as four-fifths of the costs to industry of building new gigabit-capable broadband networks. The 'Fibre in Water' scheme will demonstrate what could be a greener, quicker and more cost-effective way of connecting fibre-optic cables to homes, businesses and mobile masts, without the disruption caused by digging up roads and land. The network will also be used to set up 5G masts to bring fast and reliable wireless broadband to hard-to-reach communities where wired solutions are too expensive to deliver commercially. The…

  • Solar nanowire-nanotube filter offers easy access to clean drinking water

    Even today, clean water is a privilege for many people across the world. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at least 1.8 billion people consume water contaminated with faeces, and by 2040 a large portion of the world will endure water stress because of insufficient resources of drinking water. Meanwhile, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) estimates that around 1,800 children die every day from diarrhoea because of unsafe water supply, which causes diseases such as cholera. It has thus become imperative that efficient and cost-efficient ways to decontaminate water can be developed. With this need in mind, a team of scientists at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), led by László Forró, has come up with a new water purification filter that combines titanium…

  • Building Europe’s next ‘Channel Tunnel’

    We take it for granted now, but the opening of the Channel Tunnel was the engineering of a miracle. In an instant, the centres of London and Paris grew closer, as travel times between the two fell to under three hours. Since the link first opened in 1994, an estimated 450 million railway passengers have taken advantage of the connection, transforming business and tourism alike. And now 30 years on, ground has broken on a tunnel that arguably lays claim to being Europe’s next Channel Tunnel. The Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link, as the 18km (11 mile) tunnel is known, is a planned road and rail connection that will create a new link between Germany and Denmark beneath the Baltic Sea. By joining the German island of Fehmarn with the Danish island of Lolland, it will cut what is now a 45-minute ferry…

  • Why electrifying your classic car probably doesn’t make environmental sense

    Electrification of classic vehicles, especially cars, is a divisive subject. The position of the Historic and Classic Vehicles Alliance (HCVA), which is dedicated to ensuring the long-term sustainability of a UK industry with an annual turnover of £18.3bn, is that if a vehicle owner wishes to change the propulsion system in their classic car, then that is their choice. However, they should carefully consider the total environmental impact of a conversion that can often make no logical sense; in fact far from it! If one regards the embedded carbon dioxide from the production of a classic car as a ‘sunk’ environmental impact, adding an electric powertrain and energy-storage system is re-embedding new CO 2 that is unlikely to be recovered due to the very limited use classic cars receive. The…

  • Britain’s energy system gets ‘Future System Operator’ to help boost network resilience

    The new body will boost security and resilience of UK energy supplies and support the transition to net zero emissions. The proposal follows a period of consultation with the energy industry, which backed the creation of the new public body. The FSO will be launched once the necessary legislation is passed and timelines have been discussed with key parties. It will look at Great Britain’s energy system as a whole, integrating existing networks with emerging technologies such as hydrogen. The FSO will be a new public body founded on the existing capabilities of the Electricity System Operator (ESO) and, where appropriate, National Grid Gas (NGG). It will work with energy suppliers and networks to balance the UK’s electricity systems and ensure continued energy resilience and security of…

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