ITRI Introduces Three Environmental Technologies: Green Glass Adsorbent Technology For Industrial Wastewater Treatment; SoPoWake For Landslide Detection; URABat Aluminum Battery For Safety And One-Minute Charging

These 2016 R&D 100 Awards Finalists provide solutions to complex environmental problems

Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), Taiwan's largest and one of the world's leading high-tech applied research institutions, introduces three environmental technologies:

• Green Glass Adsorbent Technology, an optimal adsorption mechanism for removing heavy metal ions from industrial wastewater, based on recycled LCD panel glass. The Green Glass Adsorbent Technology is the world’s first glass-based heavy metal adsorbent, and the technique for transforming the waste LCD panel glass into an adsorbent technology is also unique. Adsorbed heavy metal ions can be simply desorbed, concentrated and further recycled, while the Green Glass Adsorbent can be regenerated and re-used more than 20 times. No secondary pollution is generated after the adsorption process. Furthermore, the treatment application is simple; the adsorbent is added directly into wastewater to adsorb heavy metals without pretreatment. It also has the lowest production and operation costs of any method for removing heavy metal ions from industrial wastewater. The Green Glass Adsorbent Technology was developed in cooperation with Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration.
• Soil-Powered Wake-up (SoPoWake), the world’s most energy-efficient autonomous landslide and mudslide detection system, can last for decades before requiring maintenance such as a battery change. SoPoWake solves the energy supply problem of autonomous landslide surveillance (ALS) systems by an environmental interrupt mechanism, which activates the sensor and communication circuits only when the water content in monitored soils exceeds a certain threshold. This approach completely eliminates the need for an ALS node to periodically activate, sense, and communicate. As a result, SoPoWake’s power consumption is close to zero when the soil moisture level is low; power consumption increases after the soil moisture level escalates beyond a threshold, and then SoPoWake draws energy from its battery to operate its sensor and communication circuits and send out alarms before a disaster occurs.
• Ultrafast Rechargeable Aluminum Battery (URABat), the first commercially viable aluminum battery, was developed in collaboration with Stanford University. URABat can be fully charged in just one minute for more than 10,000 cycles, while maintaining an exceptional coulombic efficiency (CE) of 98 percent throughout its life. It is made of highly stable graphite and aluminum materials and does not catch fire when damaged. Graphite and aluminum are inexpensive, abundant materials, enabling URABat batteries to be produced at half the price of lithium batteries, with a similar production process. This breakthrough battery technology will compete with lithium-ion batteries for mobile devices and with lead acid batteries in electric motorcycles, scooters, bicycles, and in renewable energy storage in electricity grids. URABat is the first electrochemical device capable of achieving a storage cost lower than a quarter of the cost of renewable electricity itself. URABat batteries are as flexible as paper and can be used in any shape with no safety issues, which enables virtually limitless applications.

Green Glass Adsorbent Technology Combats Toxicity
Wastewater treatment and heavy metal pollution as a result of industrial activities are significant issues faced by many countries, especially developing ones. When heavy metals, such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, nickel and zinc, contained in wastewater discharge into rivers and trenches without proper treatment, the result is severe pollution, leading to environmental impacts on ecology. Many heavy metals are biologically accumulated and cannot be easily decomposed, jeopardizing human health through the food chain. Sources of industrial wastewater containing heavy metals include complex organic chemicals, electric power plants, electronics manufacturing, electroplating, iron and steel, and mines and quarries.

Furthermore, every year, about 600 metric tons of LCD panels are discarded in Taiwan alone. The waste LCD panels are buried in landfills, creating an enormous burden on the environment. ITRI and Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration have cooperated in developing the Green Glass Adsorbent Technology, an innovative method of handling and recycling waste LCD panels. The technology’s research team successfully identified a way to separate the liquid crystal, glass, and indium, and transformed the glass surface into a nano-scale porous structure that creates an optimal adsorption mechanism for heavy metal ions from wastewater.

ITRI’s Green Glass Adsorbent Technology has a high ability to adsorb copper ions, with each gram of adsorbent material able to adsorb 47 milligrams of copper. The Green Glass Adsorbent Technology can also treat heavy metal wastewater high in boron, arsenic and lead. The effective chemical resistance, the ability to reuse the glass, and the lack of resultant silt make the Green Glass Adsorbent Technology more eco-friendly than traditional adsorbents such as ion exchange resins or chemical precipitation and coagulation, and it operates at only one-third the cost of conventional solutions.

“In developing the Green Glass Adsorbent Technology, ITRI and Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration solved two important environmental problems: the high volume of LCD panels in Taiwan’s landfills, and the problem of effectively treating heavy metals in industrial wastewater worldwide,” said Dr. Huan-I Hung, deputy director of Material and Chemical Research Laboratories, ITRI. “The glass structure is retained on purpose during the transformation process, so the green glass adsorbent can work with acids and chemicals and can even be used to treat wastewater in a low pH medium (equating to 0) to accomplish effective absorbing goals. As a result, the cost is lower, the use criteria are wider and the scope is broader for the green glass adsorbent as compared to the various metal ion adsorbents or ion exchange resins currently used.”

SoPoWake Provides Landslide and Mudslide Surveillance for Decades
Autonomous landslide surveillance (ALS) systems use soil moisture sensors to monitor the water content in soils and generate alert messages over a wireless network to provide early warnings of possible imminent occurrence of landslides or mudslides. Unfortunately, existing combinations of regenerative energy and battery cannot sustain an ALS system throughout an entire year because the regenerative energy subsystem simply cannot produce enough energy during certain periods, for example, during rainy seasons, in shade or at night for solar-powered systems.

ITRI’s Soil-Powered Wake-up (SoPoWake) is an improvement over traditional surveillance systems that rely on battery or solar power, and sense and transmit data at specific periods of time instead of continuously monitoring to save power. Rather than utilizing a “periodic data sensing and transmission” method, SoPoWake applies a self-triggered technology based on soil water content that can greatly improve power efficiency. Compared with other environmental monitoring and warning systems, SoPoWake has a much longer endurance and can last for decades.

“SoPoWake is important because ALS systems can save lives by providing various early alarms for landslides accompanied by earthquakes or mudslides after heavy rainfalls, to evacuate or take other appropriate action,” said Dr. Li-Ren Huang, division director of Information and Communications Research Laboratories, ITRI. “SoPoWake simultaneously captures signals and harvests power using the moisture of the land in which it has been installed.”

The application of ITRI’s SoPoWake technology is wide-ranging. It can be used for environment monitoring and positioning because it provides electric energy for autonomous landslide surveillance. It can also act as a backup energy source, because SoPoWake can be equipped to charge a battery in an emergency. SoPoWake’s unique self-powering mechanism and maintenance-free operation enables it to be deployed widely in remote areas and in greater numbers than traditional ALS systems.

URABat, an Ultrafast Rechargeable Aluminum Battery
URABat is a fast charging, stable battery, under all charging schemes and operating conditions. It includes an aluminum metal, a graphite-structured carbon cathode, and a highly safe ionic liquid electrolyte. Because of graphite’s lamination properties, aluminum ions can intercalate in and out of graphite at great speed, allowing the battery to quickly charge in one minute.

Lithium ion is the current mainstream battery technology; however, lithium is limited in supply, expensive, and chemically unstable. It is also not ideal for heavy duty automotive or industrial applications. Aluminum, on the other hand, constitutes an incredible 8.2 percent of the Earth’s crust. This makes it ideal for meeting current and future large scale demands in energy storage and clean mobility, and also for leading to lower manufacturing costs than lithium-ion or lead acid batteries.

URABat’s stability is attributed to aluminum’s deposit (charge) / dissolve (discharge) reaction within an ionized liquid of up to 99.8 percent coulombic efficiency. The aluminum electrode does not cause dendritic crystallization which quickly damages conventional batteries. URABat is inherently safe, because all components in the battery system, including the aluminum and graphite electrodes, and the isolating membrane, are inert. Ionic liquids in URABat are eco-friendly solvents because of their low volatility, non-toxicity, and non-flammable nature.

“After 30 years of global research of aluminum battery development, ITRI and Stanford University achieved three major technology breakthroughs: an elegant design of aluminum electrode, electrolytes, and graphite electrode. This makes a simple battery capable of 10,000 charges and discharges without decay in functionality or stability. URABat is a battery with low specific costs, and inherently safe electrodes and electrolytes which remains stable at elevated temperatures and in hostile environments. These characteristics are important requirement for universal and massive applications. It has flexible form, allowing URABat batteries to be easily formed and providing the versatility needed for almost any application,” said Dr. Chang-Chung Yang, Deputy Division Director of Green Energy and Environment Research Laboratories, ITRI.

The Green Glass Adsorbent Technology, the SoPoWake autonomous landslide surveillance system, and the URABat aluminum battery are available for licensing.

About ITRI
Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is one of the world’s leading technology R&D institutions aiming to innovate a better future for society. Founded in 1973, ITRI has played a vital role in transforming Taiwan's industries from labor-intensive into innovation-driven. It focuses on the fields of Smart Living, Quality Health, and Sustainable Environment.

Over the years, ITRI has cultivated more than 140 CEOs and incubated over 240 innovative companies, including well-known names such as UMC and TSMC. In addition to its headquarters in Taiwan, ITRI has branch offices in the U.S., Europe, and Japan in an effort to extend its R&D scope and promote opportunities for international cooperation around the world. For more information, visit http://www.itri.org/eng.