| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Environmental Nanotechnology | The earth has given us 92 natural elements, the fundamental substances we process into all the materials we use. We have an especially bountiful supply of the ones we use most. Each year we harvest about 15 billion tons of ores that we process into metals; chemicals that we process into fuels, polymers and ceramics; animal and plant products that we process into food and fiber, and so on.
The vast array of different materials we fabricate from the elemental goods the earth provides is staggering in its diversity and breadth of function. However, our principle methods of processing
— melting, chilling, vaporizing, pounding, cutting, drilling, casting, forging, etc. — use up finite resources and energy and heavily contribute to pollution. This has resulted in global problems that have become increasingly acute with the passage of time.
Currently these materials are produced at high temperatures in high vacuums, using caustic chemicals. With these latest discoveries, scientists have found that nanotechnology can copy nature and produce materials in a much more environmentally friendly way than the current state-of-the-art.
What all of today’s most widely used processing techniques have in common is that they take place on a macroscopic scale, that is, they all involve the handling of billions upon billions of atoms of any given element at a time. Consider the possibilities if the materials we fashion could instead be assembled with atomic precision. This is not unprecedented; nature has been doing it for millions of years with biological molecules. Our processing methods could become more energy-efficient
and less polluting.
The persistent energy shortages and environmental damage that plague human civilization today might be substantially reduced. That is the remarkable promise of nanotechnology and a big reason why out of all the research and development areas that are considered “hot” today, there is none hotter.
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