Search Results (203)

There is a large and rapidly growing stock of retired power batteries from new energy vehicles in China. Unregulated informal recycling and improper disposal of these waste batteries trigger serious environmental hazards. Though a batch of regulatory policies on battery recycling have been released in recent years, the power battery recycling sector still faces prominent governance bottlenecks, especially ambiguous responsibility division and poor implementability under the entrusted recycling mode. To fill the existing research gap regarding tripartite interest conflicts and pricing mechanisms in entrusted recycling, this paper constructs a three-party evolutionary game model covering power battery producers, recyclers and government regulators. Two pricing models are further developed to distinguish producer self-operated recycling and third-party entrusted recycling channels. Numerical simulation is adopted to investigate multi-stakeholder interest contradictions, dynamic evolutionary trajectories and equilibrium stability of the recycling system, and the influences of subsidy intensity, supervision intensity and recycling cost on participants’ strategic choices are quantitatively analyzed. The research results demonstrate that inadequate government supervision and insufficient economic returns for formal recyclers serve as the primary obstacles hindering the effective deployment of entrusted recycling. An inherent and reasonable price gap exists between self-operated and entrusted recycling modes. Essentially, the price differential of standardized entrusted recycling represents the profit margin conceded by producers to recyclers instead of direct financial subsidies. To solve existing industry problems, this study proposes targeted recommendations for tripartite collaboration. The government should refine the regulatory framework of Extended Producer Responsibility and adopt differentiated reward and penalty mechanisms. Producers are expected to standardize entrusted recycling management and formulate a scientific pricing range for retired batteries. Recyclers ought to advance recycling technologies and maintain standardized operations. Collective efforts from all stakeholders can facilitate the long-term sustainability of the closed-loop recycling system for retired power batteries. Full article

Effective disassembly process planning is fundamental to the sustainability of power battery recycling. However, existing knowledge graph (KG) methods rely on flat ontologies, failing to capture multi-level semantic structures and depending heavily on manual annotation, which cannot meet the scalability demands of Industry 5.0. We propose TSO-Prompt, a triple-stage ontology prompt-driven method. First, a Battery–Component–Operation–Tool (BCOT) ontology model defines four entity types and four relationship types with strict domain and range constraints. Second, a three-stage prompt strategy is designed: Stage 1 (Pattern Injection) embeds BCOT definitions for simultaneous entity recognition, ontology classification, and relation extraction; Stage 2 (Temporal Completion) captures cross-step operational dependencies; Stage 3 (Ontology Self-Check) filters hallucination-induced errors via rule-based verification. The fully zero-shot pipeline requires no manual annotation. Experiments on 172 disassembly steps from five battery models show TSO-Prompt achieves 100% core semantic retention, 90.1% operation recognition accuracy, a 6.4% entity F1 improvement over supervised baselines, and 60% query path length reduction over flat graphs, validating its potential for automated KG construction aligned with Industry 5.0 objectives. Full article

Gallium (Ga)-based liquid metal (LM) composites, particularly those based on eutectic gallium–indium (EGaIn) and related alloys, have emerged as a promising materials platform for soft and deformable energy storage owing to their unique combination of metallic conductivity, fluidic deformability, and adaptive interfaces. Despite rapid advances in LM-enabled devices, binders remain insufficiently understood and are still commonly regarded as passive structural components. Here, we present a comprehensive binder-centered perspective for LM composites, establishing the binder as a key regulator of electro-chemo-mechanical coupling, interfacial stability, transport behavior, and processability in soft energy systems. We show that tailored binder chemistries in Ga-based LM systems—including stretchable batteries, printable conductors, and soft electrochemical devices—govern LM droplet dispersion, suppress coalescence and leakage, and preserve conductive percolation under large deformation, while enabling room-temperature fabrication and printability through rheological regulation and interfacial wetting. Beyond mechanical confinement, emerging binder functionalities—including dynamic bonding, supramolecular interactions, ionically conductive networks, and reversible polymer architectures—enable self-healing interfaces, adaptive transport pathways, and robust adhesion in deformable devices. By integrating recent advances in stretchable batteries, flexible supercapacitors, printable electronics, and multifunctional soft energy systems, we establish a unified multiscale framework linking binder molecular design to device-level electrochemical and mechanical performance. We further discuss sustainability and manufacturing considerations, including recyclable polymer networks, low-temperature fabrication, and scalable processing strategies. Finally, we outline current challenges and future opportunities toward programmable binder systems with tunable viscoelasticity, interfacial reactivity, and adaptive functionality. This Review establishes binder-centered engineering as a key pathway for transforming LM composites from proof-of-concept materials into resilient, manufacturable, and multifunctional soft energy technologies for wearable, stretchable, and biointegrated electronics. Full article

The accumulation of non-recyclable construction, renovation, and demolition (CRD) wood waste necessitates sustainable management strategies, for which thermochemical valorization is a promising option. Slow pyrolysis is particularly suitable due to its high biochar yields and potential to partially replace fossil coal in energy, metallurgical, construction, and environmental applications. In this study, end-of-life CRD wood was converted into biochar using a pilot-scale vertical retort–kiln system at furnace set-point temperatures of 600 °C and 800 °C for 4 h. The biochar produced at 800 °C, which exhibited superior characteristics, was subsequently subjected to post-heat treatment at 600 °C for 30–90 min in the presence of nitrogen within a tightly sealed rotary retort-kiln assembly. Self-heating behavior was evaluated using adiabatic oven tests at 120–140 °C. Biochar properties were characterized by proximate and elemental analysis, TGA/DTG, R50, FTIR, and SEM–EDX. Increasing the pyrolysis temperature to 800 °C increased carbon content from 49.88% in the raw feedstock to 85.11% in biochar, while oxygen and hydrogen contents decreased to 5.91% and 1.52%, respectively. Van Krevelen ratios (H/C = 0.21; O/C = 0.05) indicated enhanced carbon stability, with the higher heating value reaching 30.81 MJ/kg. The thermostable fraction reached 75.18%, R50 recalcitrance index 0.57, fixed carbon 70.59%, volatile carbon 23.31%, pH 8.9, and surface area 188.33 m²/g. Post-heat treatment further enhanced aromaticity (H/C = 0.18; O/C = 0.02) of this higher pyrolysis temperature biochar, increasing its fixed carbon and stability, and reducing volatile content. Extending treatment time from 30 min to 90 min raised fixed carbon to 77–78% and thermostability to 84–85%, while volatile carbon decreased to 13–15%. Microporosity peaked at 350–380 m²/g by 75 min before declining due to pore widening. SEM and EDX analyses confirmed this structural evolution, increased carbon content, reduced oxygen, suppressed alkali metals, and enrichment of alkaline earth metals. Yield loss was highest at 90 min (20–21%), highlighting the need to balance treatment severity and biochar product yield. Both the 800 °C biochar and its post-heat-treated forms passed self-heating tests, confirming improved oxidative stability for energy and environmental applications. Full article

The engineering, resource, and financial constraints in space and spacecraft so far have not allowed the incorporation of biological components into a closed-loop bioregenerative life support system (BLSS), despite decades of research. The expected increase in deep-space exploration and planetary bases with limited access to Earth-based resources necessitates the development of self-sustaining hybrid BLSS technology. The created physicochemical systems, together with photosynthetic organisms and bacteria, aim to revitalize the air, produce food, and recycle nutrients and water in mutually beneficial mini-ecosystems. While plants are best in the function of food production and bacteria in waste recycling, the incorporation of microalgae would add immense benefits in optimizing the life support system (LSS) and increasing the degree of closure. Microalgal photobioreactors (PBRs) could perform wastewater treatment (WWT), removing the nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) in the human-derived wastewater (WW), and couple it with converting carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the cabin to oxygen (O₂) and food production. As microalgal WWT on Earth is an emerging field with engineering hurdles, power, mass, volume, microgravity fluid dynamics, and other constraints have also prevented their operations in space. However, in space vehicles, there is no need for large upscaling of a laboratory prototype system, and the WW effluent is easier to predict, facilitating microalgal extraplanetary use in comparison to Earth treatment plants. These factors, combined with the qualities of microalgae such as surface-to-volume efficiency, fast growth rate, high yield, and tolerability to WW, etc., have led to many preliminary testbeds, prototypes, and ground demonstrations from space agencies, space centers, and academia, which show promising results. Microalgal participation in space WWT is beyond current operational practice; however, PBRs are on the space agenda, and the scientific community is elaborating the technologies that would allow their successful implementation. Full article

The rapid expansion of wireless connectivity has led to vast amounts of radio-frequency (RF) energy being continuously radiated into the environment, much of which is dissipated due to severe propagation losses. Recycling this otherwise wasted RF energy is, therefore, a critical enabler for energy-efficient and sustainable wireless systems. RF energy harvesting nodes and passive backscatter communication devices provide promising solutions by enabling battery-less or low-maintenance operation for future green networks. However, both paradigms suffer from fundamental limitations, including restricted communication range, near–far effects, and insufficient harvested energy at extended distances. This review examines how cooperative relays can address these challenges by harvesting ambient RF energy and assisting both information transfer and power delivery. From a communication perspective, we review cooperative backscatter communication and harvest-then-transmit (HTT) protocols, highlighting how multi-hop relaying significantly extends coverage and improves throughput for energy-constrained devices. Particular emphasis is placed on tag-to-tag (T2T) backscatter systems, relay-assisted architectures, decode-and-forward and amplify-and-forward protocols, and optimal multi-access time allocation strategies that mitigate the doubly near–far problem in passive networks. From an energy-transfer perspective, the review is structured around three pillars: wireless power transfer (WPT), multi-hop energy transfer (MET), and integrated charging-and-sensing frameworks. We discuss relay deployment and placement optimisation, UAV-enabled mobile energy relays, waveform and beam-forming design, and the transition from idealised linear harvesting models to practical nonlinear rectification models. Key practical constraints, such as regulatory limits, safety compliance, self-interference, protocol overhead, synchronisation, and imperfect channel knowledge, are systematically reviewed. The paper concludes by identifying the scalability limits of multi-hop cooperative systems, outlining how the joint optimisation of energy relaying and cooperative communication enables RF energy recycling for sustainable, low-carbon wireless networks and highlighting open challenges and future research directions. Full article

Background: Digital exclusion remains a key barrier to equitable access to digital health services, particularly among individuals with visual impairment. Limited access to devices and digital literacy restricts participation in increasingly digital-first healthcare systems. This study aimed to evaluate the feasibility and exploratory service impact of a device recycling and digital inclusion pilot at a tertiary ophthalmic hospital. Materials and Methods: The six-month pilot at Moorfields Eye Hospital involved the refurbishment and distribution of donated electronic devices (laptops and mobile phones) alongside personalised digital literacy training delivered by trained volunteers. Twenty-two patients with visual impairment were enrolled; 18 completed the programme. Pre- and post-intervention questionnaires assessed digital engagement and confidence across key domains. Paired data were analysed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Results: Across 216 item-level engagement responses, the number of responses indicating daily engagement increased from 31 to 49. Mean self-reported confidence scores improved from 3.1 to 5.1 out of 10 (Wilcoxon signed-rank test, V = 148, p = 0.0008; r = 0.81). Patients reported increased use of email, messaging, online forms, and General Practice (GP) appointment systems. Using secondary lifecycle data and modelled estimates, the reuse of refurbished laptops was associated with an indicative saving of approximately 5.3 tonnes of CO₂-equivalent emissions. Conclusions: This service evaluation suggests that a multi-component intervention combining device provision with tailored support may improve digital engagement and confidence among patients with visual impairment. These findings support the feasibility of integrating digital inclusion initiatives within ophthalmology services, with potential co-benefits for environmental sustainability. Full article

Driven by the global demand for sustainable construction resources, Recycled High Ductility Cementitious Composites (R-HDCC) exhibit high ductility and cracking resistance, demonstrating significant potential for enhancing structural durability. However, fire resistance remains a critical constraint on its engineering application. To investigate the performance evolution mechanism of R-HDCC after high-temperature exposure, this study examined the effects of different temperatures (200 °C, 400 °C, 600 °C, and 800 °C) and cooling regimes (self-cooling and water-cooling) on R-HDCC. The results indicate that when the temperature exceeded 200 °C, the compressive strength of R-HDCC decreased significantly. At 800 °C, the residual compressive and flexural strengths dropped to below 20% of their initial values. However, water-cooling treatment mitigated the adverse effects on compressive and flexural strength to some extent. In terms of tensile performance, R-HDCC completely lost its functionality at temperatures of 600 °C and above, and the cooling method had minimal influence on tensile behavior. Compared with natural cooling, water-cooling specimens developed fewer microcracks and less interfacial damage, indicating that water-cooling alleviates high-temperature-induced deterioration of the material’s microstructure to a certain degree. These findings provide important insights for the scientific evaluation of the fire resistance of R-HDCC and offer valuable guidance for its practical application. Full article

Many South African schools face educational resource shortages that hinder effective teaching and learning. This study investigates a community-driven Open Educational Resources (OER) initiative implemented within a teacher education programme at a South African university, where Bachelor of Education (BEd) students (n = 400) from first to fourth year across the Vanderbijlpark and Potchefstroom campuses were engaged in designing sustainable Learning and Teaching Support Materials (LTSM) from recyclable materials. A purposively selected qualitative subsample (n = 53) participated in the study. Framed within an interpretivist and qualitative phenomenological design, data were collected through structured written reflections capturing participants’ experiences of the project. The findings show that creating OER from recyclable materials strengthened resourcefulness, collaboration, and awareness of educational inequality, while also encouraging more accessible and context-responsive teaching practices. The study contributes to understanding how Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)-aligned operational innovation can foster self-directed learning and sustainable teacher education in under-resourced contexts. Full article

This study evaluates the durability of Self-Compacting Sand Concrete (SCSC) incorporating Windshield Glass Aggregate (WGA) as a sustainable replacement for natural sand, utilizing Blast Furnace Slag (BFS) as a constant filler component. Eleven mixtures were investigated: a control mix and ten variants with WGA substitution levels ranging from 10% to 100% in 10% increments. The specimens were exposed to elevated temperatures of 200–800 °C and to 240 freeze–thaw cycles between −18 °C and +9 °C. Under heating, mass loss increased with temperature, but WGA-rich mixtures generally showed lower mass loss and higher residual mechanical performance than the control. At 400 °C, WGA100 reached about 96 MPa in compressive strength and 15 MPa in flexural strength, corresponding to residual values of approximately 110.34% and 166.7%, respectively. After freeze–thaw cycling, all mixtures showed limited surface deterioration and mass loss below 1%, decreasing from about 0.76% for the control mixture to about 0.05% for WGA100. The improved durability is mainly attributed to the physical effect of WGA replacement and the baseline matrix refinement associated with BFS. Full article

Thermosets are widely used in engineering applications due to their high mechanical strength, thermal stability, and chemical resistance; however, their permanently crosslinked networks also limit repair, reshaping, and recycling. Dynamic covalent chemistry offers a route to addressing these limitations through the incorporation of reversible bond exchange into thermoset networks. A range of dynamic thermosets has been developed based on transesterification, Diels–Alder reactions, imine exchange, disulfide metathesis, boronic ester exchange, and siloxane equilibration, enabling self-healing, reprocessing, welding, and closed-loop recycling. This review examines representative dynamic thermosets in terms of exchange mechanisms, network topology evolution, and macroscopic response. By correlating molecular exchange processes with network-level mechanics and macroscopic performance, this review identifies design principles for dynamic thermosets with improved sustainability and processing compatibility. Full article

Aluminum alloy has been increasingly widely used in the construction field due to its green advantages of light weight, easy processability, high corrosion resistance, and recyclability, which conforms to the concept of green energy conservation and sustainable development in modern architecture. To improve its performance, carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) was used to reinforce aluminum alloy pipes. A total of 22 groups of specimens with different lengths, thicknesses, and CFRP configurations were constructed to study their mechanical properties under axial compression. The experimental results show that CFRP reinforcement can effectively inhibit the lateral deformation and delay the global buckling of aluminum alloy pipes, among which the three-segment and full-coverage reinforcement have significant effects; the combination of aluminum and CFRP can transform direct failure into progressive failure and improve bearing capacity. This composite material not only has an excellent high strength-to-weight ratio and durability, but also can reduce structural self-weight. Full article

The textile and clothing industry has historically exerted a significant negative impact on the environment. Excessive water consumption, chemical pollution, and soil degradation are just a few of the pressing environmental concerns linked to this sector. Addressing these issues has become a priority not only for regulatory bodies, at the National and European levels, but also for the industry itself. More recently, growing attention has turned to reducing the huge volume of waste generated by consumers’ unbridled purchase of clothing. In this context, the Circular Economy (CE) and the Digital Product Passport (DPP) have emerged as complementary approaches for improving product circularity, transparency, and traceability. However, in the textile and clothing sector, their effective implementation also depends on consumer participation in practices such as prolonged use, repair, reuse, and responsible end-of-life management. This article presents EcoProve, a gamified platform designed to encourage consumer engagement with CE practices through smart wardrobe management. The platform allows users to register garments, track usage, record maintenance and repair actions, and document sharing, donation, remaking, and recycling activities. These functionalities aim both to promote more sustainable clothing-related behaviours and to support the structured recording of use phase data relevant to DPP-oriented lifecycle information. This study reports the development and pilot validation of the platform with end users. The results suggest positive effects on environmental awareness, perceived understanding of sustainable textile-related practices, and initial self-reported changes in habits associated with clothing use and disposal. The findings support the potential of gamified digital platforms to foster consumer participation in CE systems in the textile and clothing sector while also indicating the need for broader and longer-term evaluations. Full article

Road pavement rehabilitation increasingly incorporates innovative surface technologies aimed at improving pavement performance while reducing environmental impacts. In addition to conventional recycled asphalt pavement (RAP) maintenance strategies, advanced pavement surface systems such as reflective coatings, rejuvenator-based self-healing mixtures, and thin low-noise asphalt layers have been developed to enhance durability and functional performance. This study presents a comparative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of four pavement surface technologies using primary inventory data obtained from full-scale road sections. The systems evaluated include a conventional maintenance mixture and three alternative surface solutions: reflective pavement coatings, RAP mixtures incorporating rejuvenator-based self-healing systems, and thin low-noise asphalt layers. The assessment follows ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standards and applies the ILCD 2011 midpoint+ (EF 2.0) method. To enable comparability between technologies with different durability, the functional unit was defined as 1 m² of rehabilitated pavement per year of service life. The results indicate that thin low-noise asphalt layers provide the highest environmental benefits across most impact categories due to significant material savings associated with reduced layer thickness. Reflective pavement coatings decrease several impacts, particularly fossil resource depletion and atmospheric emissions, although higher burdens are observed in some categories due to synthetic binder production. RAP mixtures incorporating rejuvenator-based self-healing systems improve resource efficiency and extend pavement durability but may increase impacts associated with binder manufacturing. Overall, the findings highlight relevant environmental trade-offs between different pavement surface technologies and demonstrate that parameters such as layer thickness, binder composition, recycled material content, and service life strongly influence environmental performance. The study illustrates how comparative Life Cycle Assessment supports the development and selection of more sustainable pavement surface systems. Full article

Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanomaterials have attracted widespread attention from researchers due to their morphology-dependent properties, eco-friendly characteristics, and potential as a sustainable photocatalyst with a broad range of applications. Therefore, in this study, three different ZnO nanostructures—nanosheets (NSs), nanoflowers (NFs), and nanorods (NBs)—were synthesized via a controlled precipitation method. Among these, NFs exhibited the highest photocatalytic efficiency. The obtained samples exhibited broad optical absorption edges extending into the visible region (corresponding to apparent energies of 1.81–2.09 eV), which is attributed to the sub-bandgap states induced by oxygen vacancies rather than intrinsic bandgap narrowing—far lower than the bandgap of bulk ZnO (3.37 eV). Their photocatalytic performance was evaluated by the degradation of Methyl Blue (MB), Methyl Orange (MO), and Rhodamine B (RhB) under UV or sunlight. Notably, the NFs achieved rapid degradation of MB and RhB within 90 min under UV irradiation without the addition of any H₂O₂, demonstrating their effectiveness and cost-effectiveness for practical applications. Although H₂O₂ inhibited the degradation of MB and RhB, it promoted the decomposition of MO. Furthermore, the ZnO NFs exhibited excellent recyclability in five consecutive degradation cycles. The self-synthesized ZnO nanomaterials in this study, with their broad-spectrum absorption, high stability, and eco-friendly properties, demonstrate their potential as an efficient and low-cost photocatalyst for large-scale wastewater treatment. Full article