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Given the massive shifts facing the future energy paradigm, it is pertinent to evaluate the centrality of battery applications in the evolving scenario. This paper will look into aspects of energy storage in the electric grid, transportation, renewable energy, microelectronics and internet of things. A number of factors including future projections, current research trajectories and a global strategies issues will be considered.

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Bauxite residue, also known as red mud, has become a major challenge for the sustainable environmental management in the aluminum industry globally. The alkaline extraction of alumina from bauxite [Bayer Process] generates a major waste in the form of a residue. Approximately, a ton of red-mud is produced for every two tons of bauxite ore that are mined. The primary aluminum production generates approx. 120 million tonnes of red-mud each year globally. The red-mud produced from Jamaican bauxite is rich in hematite, alumina and titanium oxide. However, the composition of red-mud is dependent on bauxite ore. It has been shown that over 90 wt. pct. alumina can be recovered from red-mud by soda-ash sintering and caustic leaching that can be reverted back to the Bayer Process. Hematite can be reduced with a degree of metallization of over 94 pct. or over 92% of the hematite can be partially reduced to magnetite. A completely reduced material could be charged through the tuyeres in an iron blast furnace or smelted to produce pig iron as a potential application. A viable material balance shows that the entire amount of red mud can be effectively recycled. This presentation will describe the successful efforts of iron and alumina recovery. The problems associated with the use of reduced red-mud, as an alternative to direct-reduced iron [DRI] have been discussed. Critical assessment of the recovery sequence chosen for the products has been described. Current alternatives of producing inorganic polymers and insulating materials shall be discussed.

The modern silviculture as the basis of a "green iron" extractive mettallurgy. The environmental advantages of using charcoal to produce virgin iron and the Brazilian experience as the "restoring-point" of this ironmaking approach .

Among nanotechnologies, the novel synthesis method of nanoparticles has been payed our attention on because of their various applications, such as electronics, magnetics, catalysts, etc. In particular, the sustainable engineering is very important. Since Fukushima accidents have evoked the motivation to develop the new sustainable energies independent from the conventional ones, the next age solar cell system is one of them. This includes a variety of nanoparticulate materials, such as the cell itself, transparent conductive oxides (TCO), and the other nano-scale devices. From the environmental point of view, as the used of Pb has been avoided, the researches have been focused their attention on the development of the lead-free piezo-electronic materials. On the other hand, these highly functional nanoparticles have been composed of many rare elements and/or platinum group metals. In this regard, their synthesis and application method has been considered on the basis of sustainable concepts. The printing electronics techniques through the use of the nano-ink is one of the goals for the sustainable application ones. In this lecture, the electronic nanoparticles development such as TCO will be exemplified as the recent studies on these fields.

A brief resume of innovation and entrepreneurship achievements across history, countries and levels of development is described followed by several suggested comprehensive pathways to achieve a sustainable innovative and entrepreneurial society. The role of science and engineering is particularly stressed along with the need to heavily invest in these directions for a sustainable future

Permanent magnets create a magnetic field in their surrounding space with no continual expenditure of energy. An electromagnet producing a flux density of 1 Tesla in a volume V = 500 cc for 10 years will consume roughly 1011 Joules of electrical energy, costing about $2000. A permanent magnet flux source does the same job for free. Although not much energy stored is in the magnetic field — ½B2V/µ0 is just 200 Joules — the energy is in a particularly useful form and it provides the basis of highly-efficient permanent-magnet energy converters, both electric motors and generators.
The fundamental physical limits on magnet performance will be reviewed, including energy-product a figure of merit, and recent progress in magnet development will be assessed. Prospects of discovering a higher-performance magnet than Nd-Fe-B are dim, but a significant challenge is to develop a magnet with an energy product intermediate between those of Nd-Fe-B (energy product up to 450 kJm-3) and hard ferrite (energy product up to 45 kJm-3) that is economically viable in terms of raw materials costs and stability of supply. Some potential solutions will be discussed.
A single application, traction motors in all-electric vehicles, could see the current demand for Nd-Fe-B of 100,000 tonnes per year triple over the next decade if a significant fraction of the 35 million cars produced annually were replaced by electric vehicles. There will be a corresponding demand for end-of-life recycling of the magnet material. Direct-drive wind turbines, and microscale energy-harvesting applications are other areas where permanent magnets offer sustainable solutions.

Sustainable development is a comprehensive and complex system of systems requiring multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary science and technology inputs with economic, environment and social objectives. The trade space is very wide and the multitude of trade-offs generate considerable challenges and make it often difficult to achieve an effective balance In the last sixty years the planet’s population has grown exponentially, from 2.5 to 7 billion people, and the technological progress achieved has been tremendous. And they are expected to continue increasing even at faster rates. All these associated technological activities in the pursuit of better living standards have created a considerable depletion of resources, pollution of land, water and air. Thus and because most of our resources are limited, it is imperative that we achieve more with less. In broad terms, sustainable development is achieved when the present needs and challenges are met without placing in jeopardy the ability of future generations to meet their own needs and challenges.
The global energy demand is expected to increase by more than 50% from now to 2025. The three main reserves of fossil fuels: oil, natural gas and coal are decreasing very rapidly and will not be always available to meet the global demands in the near future. The continuation of associated fossil fuel emissions will not be environmentally accepted, and there is a need to remediate some of the deleterious effects already sustained by the environment. Energy security has become a major and critical issue as fossil fuels are confined to a few areas in the world and their availability is controlled by political, economic and ecological factors. This means that in a short term, considerable energy efficiencies and savings must be achieved, and alternative and renewable sources of energy must now be developed, with associated advances in energy storage and conversion materials and technologies such as batteries, super capacitors and fuel cells. The transportation industry accounts for one quarter of global energy use and has by far the largest share of global oil consumption. It used 51.5% of the oil worldwide in 2003. Mobility projections show that it is expected to triple by 2050 with associated energy use.
Considerable achievements have recently been obtained in the development of new and advanced materials such as light weight metallic alloys, metal matrix composites, intermetallics and carbon fiber composites. A significant number of nano, nano-structured and nano-hybrid materials systems have also been deployed. In addition component redesign using a materials and functional systems integration approach was used resulting in considerable system improvements and energy efficiency. This resulted in their introduction in the energy, transportation and manufacturing industries in a wide variety of devices and components with considerable technological, economic, environment and social impacts. This presentation focuses on the role of new and advanced materials in sustainable development and focus of key areas such as energy, environment, transportation and manufacturing.

The rapid rising of China mainland overwhelms the change of academic landscape of the world in the past two decades. The worldwide share of academic outputs from China rises from 2.5% in 1996 to 19% in 2015. More dramatically, the worldwide share of 0.1% most cited works from China rises from 0.2% in 1996 to 20% in 2015, an one hundred folds increase in 20 years. What is the dynamics behind that? We would like to shed lights on this issue from the following aspects: (1) the basic data; (2) the characteristics for the intriguing academic growth in China; (3) the academic and funding structures in China mainland; (4) the growth plan from 2016 to 2020; and (5) case examples. The conclusions are: (1) basic research may serve as a new driver for the continued rise of China;(2) Research landscape in China mainland is vast, fast evolving and hierarchical; and (3) upgrading dynamics of the research infrastructure is powered by the emergence of new generation.

The transformation towards a renewables dominated power generation market is a primarily by the European society driven social and political will, that shapes the entire region severely and impacts the world. It introduces volatile generators enlarging their market share on one side, and creates new market opportunities on the other side, for those which have the ability to adapt and the relevant technology to generate the missing part of the chain. Due to all influencers and the new market set up, flexibility is key. The basic solution formula is very simple; VOLATILITY + FLEXIBILITY = STABILITY. Flexible power generators are primarily fast ramp up and ramp down operating gas combined cycles power plants, flexible designed ultra-supercritical steam parameters based cleaner coal thermal power plants and storage technology based systems and plants. The Industry 4.0 era and its new technologies allow us further progress of the entire power system by introducing modern digital solutions which fulfill ‘Preventive Corrective Control’ requirements, backed by relevant hardware to secure the flexibility needs of the new market conditions of today. Progressive ‘Smart Digital Control’ systems are key to cope with new market challenges. This creates new growth opportunities for the sector. This paper will briefly evaluate the various options, including the possibility of demand side management and will introduce a solution to the market.

It is a truism to state that the current combustion of fossil fuels, including coal, is essentially the same as that at the dawn of civilization, because we merely strike a spark and ignite the fuel, resulting in known environmental problems, including the emission of non-combusted particulates, carbon monoxide, and other contaminants. Mathematical and theoretical research initiated by the author at Harvard University under support from the U. S. Department of Energy in the 1980s, and more recently at Thunder Energies Corporation has resulted in a basically new conception of combustion, called Hyper=Combustion(TM and patent pending), realized in special furnaces called Hyper=Furnaces(TM), in which the combustion is activated by specially designed high voltage pulsing DC arcs that trigger localized nuclear syntheses, such as that of 14-Si-28 from 6-C-12 and 8-O-16, or of 22-Ti-44 from 8-O-16 and 14-Si-28 without any emission of harmful radiation or release of radioactive waste. Said nuclear syntheses cause the combustion at a local very high temperature, thus allowing complete combustion without any combustible contaminant

Transmission electron microscopy has been revolutionised in recent years, both by the introduction of new hardware such as field-emission electron guns, aberration correctors and in situ stages and by the development of new techniques, algorithms and software that take advantage of increased computational speed and the ability to control and automate modern electron microscopes. In this talk, I will describe how recent developments in transmission electron microscopy have improved our ability to obtain quantitative information about the magnetic properties of materials at close to the atomic scale. In particular, I will explain how the technique of off-axis electron holography can be used to record local variations in magnetic induction in nanoscale materials as a function of temperature and applied magnetic field in situ in the electron microscope. I will present examples of the high spatial resolution magnetic characterization of isolated and closely-spaced nanocrystals, metallic alloys and working spintronic devices examined in situ in the electron microscope. This work has benefited from the development of a model-based approach that can be used to reconstruct the three-dimensional magnetization distribution in a specimen from holograms recorded as a function of specimen tilt angle. The approach avoids many of the artifacts that result from the use of backprojection-based tomographic techniques, as well as allowing additional constraints and physical laws to be taken into account. I will also describe the application of combined chromatic and spherical aberration correction of the Lorentz lens of a transmission electron microscope to achieve magnetic-field-free imaging with the conventional microscope objective lens switched off with a spatial resolution of better than 0.5 nm. I will conclude with a personal perspective on directions for the future development of transmission electron microscopy instrumentation and techniques. When combined with advances in specimen preparation and automated image acquisition, such developments may lead to approaches for characterizing the positions, chemical identities, magnetic moments and electrostatic potentials of individual atoms in three dimensions.

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