̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Water

Emissions-free flying takes off at Cambridge Climate Challenge

plc32 — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 09:11:42 +0000

A biology PhD candidate and an early career aerospace engineer researcher won the 2025 Cambridge Zero Climate Challenge for turning waste into sustainable jet fuel

Changemakers: Bhaskar Vira, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education and Environmental Sustainability

lw355 — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 08:50:53 +0000

Economist, researcher and educator, Bhaskar Vira is keeping faith with a life-long love for the natural world and a determination to tackle the climate and nature crises.

Solar-powered device produces clean water and clean fuel at the same time

sc604 — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 16:21:43 +0000

̽��ֱ��device, developed by researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, could be useful in resource-limited or off-grid environments, since it works with any open water source and does not require any outside power.

It takes its inspiration from photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert sunlight into food. However, unlike earlier versions of the ‘artificial leaf’, which could produce green hydrogen fuel from clean water sources, this new device operates from polluted or seawater sources and can produce clean drinking water at the same time.

Tests of the device showed it was able to produce clean water from highly polluted water, seawater, and even from the River Cam in central Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal Nature Water.

“Bringing together solar fuels production and water purification in a single device is tricky,” said Dr Chanon Pornrungroj from Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, the paper’s co-lead author. “Solar-driven water splitting, where water molecules are broken down into hydrogen and oxygen, need to start with totally pure water because any contaminants can poison the catalyst or cause unwanted chemical side-reactions.”

“In remote or developing regions, where clean water is relatively scarce and the infrastructure necessary for water purification is not readily available, water splitting is extremely difficult,” said co-lead author Ariffin Mohamad Annuar. “A device that could work using contaminated water could solve two problems at once: it could split water to make clean fuel, and it could make clean drinking water.”

Pornrungroj and Mohamad Annuar, who are both members of Professor Erwin Reisner’s research group, came up with a design that did just that. They deposited a photocatalyst on a nanostructured carbon mesh that is a good absorber of both light and heat, generating the water vapour used by the photocatalyst to create hydrogen. ̽��ֱ��porous carbon mesh, treated to repel water, served both to help the photocatalyst float and to keep it away from the water below, so that contaminants do not interfere with its functionality.

In addition, the new device uses more of the Sun’s energy. “ ̽��ֱ��light-driven process for making solar fuels only uses a small portion of the solar spectrum – there’s a whole lot of the spectrum that goes unused,” said Mohamad Annuar.

̽��ֱ��team used a white, UV-absorbing layer on top of the floating device for hydrogen production via water splitting. ̽��ֱ��rest of the light in the solar spectrum is transmitted to the bottom of the device, which vaporises the water.

“This way, we’re making better use of the light – we get the vapour for hydrogen production, and the rest is water vapour,” said Pornrungroj. “This way, we’re truly mimicking a real leaf, since we’ve now been able to incorporate the process of transpiration.”

A device that can make clean fuel and clean water at once using solar power alone could help address the energy and the water crises facing so many parts of the world. For example, the indoor air pollution caused by cooking with ‘dirty’ fuels, such as kerosene, is responsible for more than three million deaths annually, according to the World Health Organization. Cooking with green hydrogen instead could help reduce that number significantly. And 1.8 billion people worldwide still lack safe drinking water at home.

“It’s such a simple design as well: in just a few steps, we can build a device that works well on water from a wide variety of sources,” said Mohamad Annuar.

“It’s so tolerant of pollutants, and the floating design allows the substrate to work in very cloudy or muddy water,” said Pornrungroj. “It’s a highly versatile system.”

“Our device is still a proof of principle, but these are the sorts of solutions we will need if we’re going to develop a truly circular economy and sustainable future,” said Reisner, who led the research. “ ̽��ֱ��climate crisis and issues around pollution and health are closely related, and developing an approach that could help address both would be a game-changer for so many people.”

̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme, ̽��ֱ��European Research Council, the Cambridge Trust, the Petronas Education Sponsorship Programme, and the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability. Erwin Reisner is a Fellow of St John’s College. Chanon Pornrungroj is a member of Darwin College, and Ariffin Mohamad Annuar is a member of Clare College.

Reference:
Chanon Pornrungroj, Ariffin Bin Mohamad Annuar et al. ‘Hybrid photothermal-photocatalyst sheets for solar-driven overall water splitting coupled to water purification.’ Nature Water (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s44221-023-00139-9

For more information on energy-related research in Cambridge, please visit the Energy IRC, which brings together Cambridge’s research knowledge and expertise, in collaboration with global partners, to create solutions for a sustainable and resilient energy landscape for generations to come.

A floating, solar-powered device that can turn contaminated water or seawater into clean hydrogen fuel and purified water, anywhere in the world, has been developed by researchers.

These are the sorts of solutions we will need to develop a truly circular economy and sustainable future

Erwin Reisner

Chanon Pornrungroj

Device for making solar fuels on the River Cam near the Bridge of Sighs

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Foresters bring Cambridge 'water curriculum' to Indian Himalayas

plc32 — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:13:44 +0000

‘Pani Pahar - the Water Curriculum', jointly developed by researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the Hearth Advisors, a division of Canta Consultants LLP will form the central education platform within a programme of tree plantation drives, waste management and recycling that engages students, communities, village councils and towns across an area that contains about a quarter of all India's forests.

Designed for students between the ages of 9 and 15, the Pani Pahar curriculum has been freely available to teachers and schools since 2020. ̽��ֱ��aim of the curriculum is to engage students in experiential learning and to instil in them a sense of responsibility towards water conservation, and environmental sustainability more generally. ̽��ֱ��curriculum preparation and instructional design was led by the Hearth Advisors, based on research conducted at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Young Nagaland forestry graduates under the Mobius Young Professional Programme are being trained by the Hearth Advisors to impart the Pani Pahar curriculum in schools, collect data on ‘indigenous knowledge and practices in forest management/natural resource management’ and contribute to an international research initiative ‘to translate indigenous knowledge into concrete policy action’ launched by the Indian government at COP 27.

̽��ֱ��foresters will also be given hands-on training and work experience on various aspects of forestry projects by a team from the Nagaland Forest Management Project (NFMP). ̽��ֱ��NFMP is a development project “to improve forest ecosystems” supported by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) of the Japanese government.

̽��ֱ��Nagaland project is led by Cambridge alumnus Atoho Jakhalu, who is Director of the Climate Studies and Knowledge Solutions Centre in the Government of Nagaland, supported by the Government Department of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Hearth Advisors, as well as YouthNet, and funded by the Mobius Foundation.

“We anticipate the success of this project in Nagaland will set a strong foundation to be followed for the rest of the other seven North Eastern states of the Indian Himalayan region (which has a quarter of India’s total forest cover and therefore has a huge role to play in keeping up with India’s climate commitments especially in the forestry sector),” Jakhalu said.

‘Pani Pahar – Waters of the Himalayas' grew out of a collaborative research project between the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, ̽��ֱ��Centre for Ecology Development and Research in India (CEDAR) and the Southasia Institute for Advanced Studies in Nepal (SIAS). ̽��ֱ��project explores the changing landscapes and escalating water crises of the Indian Himalayas. It combines academic research led by Cambridge Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education Professor Bhaskar Vira and Dr Eszter Kovacs then at Cambridge’s Department of Geography (now at ̽��ֱ�� College London) with contemporary imagery by photojournalist Toby Smith, which has been exhibited in the UK and India.

̽��ֱ��curriculum, developed by the Hearth Advisors, aims to help students understand water resources and sustainability and how these are impacted by climate change. ̽��ֱ��detailed lesson plans encourage reflection and research on the human causes of water scarcity, and some of the effects of environmental change on humans and our shared resources. It also helps students understand the meaning of activism, recognise some of the challenges associated with activism, and begin to associate activism with the needs and issues of their school.

“These school materials are designed to allow young people, who are highly mobilised through the school strikes for climate, to develop a critical engagement with these issues, with learning resources and educational materials that are targeted at different stages of the secondary school curriculum,” said Vira. “We wanted to show the links between our research on water scarcity and broader concerns about environmental change and crises.”

̽��ֱ��curriculum has three sets, one for each level, involving 10-hours of contact time with students on each level. ̽��ֱ��curriculum is targeted at students of junior, middle and senior level.

̽��ֱ��curriculum was launched in India in 2020, although Vira says it could easily be incorporated into the school systems of other countries, including the UK. ̽��ֱ��resources are free to download and use, and have been released through creative commons licensing.

Funding for the research project and exhibition was provided by the UK’s Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) programme, which was a joint initiative of the UK Department for International Development (DFID), Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Funding was also provided by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Economic and Social Research Council Impact Acceleration Account. ̽��ֱ��Oxonian India Foundation funded the graphic design of the curriculum materials.

Foresters across the mountainous northeastern Indian state of Nagaland will help roll out a unique programme of environmental education, co-developed by researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Toby Smith

A young child drinks from a water tap

Yes

Scientists have new tool to estimate how much water might be hidden beneath a planet’s surface

cmm201 — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 12:25:33 +0000

Scientists from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge now have a way to estimate how much water a rocky planet can store in its subterranean reservoirs. It is thought that this water, which is locked into the structure of minerals deep down, might help a planet recover from its initial fiery birth.

̽��ֱ��researchers developed a model that can predict the proportion of water-rich minerals inside a planet. These minerals act like a sponge, soaking up water which can later return to the surface and replenish oceans. Their results could help us understand how planets can become habitable following intense heat and radiation during their early years.

Planets orbiting M-type red dwarf stars — the most common star in the galaxy — are thought to be one of the best places to look for alien life. But these stars have particularly tempestuous adolescent years — releasing intense bursts of radiation that blast nearby planets and bake off their surface water.

Our Sun’s adolescent phase was relatively short, but red dwarf stars spend much longer in this angsty transitional period. As a result, the planets under their wing suffer a runaway greenhouse effect where their climate is thrown into chaos.

“We wanted to investigate whether these planets, after such a tumultuous upbringing, could rehabilitate themselves and go on to host surface water,” said lead author of the study, Claire Guimond, a PhD student in Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences.

̽��ֱ��new research, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, shows that interior water could be a viable way to replenish liquid surface water once a planet’s host star has matured and dimmed. This water would likely have been brought up by volcanoes and gradually released as steam into the atmosphere, together with other life-giving elements.

Their new model allows them to calculate a planet’s interior water capacity based on its size and the chemistry of its host star. “ ̽��ֱ��model gives us an upper limit on how much water a planet could carry at depth, based on these minerals and their ability to take water into their structure,” said Guimond.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that the size of a planet plays a key role in deciding how much water it can hold. That’s because a planet’s size determines the proportion of water-carrying minerals it is made of.

Most of a planet’s interior water is contained within a rocky layer known as the upper mantle — which lies directly below the crust. Here, pressure and temperature conditions are just right for the formation of green-blue minerals called wadsleyite and ringwoodite that can soak up water. This rocky layer is also within reach of volcanoes, which could bring water back to the surface through eruptions.

̽��ֱ��new research showed that larger planets — around two to three times bigger than Earth — typically have drier rocky mantles because the water-rich upper mantle makes up a smaller proportion of their total mass.

̽��ֱ��results could provide scientists with guidelines to aid their search for exoplanets that might host life, “This could help refine our triaging of which planets to study first,” said Oliver Shorttle, who is jointly affiliated with Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences and Institute of Astronomy. “When we’re looking for the planets that can best hold water you probably do not want one significantly more massive or wildly smaller than Earth.”

̽��ֱ��findings could also add to our understanding of how planets, including those closer to home like Venus, can transition from barren hellscapes to a blue marble. Temperatures on the surface of Venus, which is of a similar size and bulk composition to Earth, hover around 450oC and its atmosphere is heavy with carbon dioxide and nitrogen. It remains an open question whether Venus hosted liquid water at its surface 4 billion years ago. “If that’s the case, then Venus must have found a way to cool itself and regain surface water after being born around a fiery sun,” said Shorttle, “It’s possible that it tapped into its interior water in order to do this.”

Reference:
Guimond, C. M., Shorttle, O., & Rudge, J. F. 'Mantle mineralogy limits to rocky planet water inventories'. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2023). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stad148

In the search for life elsewhere in the Universe, scientists have traditionally looked for planets with liquid water at their surface. But, rather than flowing as oceans and rivers, much of a planet’s water can be locked in rocks deep within its interior.

We wanted to investigate whether these planets, after such a tumultuous upbringing, could rehabilitate themselves and go on to host surface water

Claire Guimond

NASA

Water worlds

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Licence type:

Public Domain

New form of ice is like a snapshot of liquid water

cr696 — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 19:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��new form of ice is amorphous. Unlike ordinary crystalline ice where the molecules arrange themselves in a regular pattern, in amorphous ice the molecules are in a disorganised form that resembles a liquid.

In their paper, published in Science, the team created a new form of amorphous ice in experiment and achieved an atomic-scale model of it in computer simulation. ̽��ֱ��experiments used a technique called ball-milling, which grinds crystalline ice into small particles using metal balls in a steel jar. Ball-milling is regularly used to make amorphous materials, but it had never been applied to ice.

̽��ֱ��team found that ball-milling created an amorphous form of ice, which unlike all other known ices, had a density similar to that of liquid water and whose state resembled water in solid form. They named the new ice medium-density amorphous ice (MDA).

To understand the process at the molecular scale the team employed computational simulation. By mimicking the ball-milling procedure via repeated random shearing of crystalline ice, the team successfully created a computational model of MDA.

“Our discovery of MDA raises many questions on the very nature of liquid water and so understanding MDA’s precise atomic structure is very important,” said co-author Dr Michael Davies, who carried out the computational modelling. “We found remarkable similarities between MDA and liquid water.”

A happy medium

Amorphous ices have been suggested to be models for liquid water. Until now, there have been two main types of amorphous ice: high-density and low-density amorphous ice.

As the names suggest, there is a large density gap between them. This density gap, combined with the fact that the density of liquid water lies in the middle, has been a cornerstone of our understanding of liquid water. It has led in part to the suggestion that water consists of two liquids: one high- and one low-density liquid.

Senior author Professor Christoph Salzmann said: “ ̽��ֱ��accepted wisdom has been that no ice exists within that density gap. Our study shows that the density of MDA is precisely within this density gap and this finding may have far-reaching consequences for our understanding of liquid water and its many anomalies.”

A high-energy geophysical material

̽��ֱ��discovery of MDA gives rise to the question: where might it exist in nature? Shear forces were discovered to be key to creating MDA in this study. ̽��ֱ��team suggests ordinary ice could undergo similar shear forces in the ice moons due to the tidal forces exerted by gas giants such as Jupiter.

Moreover, MDA displays one remarkable property that is not found in other forms of ice. Using calorimetry, they found that when MDA recrystallises to ordinary ice it releases an extraordinary amount of heat. ̽��ֱ��heat released from the recrystallization of MDA could play a role in activating tectonic motions. More broadly, this discovery shows water can be a high-energy geophysical material.

Professor Angelos Michaelides, lead author from Cambridge's Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, said: “Amorphous ice in general is said to be the most abundant form of water in the universe. ̽��ֱ��race is now on to understand how much of it is MDA and how geophysically active MDA is.”

Reference:
Alexander Rosu-Finsen et al. 'Medium-density amorphous ice.' Science (2023). DOI: 10.1126/science.abq2105

A collaboration between scientists at Cambridge and UCL has led to the discovery of a new form of ice that more closely resembles liquid water than any other and may hold the key to understanding this most famous of liquids.

Our discovery of MDA raises many questions on the very nature of liquid water and so understanding MDA’s precise atomic structure is very important

Michael Davies

Christoph Salzmann

Part of the set-up for creating medium-density amorphous ice: ordinary ice and steel balls in a jar (not amorphous ice)

Yes

Liquid water beneath Martian polar ice cap

sc604 — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 14:38:08 +0000

An international team of researchers has revealed new evidence for the possible existence of liquid water beneath the south polar ice cap of Mars.

New phases of water detected

sc604 — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 15:27:56 +0000

Scientists at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have discovered that water in a one-molecule layer acts like neither a liquid nor a solid, and that it becomes highly conductive at high pressures.

Much is known about how ‘bulk water’ behaves: it expands when it freezes, and it has a high boiling point. But when water is compressed to the nanoscale, its properties change dramatically.

By developing a new way to predict this unusual behaviour with unprecedented accuracy, the researchers have detected several new phases of water at the molecular level.

Water trapped between membranes or in tiny nanoscale cavities is common – it can be found in everything from membranes in our bodies to geological formations. But this nanoconfined water behaves very differently from the water we drink.

Until now, the challenges of experimentally characterising the phases of water on the nanoscale have prevented a full understanding of its behaviour. But in a paper published in the journal Nature, the Cambridge-led team describe how they have used advances in computational approaches to predict the phase diagram of a one-molecule thick layer of water with unprecedented accuracy.

They used a combination of computational approaches to enable the first-principles level investigation of a single layer of water.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that water which is confined into a one-molecule thick layer goes through several phases, including a ‘hexatic’ phase and a ‘superionic’ phase. In the hexatic phase, the water acts as neither a solid nor a liquid, but something in between. In the superionic phase, which occurs at higher pressures, the water becomes highly conductive, propelling protons quickly through ice in a way resembling the flow of electrons in a conductor.

Understanding the behaviour of water at the nanoscale is critical to many new technologies. ̽��ֱ��success of medical treatments can be reliant on how water trapped in small cavities in our bodies will react. ̽��ֱ��development of highly conductive electrolytes for batteries, water desalination, and the frictionless transport of fluids are all reliant on predicting how confined water will behave.

“For all of these areas, understanding the behaviour of water is the foundational question,” said Dr Venkat Kapil from Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, the paper’s first author. “Our approach allows the study of a single layer of water in a graphene-like channel with unprecedented predictive accuracy.”

̽��ֱ��researchers found that the one-molecule thick layer of water within the nanochannel showed rich and diverse phase behaviour. Their approach predicts several phases which include the hexatic phase--an intermediate between a solid and a liquid--and also a superionic phase, in which the water has a high electrical conductivity.

“ ̽��ֱ��hexatic phase is neither a solid nor a liquid, but an intermediate, which agrees with previous theories about two-dimensional materials,” said Kapil. “Our approach also suggests that this phase can be seen experimentally by confining water in a graphene channel.

“ ̽��ֱ��existence of the superionic phase at easily accessible conditions is peculiar, as this phase is generally found in extreme conditions like the core of Uranus and Neptune. One way to visualise this phase is that the oxygen atoms form a solid lattice, and protons flow like a liquid through the lattice, like kids running through a maze.”

̽��ֱ��researchers say this superionic phase could be important for future electrolyte and battery materials as it shows an electrical conductivity 100 to 1,000 times higher than current battery materials.

̽��ֱ��results will not only help with understanding how water works at the nanoscale, but also suggest that ‘nanoconfinement’ could be a new route into finding superionic behaviour of other materials.

Dr Venkat Kapil is a Junior Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��research team included Dr Christoph Schran and Professor Angelos Michaelides from the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry ICE group, working with Professor Chris Pickard at the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy, Dr Andrea Zen from the ̽��ֱ�� of Naples Federico II and Dr Ji Chen from Peking ̽��ֱ��.

Reference:
Angelos Michaelides et al. ‘ ̽��ֱ��first-principles phase diagram of monolayer nanoconfined water.’ Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05036-x

Water can be liquid, gas or ice, right? Think again.

One way to visualise this phase is that the oxygen atoms form a solid lattice, and protons flow like a liquid through the lattice, like kids running through a maze

Venkat Kapil

Daniel Sonoca via Unsplash

Water

Yes