literature invites us to see people in particular. i like to see myself as the kids find. my own objective is to work and find. the books on you to. sound and you think there's more than enough of it out there for anything. but deserts is totally unsuited for construction the sector that uses most of this bull material. and that's not because the grains are too rounded scientists now say but because they too by. the immaterial is essential

to our everyday lives and the focus on tomorrow today this week. here's what's coming up. many cars have astounding characteristics some for example absolute metals from soon. researchers are working on organic mining systems. wind turbines and many other high tech products require other valuable role materials the rare earths until now they've been hard to recycle now scientists are developing new ways to recover them. and we need to research this have a smart idea she wants to make nylon out of chicory roots instead of the petroleum that's normally used in the manufacture of products like pantyhose. welcome to tomorrow today.

you know should human nature can do it it. can chameleon sinensis. and selena voulgaris can do it as well all of these plants are what are known as hyper accumulated. they take up heavy metals like lead and cadmium from the soil and store them in the tissues so why not take advantage of that ability then harvest the metals along with the plants a species called yellow tuft has a taste for nickel and in albania people and nature are starting to benefit from that preference. albania's mountainous eastern border on the banks of lake or it is one of the poorest regions in europe. there's almost no industry here unemployment levels are high even farming is not really an option because the ground is full of heavy metals a naturally occurring phenomenon. but there's one

thing that grows everywhere here. yellow tufts of diesel for centuries this humble plant. it's useless to the farmers just the wheat but now it's the big hope for a better future. leave them a bone they don't want to be in the past we tried growing corn here we had we seen stew but it just wasn't profitable really. so we simply stopped farming the land. is one of them as you can see many had tears of land. and. instead the farmers are working with the elisa the plant is what's known as a nickel hyper accumulator which means it draws nickel out of the ground the farmers can then sell the metal and in 20 years the nickel levels in the ground could be depleted enough to allow food crops to grow. agricultural scientist.

is heading up the project he uses a hand-held x. ray unit to see how the crop is doing i'm checking the nickel content in different plant pots and the most interesting part is the leaves so the leaf has between one percent and 2 percent nickel. the harvest is a success the plants are left out in the fields for a few days to dry in the sun. this process of using a least some plans to extract metal from the ground is known as fight or mining. later the dried plants will be transported to friends who are scientists will extract the nickel from them incidentally yellow tough to the some is officially labeled as a medicinal herb for export purposes as e.u. customs forms don't get have an entry for nickel plants.

the french university city of known c. has become a center for research into fido mining in recent years at a lab on the edge of the city beyond his team set out to work on the harvest from albania. the ground up plants are placed into an oven to be burned. this not only allows the nickel to be extracted from the plants it also provides he. heating for the research station. we can burn as much as 50 kilograms of biomass per day of course in that case it is even more than what the building needs for heating. the nickel is then left in the ash now in a much higher concentration than it was in the plant. is our end product which is the bio or the this is

a bag of let's say approximately 5 kilograms of ash and this contains almost one kilogram of nickel. the ash is then taken to a laboratory at known sees university of luvin with a nickel can be extracted the scientists are not aiming for pure nickel as that wouldn't be financially viable instead they produced nickel salts which sell better . listen than you can so producing on other people to clinical salts are used in industry for treating surfaces for example in the aviation and automotive industries metal components are basically dipped into a nickel based bath to protect them from corrosion or soon put extolled what i call holes you. who think of these look we can also produce special nickel oxides that are then used in paints and dyes for ceramics glass artworks or for coating the lenses of

glasses. that. the scientists unknown see are also working to optimize the way hyper accumulators are planted here they're testing how the roots of at least some grow best one way is to put them together with other plants that loosen the soil structure and this allows the roots of the at least some to penetrate down into deeper layers of soil so that they can draw in the nickel there to. the scientists have also learned that certain bacteria in the soil facilitate the plant's absorption of metals. in another laboratory at the university biologist 17 lopez has been studying these bacteria.

they're found directly around the roots of hyper accumulator plants we 1st isolate the bacteria and then study their activities these activities can be advantageous to the plant improving its growth or mobilizing the metals in the soil allowing the plants to absorb them better. the scientists are still only in the early stages of their research but soon these bacteria could help to further improve the metal yield. in albania farmers are already reaping the benefits of the research project it's helping them to earn money while at the same time improving the soil. with all the farmers welcome to this project it's a great opportunity for them especially if the project gets subsidies or is expanded the people here are really interested because for the forseeable future

it's the only way for the owners of land here to generate income and i think that our children will continue with us it's our only chance. once considered a wheat the yellow tuft of the sum now offers a brighter future for this impoverished region and perhaps it could provide a model for other infertile areas with metal rich soil. many plants are in. mazing some provide a dependable supply for classical material good but what role materials exactly then materials that are taken from nature that can be processed industrially rabbit is one for example as of things like coal oil and various types of or. mineral deposits often contain vole materials known as rare earths the key elements in many high tech products scientists in germany are looking at how to ensure

a steady supply. are w t h is the largest technical university and germany. scientists here are trying to find a solution to a global problem how to ensure the supply of rare earth they're using a common kitchen appliance to investigate alternate methods for industrial production. most rare earth metals are imported from china but they're needed around the world. they're in the magnets in your hard drive and in electric motors especially wind turbines. down fleet is director of the metallurgy department at austin he and his team are developing ways to recycle rare earth and to obtain them from new sources economic considerations also play a role. of can we produce our own rare earths independent of china of changing 90 or 95 percent of all rare earth metals from

a single country is not an acceptable situation. to to a. rare earth deposits are not necessarily all that rare they're found on all continents not just in china you delight or is found in large quantities in sweden and greenland for example and could be a good source for rare earth elements but extracting them isn't easy. stuff is only what's interesting about this process is that we're trying to find alternative sources of rare earths in europe those sources have advantages and disadvantages the u.t.i. like we have in europe has a major disadvantage it has to be pre-processed which isn't the case with conventional sources it's using a conventional process the polarized or would come together that's why it's 1st treated with or hydrochloric acid it's expensive but can be used on a large scale. recycling could also be another viable solution for ending the near

monopoly on the global production of rare earth wind turbines electric motors and hard drives contain these metals in large quantities. we were investigating new recycling processes and alternatives here at the institute both experimentally and fear radically we want to be prepared should the need arise . it seems like that might happen if china were to suddenly limit the export of rare earths here at the institute shredded magnets from hard drives are being melted down it's the 1st step in a special recycling process when heated to more than a 1000 degrees celcius electricity is applied the metal separate that makes it possible to extract a rare earth like neodymium from industrial permanent magnets but it's a complex process. the problem isn't obtaining the hard drives but processing them everything has to be shredded and

broken down improperly sorted then we can work with that duncanville if they're good at all but. recycling sounds like it would be environmentally friendly but the process typically releases hydrogen fluoride compounds and lots of carbon dioxide. the scientists use a workaround substituting are gone for oxygen argon gas inhibits the toxic chemical reactions the final product is neodymium that's ready for industrial use so far most magnetic recycling on an industrial scale has been done in china even though europe also generates several 1000 tons of the raw material every year. we really be sending all our magnetic scrap there or do we want to figure a way of doing this in europe. for europe and germany this near monopoly could backfire in the event of a trade war or other crisis. and his strategy is not only to

sell rare earth metals and alloys the raw materials they'd like to export the end product the electric motors that would have a serious impact on the automotive industry is in other countries the motor is the crucial component in electric vehicles if manufacturers import lect motors all that know how would vanish that would be a serious risk for our domestic automotive industry which is a mainstay of the german economy so it's a major consideration as. recycling rare earths and sourcing them from or is in europe could provide enough of the raw materials to last for generations. the researchers from us and have shown that you would see a light or could be a very abundant source. for that though it would need to be mined on an industrial scale. humanity's

hunger for all materials is not restricted to. asteroids can also hold high concentrations of precious metals or even read earth's. that's why mining them is high on agendas at national space agencies. here on earth there was still many untapped deposits of raw materials in the arctic the race is on to exploit the region's oil and gas reserves and in the ocean depths life valuable not made of manganese but bringing them up is no easy task. researchers from germany's federal institute. 4 geosciences and natural resources are hoping to find treasures on the ocean floor using this device. on top of the device is lowered for 4 kilometers until it reaches the ocean floor where it deploys a probe into the seabed it's open at the bottom and penetrates about 40 to 50

centimeters deep into the sediment then this flap closes and it's hauled back to the surface the whole procedure takes about an hour and a half. time and again they set out on the pacific to discover just how many natural resources can be found on the seabed they're looking for pieces of rock called manganese nodules they don't only contain the trace mineral manganese but also other valuable metals such as cobalt essential for the lithium ion batteries in electric cars and smartphones. since 2006 german scientists have been exploring 2 sections of an area between hawaii and mexico. and it's important for countries with few natural resources like germany and south korea to stand on their own 2 feet and not have to rely on imports from perhaps politically unstable countries like the congo. in addition the seabed nodules

contain more valuable metals than many soils on land and there are a lot of them. on 4 percent of the german seabed alone there are enough manganese nodules for 20 years of mining of attentional gold mine but also the habitat of many organisms that were previously unknown and scientists want to discover more about them too would mining for manganese nodules drive away these organisms for good. as. some organisms would return but not in the same proportion and some organisms couldn't come back common couldn't it would take generations or even centuries. for an ecosystem like this could recover and regain stability. touch. as of yet there is no suitable a quickness with which companies could mine manganese nodules this prototype device is supposed to suck up the nodules together with the sediment. but in

a deep sea test run in spring it failed to work. i believe it will take at least another 10 years the technical equipment for the mining and the metallurgical processing has to be developed and that will take time on its site the researchers plan further tests on their next pacific expedition they want to see how much the devices would disrupt the ocean floor and how deep seeded weller's react when humans come to extract those hidden treasures. salt is an abundant war material here on earth industry couldn't do without. it can be combined with a line to produce in a trunk a compound commonly used in washing and cleaning agents as well as dye all even. the material that we want to talk about now. this week's question was sent in by

a viewer from iraq. why does glass shatter. let's 1st take a look at how this transparent material is made. the usual ingredients for commercial glass are sounds of soda ash lime and often recycled glass it's all crushed together and melted but well over a 1000 degrees celcius. when the molten mass cools it undergoes a transformation into a tough but amorphous solid meaning it could be shaped into everything from bottles and drinking glasses to window panes. while other solids like metals may be pliable and flexible glass is hardened brittle. when it's put under too much pressure it doesn't deform it breaks. and for that reason it rarely survives a fall. just. or a big temperature difference between say ice cold water and a hot glass bottle while filling a cold glass with boiling water is likewise not

a great idea. unlike metals glass is a poor conductor of heat. so if you pour cold water into a hot glass the inside surface of the glass contracts. but the outside remains warmer creating a strain inside the material small fracture. as for months spread causing the glass to break. glass can also be shattered by sound when of the right frequency the sound has to be very loud and sustained over this to work. when it is the glass begins to oscillate rather like this bridge and that can result in what's

called a resonance disaster finally oscillation and causing the glass to break. the glass will also break more easily if it has a flaw such as a tiny fracture or material weakness. and if that doesn't work. there's always this option. the problem is right why are you. so you have the science question let us know via video text you know if we showcase your question on the program we'll sing you a little surprise as a thank you. go on just ask. and if you just can't get enough from the world of science and research head for our website overset us on twitter or facebook. oil is a very versatile role material. it can be burned to provide energy but it also

supplies the basic chemical building blocks used to produce conventional plastics almost 2 and a half liters of oil go into an average t.v. set for example producing a toothbrush consumes 2 tenths of a liter the packaging for a sausage contains just a little less. nylon products also based on petroleum could it be replaced in the future by vegetables. and dry or chicory is an alternative. raw material with great potential. believe a vegetable is rich in vitamins and minerals. but researchers are more interested in its roots. typically either tossed into the garbage or sent to a bio gas plant. but professor on to be a cool from the university of hohenheim as far different plans for the plants.

they contain a substance that she needs for her research. this is the part you can eat the vegetable. is the root. the root contains a substance for storing glycogen cellulose and starch which we can turn into a base chemical compound for things like nylon pantyhose or bottles. of thank you floss in my. chicory roots are too bitter to eat apart from fermenting bio gas not much else can be done with them but that makes them ideal for on and her project. is looking as this is really the 1st time we've been able to produce the space chemical compounds from chicory roots or other waste substances yes. this is the that's what's special. these upset compound hydroxy methyl for for all it's already commercially available but made using sugar in

a rather dirty process we have a clean process and we're using something that isn't a food stuff which is important to us. in her university lab kusa spent over 5 years trying to find a suitable raw material. chicory is ideal because a substance forms in the root from which they can extract a basic chemical building block simply by boiling it. the chemical is used to obtain additional. substances which are used to make nylon . kusa says it's a real alternative to crude petroleum based plastics because 500000 tons of chicory waste are produced every year in europe alone enough to manufacture 3000000000

pairs of pantyhose. this is clamped as we know that oil is a finite commodity that it will run out one day and of course there's also the c o 2 problem to deal with problematic when we use crude oil we also burn it in some form to break it down so to speak. in a form that produces carbon dioxide. and by when you use biomass however while it also releases c o 2 into the atmosphere it's exactly the same amount the plants absorbed when they grow box itself name until they are cool the hopes that one day pantyhose and plastics will be made from chicory roots but you'll need more funding to make her project marketable. that's all we have time for this week but join us again next time to learn exactly what this robot is doing and why spoiler alert it's not about learning to knit.

thanks for watching and see you then on tomorrow today.

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. this is the w. news these are our top story is former austrian chancellor sebastian kurtz is poised to return to power after his people's party won snap elections but he'll have to find a coalition partner the vote was held after a corruption scandal involving the far right freedom party triggered the collapse of kurtz's governing.