hlieberman
15 hours ago
It's a concrete that: 1) breaks down in water in a day(!), and 2) has a "5 times higher impact on human health and 3 times higher impact on eco-toxicity as compared to concrete.".
Cool research, but I'll pass on using it.
klysm
15 hours ago
Having 'negative' results like this published is so good though because then it's harder to scam people with this idea in the future.
candiddevmike
12 hours ago
Why do we still use corn based ethanol?
pinkmuffinere
11 hours ago
I can't speak _specifically_ to ethanol, but there are good reasons for the US to provide various subsidies to farms. A visceral example -- if there is a large "world war III" and the US doesn't have a strong Agricultural sector, we could be screwed. It is worth keeping domestic agriculture strong, to hedge against the case where we can't buy produce from other countries. I suspect ethanol is a subset of this general approach. Worth noting I'm no expert, this is just my extremely layman understanding.
some more discussion on this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_policy_of_the_Uni...
ecshafer
12 hours ago
As far as i know, ethanol and all biofuels are/were a dead end. They were used purely for farmer subsidies and the energy independence was an excuse.
starspangled
11 hours ago
Trust the government and their experts though.
robterrell
10 hours ago
Literally a report from government experts:
"It is important to note that biofuel production and consumption, in and of itself, will not reduce GHG or conventional pollutant emissions, lessen petroleum imports, or alleviate pressure on exhaustible resources."
starspangled
10 hours ago
Which makes it even more ridiculous that governments subsidize ethanol for fuel.
_heimdall
7 hours ago
Its only ridiculous if you view it as a subsidy for ethanol fuel rather than a subsidy for the corn industry. All the government is doing there is creating a market where one wouldn't otherwise exist.
animal_spirits
5 hours ago
what is the source?
jstummbillig
4 hours ago
Googling the exact quote: https://www.epa.gov/environmental-economics/economics-biofue...
jollyllama
10 hours ago
Because the Iowa caucus is the first Presidential primary and it gets old gas cars off the road quicker by gunking up their fuel systems, allowing manufacturers to sell newer vehicles.
adrianN
5 hours ago
I don’t think any gas engine built in the last twenty to thirty years has problems with 10% ethanol.
palmfacehn
4 hours ago
Agreed. How many any automobiles older than that are not already in need of new hoses and gaskets?
Spivak
10 hours ago
I mean the subsidies exist regardless of what the corn is used for and the rural folks are the most angry about ethanol in their fuel. I'm not sure this explanation lines up all the way.
Out in the country is the only place I can still find 100% gasoline.
MBCook
8 hours ago
It’s a lot harder to justify subsidies if the corn was just rotting in the field.
But mandating a certain percentage of ethanol ensures a minimum level of demand, preventing that problem.
_heimdall
7 hours ago
The irony there is that most of the government subsidies and crop insurance programs come with stipulations related to how the crops are used. The last two years corn farmers in my area have had a hell if a time with drought. The corn ends up rotting in the field specifically because they can't claim insurance or get government assistance if they find another use for the corn, even if the other use only pays a fraction of what a full harvest would have yielded.
3eb7988a1663
12 hours ago
Nobody is willing to upset farmers.
_heimdall
7 hours ago
Nobody is willing to upset massive industrial farmers. Small farmers and homesteaders are regularly upset by the government.
If I want to sell you raw milk from a cow on my pasture it can only be for non-human consumption. If I want to sell you beef you either have to buy 1/4 or more of the animal before its processed or I have to load it onto a trailer and allow a state or USDA facility process it, leaving me with lovely packaged cuts that have a high level of stress hormones and was sprayed down with bleach.
Spivak
10 hours ago
I think this take is pretty funny because it's in instance where our elected officials are responding directly to the will of the votes that actually matter. Which is pretty refreshing compared to listening to the campaign donations that matter.
I want more of this kind of thing, not less. Politicians should be scared to piss lots of different voting blocs off. The way we do democracy is terrible at rewarding politicians for enacting (roughly) the will of the people.
hypercube33
11 hours ago
I think this is off topic and I'm not the expert but it's a relatively reliable and established process that replaced lead in gasoline. I did some quick digging and didn't turn up any research of an alternative to ethanol for anti knock so perhaps this is why.
MBCook
8 hours ago
Ethanol free lead free gasoline works just fine. Some stations sell it. It just costs more because the ethanol is subsidized.
Cars don’t need ethanol. In fact they don’t like it. It causes problems for older cars, the auto industry had to adjust things to be able to survive a certain percent ethanol without damage.
ahartmetz
4 hours ago
Ethanol breaks down or degrades certain polymers (formerly) used in fuel systems. But in the actual engine, it's fine: it has lower energy content but a very high octane rating compared to other constituents of gasoline.
mythas
15 hours ago
Yeah when the CORN-FREAKING-CRETE skyscraper crowd funding video comes out we can all be more skeptical than we were for SOLAR-FREAKING-ROADWAYS.
disillusioned
12 hours ago
Sweet jesus was anything stupider than the solar roadways idea? "Let's take a technology that can easily be aggregated in appropriate, economies-of-scale implementations and _distribute them_ and require them to be extraordinarily more durable while running voltage through a surface that's being contacted by random people thousands of times a day, with the miles and miles of additional distributed infrastructure necessary to boot!"
ben_w
3 hours ago
Loads of things are stupider in that sense and actually done.
They're a bad fit in practice on basically every count, but the idea was interesting enough to pass the elevator pitch sniff test. Ruggidised PV as footpaths might not even suck, though I suspect even then they'd be better as roofing over footpaths rather underfoot.
HideousKojima
7 hours ago
My favorite part about the video was them talking about how much square footage roads take up and how that space could be used for solar panels, while showing footage of vast fields of open land right next to a road.
ben_w
3 hours ago
Given how often I still see people dunking on PV due to the land usage, I unironically think that's one of the better points.
Yes, I know there's plenty of better land, but comparing the scale needed to something we've already got likely helps change people's minds about the practicality of PV.
szvsw
15 hours ago
Alternatively, some other researcher can say “cool, some problems I can try to address with future work!”
Or it can go by the wayside. Both outcomes are fine. But no need to pre-emptively dismiss something that is obviously not being pitched as a production-ready building material…
Animats
15 hours ago
This is much like staff.[1] Staff is a kind of cheap artificial stone, made from gypsum, cement, dextrin, and glycerin, with some long plant fibers for tensile strength. It was used for temporary exhibition buildings for various fairs a century ago. The Palace of Fine Arts colonnade in San Francisco, built for a 1915 fair, was originally made from staff. By the 1960s, it was a ruin. The current version is a full rebuild from 1974 in more durable materials.
There are more promising bio-materials for construction.
Attempts have been made to make boards from bagasse, the leftover fiber from sugar cane processing. It works, more or less. The most useful application for bagasse is making clamshell containers and plates for fast food. It's cheap, biodegradable, and non-toxic.
Cthulhu_
14 hours ago
They're building tall buildings out of "wood" nowadays, but it's so processed, sliced up, layered and laminated, and pumped full of epoxies that it's really more down to aesthetics than any environmental benefit; that is, effort / energy investment is high to the point where it's probably cheaper to make steel, and they're not biodegradeable.
bobthepanda
13 hours ago
There’s still some environmental benefit; wood is so much lighter than concrete or metal as a rule, that you end up needing not only less material in general but also less material in the structure because the frame weighs less and needs less support, not to mention general carbon savings from transportation of heavy material.
It’s also a major time saver since unlike concrete it doesn’t need to set, and the products are basically manufactured panels that don’t need specialized workers to install.
skybrian
14 hours ago
That seems rather long-lasting for a temporary building. I wonder what other buildings should be temporary?
Animats
13 hours ago
> That seems rather long-lasting for a temporary building.
By 1964, not much of the colonnade was still standing. This was all that was left.[1] What you see today is a full rebuild.
[1] https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Dramatic-Palace-of-Fi...
yunohn
14 hours ago
Sometimes I wonder if buildings really should last hundreds of years taking up that space. Similar to how laws last almost forever and lead to byzantine requirements and tricky interpretations.
Would be interesting if transient infrastructure and time-limited laws would lead to a more beneficial way of living.
Cthulhu_
14 hours ago
Japanese buildings are designed to last about 50 years iirc, after which they're demolished. Temples are rebuilt every X years as well. The building materials, at least in those temples, are mostly natural (wood, mostly cleverly jointed so minimal metal required). IDK if they're still popular but the tatami mat is made out of rice straw, also fully biodegradeable (assuming the stitching isn't plastic).
adrianN
2 hours ago
AFAIK clever wood joinery is so niche nowadays that it’s really hard to find people who can still build like that.
theultdev
13 hours ago
Japan is not in the same era as what you're describing.
There are many modern buildings that are built the same way as other modern cities and designed to last.
They have very modern infrastructure, and while what you're describing does exist, but is by no means the norm nowadays.
Tanoc
8 hours ago
If buildings could be more easily repurposed this wouldn't even really be a question that needs to be asked. Throughout most of human history larger buildings were repurposed instead of being destroyed, because there wasn't an illusion of limitless materials and labour. The proliferation of specialized buildings after the late 1800s because of that illusion rising, especially for commercial interests, is one half of a problem. The other being regulations written for those specialized buildings that provide little or no possibility of being repurposed.
For example old roadside motels from the '50s and '60s could easily be remade into dorm style apartments with micro kitchens supplemented by communal bathrooms, but laws, especially hygiene and fire codes, currently prevent that. Those motels are built of sturdier materials than many modern homes, and only need to be refitted with fire suppression systems and heat pumps to be cheap housing.
Making temporary housing is just creating a new problem rather than solving an existing one.
yunohn
5 hours ago
I really wasn’t focusing on the USA and its red-tape zoning and refurb laws. For example in the EU, lots of cities have 1-3 city halls at this point. The older ones are often repurposed into government offices or museums.
But what if they disappeared entirely and we built something new in its place? What if the entire block was completely transformed at some point?
Keysh
an hour ago
Well, that happened with some European cities as a result of WW2.
I remember a celebration in the late 1980s for a retiring British architect/art historian, who reminisced about being an architecture student during the Blitz in London. While he and his pals sheltered underground during the bombing, they shared a (slightly shameful) excitement about the prospect of rebuilding London with "something new" after the war was over.
In contrast to some European cities, where the goal was to recreate as much of the pre-war architecture as possible, postwar London was, as I understand it, rebuilt with lots of new architecture. My impression is that most people think a lot of it was pretty terrible.
jedimastert
14 hours ago
The question then becomes how do you make a building degrade in a way that isn't dangerous to the occupants? When a building does degrade, it takes more energy to remove the debris and build a new structure. Can that be minimized as well? This isn't to say I'm against the idea, just thinking out loud
yunohn
14 hours ago
I was thinking less about potential energy usage / emissions, so that’s a good point. Probably solvable like the sibling comment about Japan.
I was philosophizing more about changing the way we enforce permanency of decisions taken by humans who lived before on everyone who comes after them.
Animats
11 hours ago
No, just slums.
yunohn
5 hours ago
Thanks for contributing nothing of importance to the discussion on this thread.
adrian_b
5 hours ago
There has been another thread on HN, with a research starting from this, which has developed a concrete suitable for use on Moon or on Mars, where there is no danger of it being broken down by water and where its production would be simplified by this choice, because starch must be produced anyway for food, so making concrete does not require additional production facilities.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41751122
Therefore even research results that do not seem useful in normal conditions may find some circumstances where their use becomes preferable.