Wax, wood and CO2
63 Degrees North15 Nov 2022

Wax, wood and CO2

Three tons of wax. A 4-story office building made almost entirely of wood. And putting CO2 to work instead of letting it heat up the planet: Scientists and engineers across the globe are harnessing unlikely materials to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Today's show looks at how a zero-emissions office building combines integrated solar panels, heat pumps and a huge vat of wax to heat and power the structure, with enough left over to sell. We'll also look at highly efficient heat pumps using CO2 as the stuff inside that makes it work. They're spreading worldwide, and can be found everywhere from inside your Volkswagen ID electric car to the Large Hadron Collider. And also — at a hotel in Hell, Norway, where electricity use was cut by 70 per cent — without making a pact with the devil!

Our guests on today's show are Tore Kvande and Armin Hafner.

There's a video on Professor Hafner's work at CERN here, and more about CoolCERN, here.

Find a related podcast episode here.

Read more:

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episoder(35)

Cathedral at the end of the world

Cathedral at the end of the world

Nobelmen and women, in fancy clothing and pearls – but with dragon wings and tails. A laughing man with a full head of curly hair. Lions biting the ears off a man whose mouth is full of writhing serpe...

8 Aug 202425min

ENCORE: Hermann Göring's Luftwaffe and the $6 billion deal

ENCORE: Hermann Göring's Luftwaffe and the $6 billion deal

This episode was originally aired on March 16, 2021. Norway doesn't seem like a natural place for the aluminium industry to blossom. But somehow, it did – due in part to the unlikely combination of WW...

25 Jul 202429min

ENCORE: Old bones and modern germs

ENCORE: Old bones and modern germs

This episode originally aired on Feb. 16, 2022.Trondheim, Norway’s first religious and national capital, has a rich history that has been revealed over decades of archaeological excavations. One ques...

26 Jun 202426min

ENCORE: Shedding light on the polar night

ENCORE: Shedding light on the polar night

This episode originally aired on January 27, 2021.Krill eyeballs. The werewolf effect. Diel vertical migration. Arctic marine biologists really talk about these things. There’s a reason for that — whe...

31 Mai 202424min

Strange bedfellows: Howard Hughes, a $2 billion ship and a lost Soviet submarine

Strange bedfellows: Howard Hughes, a $2 billion ship and a lost Soviet submarine

It's 1968 and a Soviet sub carrying nuclear warheads has gone missing – lost, with all hands. The Soviets never found it – but the Americans did – in nearly 5000 meters of water.What follows is the st...

21 Mar 202418min

Seabed mining – savior or scourge?

Seabed mining – savior or scourge?

Norway's Mid-Arctic Ocean Ridge is alive with underwater volcanic activity – where big towers called black smokers spew mineral-laden boiling hot water into the ocean. The minerals precipitate out, an...

6 Feb 202428min

Report from Dubai

Report from Dubai

Our guest on today's show is Anders Hammer Strømman, one of the lead authors for the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on mitigation of climate change, released in April 2022. He w...

13 Des 202312min

When trees talk

When trees talk

In their careful records of climate change over the centuries — and millennia — trees offer a kind of crystal ball on the past. But they can also help researchers figure out everything from what happe...

1 Nov 202329min

Populært innen Vitenskap

fastlegen
tingenes-tilstand
rekommandert
jss
liberal-halvtime
rss-rekommandert
sinnsyn
forskningno
villmarksliv
rss-paradigmepodden
fjellsportpodden
dekodet-2
pod-britannia
rss-overskuddsliv
tidlose-historier
hva-er-greia-med
tomprat-med-gunnar-tjomlid
katastrofe-i-hjernen
rss-lundqvist-podden
rss-nysgjerrige-norge