Prediction: Some time this year, people will stop referring to the year as "two-thousand-"something and start calling it "twenty-."

Prediction 2: That will not be the only thing that changes.

In 1899, Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office, wrote a letter to President McKinley stating that everything that can be invented already had been. The sentiment was predicated on the unprecedented technology leap that had occurred in the 19th century, and the apparent slowing down of innovation. By 1920, that sentiment looked pretty silly. A century later, it seems ludicrous.

Yet a hundred years after progress supposedly died on the eve of the Progressive Era, again a sense has crept into the American public that all of the big discoveries have been made, that our biggest technological dreams will be forever 40 years away, that companies have forgone R&D and are focused solely on survival.

It would be equally untrue.

It has been said that the environmental market is driven by regulations, which is true, but not the whole story. Congress and the White House could create all the regulations in the world, and it would do little for the environment without the technological advances required to achieve those goals.

Some of the following technologies that will hit the market or be developed this year are directed at meeting upcoming regulatory challenges, particularly greenhouse gas (GHG) control. For many of these advances, however, improving current environmental practices was impetus enough. Some are ready to hit the market, or have already, while others are still far from complete realization. All of them started simply as ideas and now march toward practical application. They are not the absolute top ten – such a list would be impossible to create with any honesty. But they are all good examples of what is likely to be accomplished as the environmental industry enters the "Twenty-Teens."

10. Cleaner-burning gasoline

The biggest problem – pollution-wise – with gasoline is not that it generates a lot of CO₂ when burned, but that its refining process generates more dire pollutants, and also leaves some of those pollutants in the final product, reducing fuel efficiency and contributing to air pollution. Researchers at Wayne State University in Detroit are testing the potential of metal phosphides as catalysts in the refining process. Their goal is to remove more sulfur from crude oil than is possible with current methods. If successful, the research could lead to gasoline that releases lower quantities of SO₂ and NO_X. Since those pollutants cannot be controlled at the tailpipe, reducing their presence in fuel could go a long way toward helping the U.S. meet EPA mandates for lower emissions of both gases.

9. Hydrogeologic simulation

Controlling water pollution is not easy, since wastewater tends to find all sorts of interesting ways of trickling into things it shouldn't. More precise (and less expensive) modeling of groundwater flows could be a major step toward easing the wastewater burden for some companies, and on the flip side, noticing unforeseen dangers. Schlumberger Water Services of Waterloo, Ontario, recently launched its simulator-independent conceptual modeling environmental software, which the company calls Hydro Geobuilder. Compatible with U.S. Geological Services' Visual Modflow modeling code, the software can build and evaluate groundwater flow models independently from the grid or mesh. It cannot replace numerical models yet, but it can give a valuable second opinion. Who knows: maybe one day calculating groundwater flows may be as simple as inputting GIS data.

8. New ingredients for fusion: ice, coconuts, very big laser

Major advancements have been made in fusion science and in the next decade, could see another big leap. In France, ITER, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, will go online in 2018. The reactor, which should reach 150 million Kelvin (the sun's core is about 15 million Kelvin), comes with a galactic-strength cooling system, and a cleaning system that uses coconut charcoal as its super-adsorbent. Edge localization modes (ELMs – basically miniature solar flares) possibly could be controlled by regularly spitting ice pellets (of frozen deuterium) at the plasma.

Meanwhile, the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, along with affiliated labs such as the home of nukes in Los Alamos, say they are a $3.5 billion laser away from fusion ignition. The laser smash theory for creating controlled fusion has been around for a long time, but until the Californians came along, a laser of the required size had only been imagined, not designed.

7. Energy from biosolids

Qteros of Marlborough, Mass., and Israeli company Applied CleanTech have commercialized a process that the companies say can turn biomass such as municipal biosolids into cellulosic ethanol. The system uses biosolids (called Recyllose) produced from the Israeli process. The process is particularly useful for ethanol production because it ends up with a low-lignin sludge. The companies estimate that one ton of biosolids could produce 120 to 135 gallons of ethanol. Using those numbers, and guessing about 30 million gallons per year of ethanol would be required to achieve profitability, the system could likely be cost-efficient for any municipal wastewater treatment plant that produces over a 250,000 tons of sludge per year (about a 200 MGD plant). Visit www.qteros.com and www.appliedcleantech.com for more information.

6. Running on waste

Meanwhile, Moinuddin Sarker, Ph.D., MCIC, and vice president of Research & Development for Natural State Research Inc., Stamford, Conn., has discovered a formula to make liquid fuel from waste plastic. In the conversion process, almost 100 percent of the plastics turned into liquid fuel for any internal combustion engines. The company is looking for a partner to franchise its technology. For more information about the project, contact Sarker at msarker@naturalstateresearch.com, or visit www.naturalstateresearch.com.

And in Napa Valley, they may not be able to turn water into wine, but researchers visiting from Pennsylvania State University in State College are already turning wine wastewater into hydrogen fuel. A refrigerator-sized generator takes waste from the Napa Wine Company in Oakville, Calif., and feeds it to microbes. With the aid of a little electricity, these naturally occurring bacteria break the organic material to release hydrogen gas. While the generator is still being tweaked, and has not yet reached its goal of one liter of hydrogen per liter of reactor, Penn State environmental engineer Bruce Logan believes the winery eventually could use the hydrogen to run its vehicles and power systems.

5. A fine mesh to be in

The EPA is considering a technology requirement to retrofit fine-mesh (2.0 millimeter) screens at all applicable facilities as a central feature of a revised Phase II Rule. There are numerous U.S. power plants operating with fine-mesh screens but none is located along waterways with heavy sediment and debris loads commonly found in Midwestern rivers, particularly the Missouri River and its tributaries.

Last September, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) announced that it has secured a test site (Kansas City's Hawthorn Station) to evaluate fine-mesh screen performance on power plant cooling water intake structures. The screens are a key technology that the EPA is considering as a way to protect fish and other species living near the structures.

The testing is part of a new research project to evaluate fine-mesh screen performance in sediment and debris-laden rivers. Data generated from the fine-mesh screen testing is expected to provide critically important information to the EPA to revise the Clean Water Act §316(b) Phase II Rule. The rule may require the use of screening technologies for fish and shellfish protection on cooling water intake structures, and would apply to power plants using once-through cooling at more than 50 million MGD of water. A new draft version for public review and comment is expected in mid-2010.

4. Algae-braic, my Dear Watson

One of nature's favorite energy sources may be the key to human energy needs. A book by Mark Edwards of Arizona State University in Tempe, entitled Green Algae Strategy: End Oil Imports and Engineer Sustainable Food and Fuel, outlines how that might be accomplished. In the report, which won the 2009 Gold Independent Book Publishers' Award in Science, Edwards explored possible uses for various types of algae in a number of environmental endeavors.

Isaac Berzin, founder of GreenFuel Technologies Corp., wants to put an algae farm beside every power plant. In a recent podcast with the blog Algae to Oil, Berzin noted that the resources needed to harness algae are exactly those that fossil fuel-burning power plants have in abundance: land that nobody wants to live on, non-potable water and lots of CO₂.

The key to the effectiveness of this most ancient plant is actually its incredible inefficiency. Compared to other extant photosynthetic organisms today, algae is a more effective CO₂ scrubber and energy source because its evolutionary simplicity never gave it the energy economy of more advanced organisms. Algae thus use more air and stores more photosynthetic energy than terrestrial grains. Possible uses in wastewater are also being developed; since algae is a fairly indiscriminant devourer of nutrients, it can thrive in polluted environments, and treat a lot wastewater streams.

Not all algae are good; fighting toxic blue-green algae formations is a major concern for ocean and inland water professionals. At the Society for General Microbiology's meeting at Herot-Watt University in Edinburgh, researchers from Scotland's Robert Gordon University noted they had identified more than 10 strains of bacteria that can break microcystins down into harmless byproducts. Six of the strains were tested with contaminated river water under conditions that simulated real-world conditions, and all six were able to break down the toxins, the researchers reported.

3. Circuits of slime

Genetic analysts at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, working with teams from Michigan State University in East Lansing, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Wash., have noticed that bacteria strains that are effective at cleaning up pollutants are usually made up of several different types of germs. Researchers have been looking into mixing and matching certain known effective microbes to obtain different effects, from cleaning nuclear dumpsites to powering future fuel cells, to lighting.

"Soon we will be able to pick the right strain for cleaning specific environments," said Kostas Konstantinidis, an environmental microbiologist at Georgia Tech. "But we are in the beginning stages of this."

Konstantinidis and his colleagues focused on a bacterial genus known as Shewanella, which is found in a wide spectrum of ecosystems ranging from the Arctic to the Amazon. Their genetic analysis of 10 strains of Shewanella was published late last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Shewanella typically converts metals and other nasty compounds into less toxic stuff, which makes the bacteria well-suited for environmental cleanup duty. One strain of the bacteria, Shewanella oneidensis MR-1, is particularly good at sucking metal oxides from groundwater and transforming them into insoluble forms that are ripe for removal. The U.S Department of Energy is looking into whether that strain could help clean up radioactive nuclear weapons sites.

Shewanella is also being studied as a potential power converter for microbial fuel cells. In that application, Shewanella (or other microbes such as Geobacter) would gobble up metals and expel electrons as a waste product, setting up what Konstantinidis called "circuits of slime."

2. Nanowires, or bacteria?

Derek Loveley, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is also looking into power-conducting scum. He discovered that tiny filaments appear to enhance the flow of electricity by a strain of sulfur-eating bacteria known as Geobacter sulfurreducens KN400.

"The filaments form microscopic projections called pili that act as microbial nanowires," Lovley said in a news release. "Using this bacterial strain in a fuel cell to generate electricity would greatly increase the cell's power output."

Lovley and his colleagues are developing such fuel cells to power monitoring devices in environments where it's difficult to replace batteries. KN400, for example, could provide the energy for deep-sea sensors that monitor turtle migration, Lovley said.

1. It's just carbon and oxygen

CO₂ is an excellent example of two good components that are less desirable when paired. As a waste gas, pure oxygen as is the next-cleanest thing to nitrogen; at 20 percent of the Earth's atmosphere (as opposed to CO₂, which is less than 0.04 percent), the amount of O₂ that can be released into the atmosphere is, in human terms, limitless. Meanwhile, graphite, a simple carbon allotrope, is a valuable substance to have around (as is another well-known carbon allotrope that has been described as an entire gender's "best friend"). So if (when) CO₂ becomes a controlled "pollutant," the ability to break it down into its two stable components would be nice.

What is stopping this from happening is the CO₂ bond is strong, so it should take much more energy that it is worth to separate the two, unless the bond can be weakened first.

Integrated Environmental Services Inc., Lake Forest, Calif., has found a way to pre-process CO₂ so that its molecular bonds can be broken with only a third of the bond energy (somewhat like a crude oil refinery uses catalytic devices to reduce the energy needed to refine crude oil). The company notes that the cost of the technology for the facility will depend upon the facility characteristics. The process also reduces other pollutants in the stream, so at new power plants, a simultaneous CO₂, NO_X and SO₂ emission system could be installed; for plants that already have NO_X and SO₂ controls, the cost justification is a bit more dicey. The company is in the process of selecting a facility in the United States for a large-scale demonstration project. PE