Noise barriers muffle the transmission of traffic noise and constitute a relevant factor in urban action plans. However, their effectiveness varies according to multiple factors. The new green noise barrier developed by two researchers from the School of Building at UPM [(Universidad Politécnica de Madrid)] use the raw material resulting from the pruning of plants and gardens. The combination of this vegetable waste with a local substrate and water result in a new mixture of suitable acoustic and structural characteristics for these types of barriers.
Today, the commercial noise barriers are made of different materials such as concrete, brick, wood, and glass that consume material resources in the manufacturing process and generate a large amount of waste at the end of their useful life.
Researchers have now developed barriers made of recycled elements that reduce the use of materials and reuse carpet waste, scraps of paper and fibrous materials. In this study, the raw materials used by UPM researchers come from garden waste, specifically palm leaves. Using local materials provides savings for both transport and environmental impact, offering a solution to the excessive amount of waste.
This one comes with electrolytes.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bradley13 on Friday July 20 2018, @09:57AM (9 children)
This looks like nothing but a publicity text, with almost no actual information. I found the original, Spanish article at the University of Madrid [www.upm.es], but even it provides no link to any sort of useful information.
Basically: instead of building a noise barrier out of concrete, or some other durable material, they want to build it out of "garden waste". In the example given, they used palm leaves. Which brings the immediate question: What kind of durability does this provide? A concrete noise barrier will last for decades. How long until the "garden waste" barrier turns into compost?
Of course, they do say that the garden waste is mixed with a "substrate" - again, with no details. What's the substrate? What's the ratio? Maybe 99% concrete and 1% palm leaves?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Friday July 20 2018, @10:45AM (3 children)
True, the sources are a bit short on details, but using plants or plant remains is not entirely new. Locally, they use barriers that are a 3...5m high organic substrate (regular dirt and internal meshes) encapsulated in a permeable mesh with plants growing on them. Yes, it needs some work trimming them now and then, but they are superior. The foliage dampens the sound by absorption and is not reflected to somewhere else where it still is annoying.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 20 2018, @11:48AM (2 children)
And if you source that 3-5m dirt wall very locally, you also get a moat which, in Florida at least, will naturally fill with alligators. Moats are quite effective at keeping livestock and small children from wandering onto the highway.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Friday July 20 2018, @12:14PM (1 child)
Those alligators would be, like, road-decoration? Very flat road-decoration?
One can only hope that they point in the right direction and have been eating reflectors ;-)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 20 2018, @12:39PM
On Alligator Alley they put up chain linked fences to keep the number of alligator speed bumps to a minimum on the highway.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 20 2018, @11:45AM
The details I'd be looking for would include: sound absorption vs the reflection that concrete walls give. Concrete sound barriers have textured surfaces to randomize the reflections, but they still reflect an awful lot of sound energy.
If this "natural" absorption material is layered over a durable substrate, it might mean that the overall wall can be shorter with the same sonic effectiveness, and if you can get the wall down to half the height, rebuilding it twice as often is clearly a win on the economics.
Still, would be nice if TFA did more than wave hands about "locally sourced."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday July 20 2018, @01:42PM
I liked the part about using local waste to form them. The Tri-State area has landfills that are full. Most of the garbage gets sent out to the Third World on barges. More recycling would help (NYC recycles, but Nassau County on Long Island barely does). Separating food waste and composting that would be a triple win, because it would save space in the landfills, cut down on the methane gas they generate, and produce rich new soil that gardeners and farms always demand.
Still, there are elements like the rug scraps and things the article cites that have no use. If they can reprocess that into highway sound barriers, then great.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @03:19PM (1 child)
All of the phys.org articles are short on details. That's why I hate that site.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday July 20 2018, @04:23PM
Over 90% of the Phys.org articles are reprints of university press releases. Direct your hate to the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday July 20 2018, @05:26PM
The problem I have with it is that the image shown is thick. I was concerned about it's structural strength, but looking at the drawing a pile of dirt would work as well. (Well, possibly not dirt, as that might run off in rainfall or blow away in drought, but gravel or sand mixed with clay anyway.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday July 20 2018, @10:02AM (10 children)
Hard to see anything really "new" here; gabions [maccaferri.com] can be filled with locally-sourced rocks, and covered in plants.
They don't sat what the shells are made from, so they could be plastic or cement - not particularly "green", even if the plastic is recycled.
At least when plants grow on them, they are a bit less ugly than "regular" noise barriers.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 20 2018, @11:51AM (9 children)
The problem I see with the "natural" barrier is that it takes up quite a bit of width on the right of way. Whereas a 20' tall concrete wall can be erected in 3' or less of ROW width, these "natural" bumps with plants growing on them tend to be more like 10-20' wide. Put one on each side of a roadway and you've consumed 50' from the entire ROW - that's a lot of land in an urban area (where the sound barriers tend to be erected most often.)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday July 20 2018, @01:49PM (1 child)
I don't know about elsewhere, but 10'-20' is feasible in the Tri-State area. Long Island, Jersey, Westchester, Connecticut, are all densely populated but there's typically that much set-back from the freeway anyway. Mostly it's flat, grassy- or concrete median now.
The advantage of TFA's approach is that you can look at it like a measure taken to save space in landfills. If you can re-process items traditionally headed for the dump into sound barriers that improve the quality of life for suburban communities, then it's a double win.
I had the same thought with another article I saw recently on the bricks Elon Musk's Boring Company is producing from the dirt they've excavated for tunnels. I don't know if I'd want to build a house out of them, but they could certainly find use as anti-erosion barriers along shorelines.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 20 2018, @02:59PM
When I visited Freeport, Bahamas in 1986, they were already working on this: the roadsides were literally covered in garbage. If it weren't for the hurricanes, I bet those roadside garbage heaps would be over 10' tall by now.
As for Boring Bricks - on the one hand, houses like Earthship are made from what appears to be far worse stuff (old tires, in my indoor air? no thanks.) On the other, when we drilled a 200' x4" well, the tailings that came out of that hole were the nastiest slimy concoction of goo I've ever seen (with the possible exception of landfills...) I suppose it could be baked and formed into bricks, but some stuff that stays in the soil under the water table has some pretty alien chemistry as compared to what we're used to up here in the sun and oxygen.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday July 20 2018, @05:26PM (6 children)
The closest noise barrier to my office is a thin concrete wall, but the vine taking it over is probably the best soundproofing part.
I have the same vine trying to invade me from the neighbor's side. The thing is relentless, unkillable (I cut all the roots I could see, bloody thing didn't even lose a leaf about it), not an unpleasant shade of green, and it grows without much water.
I think it's called climbing/creeping fig. If you don't get frost, that's your organic soundproofing solution (may require occasional not-a-flamethrower to keep in check).
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 20 2018, @06:34PM (5 children)
I don't know what we had in Houston, but it was an equally tenacious wall climbing vine, and it didn't look like fig - small leaves. Wasps loved to nest in it, for added fun when standing on a ladder with pruning shears.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday July 20 2018, @06:44PM (1 child)
I restrain mine using a machete. Took a while for the neighbor to get used to that.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 20 2018, @06:58PM
I love machetes, but not for swinging while standing on a ladder with wasps buzzing around, especially near the wood/asphalt shingle interface where I "drew the line."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @07:12PM (2 children)
Possibly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org] ?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 21 2018, @02:26AM (1 child)
Nope, Kudzu can grow quite a bit faster, and it doesn't have the "super roots" and thick small leaved foilage that this wall vine did.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 21 2018, @10:44AM
Virginia creeper?