Page 7 - the NOISE May 2013

NEwSbriefs
buffalo park annex ramps up opposition to sale
FLAGSTAFF, April 24 (tN) — To many, Buf- falo Park is considered Flagstaff’s Central Park, an island of high mountain wilder- ness in a sea of asphalt, a refuge for hikers, bicyclists, runners, and dog walkers that has always been in the crosshairs of big city de- velopers and “business friendly” members of City Council.
Currently, a 26-acre parcel near the Elks Lodge and directly adjoining the Park is on the auction block so the City may fund a new City Courthouse, to the ardent chagrin of homeowners in the area and 1600 petition signers who treasure the space.
When Mayor Jerry nabours was pre- sented with reasons for opposition to the sale — including a city staff report outlining $3.5 million in flood control if the parcel were developed, negating any profit the City or a private builder might anticipate — he was quoted as saying “It’s unused land the City might as well make some money off of,” and dismissed the legitimate citizens’ concerns as a “Not-In-My-Back-Yard” issue.
Unrequited NIMBY, suzanne motsinger, who attended the meeting and began the petition drive with kate Gales in mid-April, said: “We asked the mayor to save the city
the time and expense of dedicating city staff to continue pursuing the sale, but he stated that he and the council will wait for the staff to answer the council’s questions on this land.”
Mr. Nabours, who won his current seat with a squeaky 329 votes (out of 10,400 cast) last May, is a longtime area attorney who himself owns multiple commercial and resi- dential properties.
According to Ms. Motsinger, the parcel in question is zoned R1, but the city land use maps gives it medium-density residential, re- quiring a zoning change if it were to be sold. And while the City Housing Authority had pegged it for low-income or senior hous- ing, the flooding issues have kept that idea in limbo, perhaps underlined by members of City Council who maintain “there is no money for subsidized housing there anyway.”
As to the City’s quandary of building up funds for the courthouse, Ms. Motsinger points to empty fire stations and “fill-in” par- cels located close to transportation, schools, and shopping, not to mention the entirety of the City’s inventory as yet unreleased to the public. “It is curious how the Schultz Creek Y and the Buffalo Park Annex suddenly ap- peared at the top of the for-sale list in Janu- ary without any discussion.
“But it is not our job to give the city alterna- tives to this parcel — it is our job to preserve this parcel. However, some alternatives were discussed with the mayor yesterday, and un- til there is that inventory of available parcels, no one can have an informed debate about alternatives. We’d like to see the unused firehouses repurposed instead of being torn down for new construction. We’d like any new development to be in-fill, not beloved open space at the borders of our wildland interface.”
u of a team discovers sulfur reuse for ev batteries
TUCSON, April 15 (ENS) — A new chemical process transforms waste sulfur into a light- weight plastic that can improve batteries for electric cars, reports a research team of US, Korean and German scientists. The scientists have successfully used the new plastic to make lithium-sulfur batteries.
Next-generation lithium-sulfur, or Li-S, batteries will be better for electric and hybrid cars because they are more efficient, lighter and cheaper than those currently used, said lead researcher Jeffrey pyun, an associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Arizona. “We’ve developed a new, simple and useful chemical process to convert sulfur into a useful plastic.”
The new plastic performs better in batter- ies than elemental sulfur, Mr. Pyun said, be- cause batteries with cathodes made of ele- mental sulfur can be used and recharged just a limited number of times before they fail.
The new plastic has promise as some- thing that can be produced easily and in- expensively on an industrial scale, he said. The team’s discovery is a new use for the mountains of waste sulfur left over when oil and natural gas are refined into cleaner- burning fuels.
Although there are some industrial uses for sulfur, the amount generated from refin- ing fossil fuels far outstrips the current need for the element. Some oil refineries, such as the oil sands refineries in Ft. McMurray, Al- berta, are accumulating yellow mountains of waste sulfur.
“There’s so much of it we don’t know what to do with it,” said Mr. Pyun. He calls the left- over sulfur “the garbage of transportation.”
About one-half pound of sulfur is left over for every 19 gallons of gasoline produced from fossil fuels, calculates co-author Jared Griebel, a University of Arizona chemistry and biochemistry doctoral candidate.
Mr. Pyun says he undertook this research because he wanted to apply his expertise as a chemist to energy production. He knew about the world’s glut of elemental sulfur at oil and gas refineries — so he focused on how chemistry could use the cheap sulfur to satisfy the need for good Li-S batteries.
He and his colleagues tried something new – transforming liquid sulfur into a useful plastic that could be produced on an indus- trial scale. Sulfur poses technical challenges; it does not easily form the stable long chains of molecules, known as polymers, needed make a moldable plastic, and most materials don’t dissolve in sulfur.
Mr. Pyun and his colleagues identified the chemicals most likely to polymerize sulfur and began to test those 20 chemicals one by one by one. They got lucky. “The first one worked – and nothing else thereafter,” said Mr. Pyun.
The new plastic has electrochemical prop- erties superior to those of the elemental sul- fur now used in lithium-sulfur batteries, the researchers report. The team’s batteries ex- hibited high specific capacity and enhanced capacity retention, Mr. Pyun explained. The researchers have filed an international pat- ent for their new chemical process and for the new polymeric electrode materials for lithium-sulfur batteries.
The international team’s research article, “The Use of Elemental Sulfur as an Alternative
Feedstock for Polymeric Materials,” was pub- lished online in the journal Nature Chemistry on April 14.
thenoise.us • the NOISE arts & news • MAY 2013 • 7