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Science Forum Index » Nanotechnology Forum » What would be 'green' nanotech?
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| Rory McLean |
 Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 12:49 am |
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Guest
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I thought it might be interesting to consider what might be
'green' nanotech.
If we assume that the construction of nanoscale robots,
'nanobots', that can do useful work for us will become possible,
an important question might be, how do we use them in such a way
that they have minimal undesired environmental impact?
Reasonably obviously we do not want to release general purpose
disassembler nanobots into the environment, even if they do not
have self-replication capability. Any disassembly that takes
place needs to be of very carefully specified targets, both in
time and space.
Disassembly of things that might be detectable as living would in
particular need to be under tight control. As would disassembly
that would disrupt the environment that living creatures need to
survive.
Even considering the above, another issue might be ownership.
Disassembly should not be allowed of targets that have clear
ownership, where the owner (or some over-riding authority) has
not given permission. In fact, disassembly might only be allowed
where there is permission granted by some sort of ownership
arbitration authority, though this might be on a blanket basis,
measured in time or space.
All this leads into what effects both disassembly, and assembly
of objects, have on the environment.
Disassembly is clearly something which has the potential to ruin
the environment, either directly by destroying parts of it, or
indirectly by the products of disassembly. Then there is the
question of what happens to the disassembly nanobots, broken or
otherwise, at the end of their task.
Assembly might introduce undesirable new objects into the
environment, and will need some raw materials to assemble things
from. Again, the fate of the nanobots needs to be considered.
Both disassembly and assembly will have side effects: consumption
of energy from some source, waste heat from the work they do, and
control signals passed between them.
For nanotech to be 'green' it might be necessary to ensure that
all nano-scale items that were not the intended product of
disassembly or assembly were removed, possibly to a suitable
container. Self-mobile nanobots might receive instructions to
'return to base', but almost certainly some will break. Clean-up
nanobots, which had better be able to clean-up broken examples of
themselves as well, might be a (partial) solution.
Designing nanobots so that if broken they become as far as
possible chemically inert and passive parts of the environment,
and in particular not biologically active, would be preferred.
It seems very likely that, in some environments, that even
thorough clean-up operations would overlook some.
Leaving nanobots active in the environment after their particular
purpose has been fulfilled seems best avoided, even though having
general-purpose nanobots around would seem a tempting resource.
We need to think-out the control techniques, and develop and test
these very thoroughly, before we consider doing that. In the
meanwhile, tidying up nanotech after use would seem to be the
'green' alternative.
--
Rory McLean
rory@romsys.demon.co.uk |
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