Stefan Lehnert

German chemical engineer Manfred Stefener, together with Oliver Freitag and Jens Müller, created the first fuel cell for portable use, known as the direct methanol fuel cell. These fuel cells deliver efficient, reliable and clean electricity in a much more compact form than a traditional battery-power supply, even in extreme temperatures. They are already used in a vast array of applications from traffic management, to security and surveillance systems, to powering isolated environmental-data stations.

Billions of lithium-ion based rechargeable batteries are produced every year to power our cell phones, laptops and MP3 players. Discarding them can add up to huge amounts of waste. French scientists Farouk Tedjar and Jean-Claude Foudraz developed a novel solution ─ which is fast, effective, inexpensive and uses less energy ─ to recycle these batteries and recover 98% of the valuable metals they contain.