Science Daily May 18, 2018 Economically and efficiently converting tough plant matter, called lignin, has long been a stumbling block for wider use of the plant energy source and making it cost competitive. Piecing together mechanisms from other known lignin degraders, a team of researchers in the US (Sandia National Laboratory, Joint BioEnergy Institute, University of Minnesota, UC Berkeley) has engineered E. coli into an efficient and productive bioconversion cell factory… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Category Archives: Energy
Nanoporous carbon electrodes harvest blue energy
Nanotechweb May 11, 2018 Capacitive mixing and capacitive deionization are currently developed as alternatives to membrane-based processes to harvest blue energy from salinity gradients between river and sea water and to desalinate water using charge-discharge cycles of capacitors. By simulating realistic capacitors based on aqueous electrolytes and nanoporous carbide-derived carbon electrodes, researchers in France accounted for both their complex structure and their polarization by the electrolyte under applied voltage. They have shown that molecular simulations can realistically predict the capacitance of devices that contain nanoporous carbon materials as the electrodes and salty water as the electrolyte…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL […]
Engineers invent smart microchip that can self-start and operate when battery runs out
Science Daily May 3, 2018 Researchers in Singapore have designed a microchip called BATLESS that switches to the minimum-power mode and operates with a tiny power consumption of about half a nanoWatt when the battery is exhausted. The power management technique enables operations to be self-started, while being powered directly by the tiny on-chip solar cell, with no battery assistance. The chip’s ability to switch between minimum energy and minimum power mode translates into aggressive miniaturisation of batteries from centimetres down to a few millimetres… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Motorizing fibres with geometric zero-energy modes
Phys.org May 4, 2018 An international team of researchers (France, Switzerland, Germany) used responsive materials to generate structures with built-in complex geometries, linear actuators and microswimmers. The results suggest that complex, fully functional machines composed solely from shape-changing materials might be possible. They show that prestrained polymer fibres closed into rings exhibit self-actuation and continuous motion when placed between two heat baths due to elastic deformations that arise from rotational-symmetry breaking around the rod’s axis. Their findings illustrate a simple but robust model to create active motion in mechanically prestrained objects… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Water-based battery stores solar and wind energy
Science Daily April 30, 2018 A team of researchers in the US (Stanford University, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) has developed a rechargeable manganese–hydrogen battery, where the cathode is cycled between soluble Mn2+ and solid MnO2 with a two-electron reaction, and the anode is cycled between H2 gas and H2O through catalytic reactions of hydrogen evolution and oxidation. They are confident they can take this table-top technology up to an industrial-grade system that could charge and recharge up to 10,000 times, creating a grid-scale battery with a useful lifespan well over a decade… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Energy conversion: Optical ‘overtones’ for solar cells
Science Daily April 19, 2018 In solar cells the spectral position of the window of light that can be efficiently converted is strongly related to its band-gap. Researchers in Germany measured the charge carrier density created by the absorption of multiple photons in perovskite nanocrystals. The efficiency of this process becomes drastically enhanced when the frequency of the primary light oscillation and frequency of the exciton at the band-gap become equal. The observation of this novel resonance phenomenon for optical excitations in excitonic semiconductors could pave the way for solar cells to more efficiently convert long-wavelength light into usable electric […]
Ultra-powerful batteries made safer, more efficient
Science Daily April 9, 2018 Using mathematical modeling, an international team of researchers (China, USA – University of Delaware, Boston University, Utah State University) fabricated a membrane made of tiny wires of porous silicon nitride that measured less than one millionth of a meter each, to suppress the initiation and growth of dendrites. They integrated this membrane into lithium metal cells in a battery and ran it for 3,000 hours without growing dendrites. The principle may also extend to other battery systems, such as zinc or potassium-based batteries… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Building lithium-sulfur batteries with paper biomass
Science Daily April 2, 2018 A major byproduct in the papermaking industry is lignosulfonate, a sulfonated carbon waste material. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have demonstrated the potential of using lignosulfonate to design sustainable, low-cost electrode materials for lithium-sulfur batteries. In its elemental form, sulfur is nonconductive, but when combined with carbon at elevated temperatures, it becomes highly conductive, allowing it to be used in novel battery technologies. They have created a lithium-sulfur battery prototype that is the size of a watch battery, which can cycle about 200 times. The next step is to scale up the prototype to markedly […]
Generating energy from fluctuations of light
Phys.org March 27, 2018 Researchers in Sweden have developed a method and a material that generates an electrical impulse when the light fluctuates from sunshine to shade and vice versa. They created a tiny optical generator by combining the small antennas consisting gold nanodiscs placed on a substrate and coated with a polymeric film to create the pyroelectric properties. The antennas generate heat that is then converted to electricity with the aid of the polymer. The degree of polarisation of the polymer affects the magnitude of the generated power, while the thickness not to have any effect at all. Applications […]
MIT and newly formed company launch novel approach to fusion power
MIT News March 9, 2018 Commonwealth Fusion Systems will support MIT to develop the world’s most powerful large-bore superconducting electromagnets. Once the magnets are developed MIT and CFS will design and build a compact and powerful fusion experiment, called SPARC, using those magnets. The device will demonstrate key technical milestones needed to ultimately achieve a full-scale prototype of a fusion power plant that could set the world on a path to low-carbon energy. The compact device is expected to be capable of generating 100 million watts, or 100 megawatts (MW), of fusion power. Goal is for research to produce a […]