Science Daily February 12, 2019 An international team of researchers (Italy, UK) developed a device, known as a Dielectric Elastomer Generator (DEG), using flexible rubber membranes. It is designed to fit on top of a vertical tube which, when placed in the sea, partially fills with water that rises and falls with wave motion. As waves pass the tube, the water inside pushes trapped air above to inflate and deflate the generator on top of the device. As the membrane inflates, a voltage is generated. This increases as the membrane deflates, and electricity is produced. In a commercial device, this […]
Tag Archives: Alternate energy
“Sun in a box” would store renewable energy for the grid
MIT News December 5, 2018 A team of researchers in the US (MIT, Georgia Institute of Technology, National Renewable Energy Laboratory) has outlined their concept for a new renewable energy storage system, which they call Thermal Energy Grid Storage-Multi-Junction Photovoltaics (TEGS-MPV). The new design stores heat generated by excess electricity from solar or wind power in large tanks of white-hot molten silicon, which can withstand high temperatures of over 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit and then converts the light from the glowing metal back into electricity when it’s needed. Previously they developed a pump that could withstand such blistering heat and could conceivably […]
Dual-layer solar cell sets record for efficiently generating power
Nanowerk August 31, 2018 The combination of hybrid perovskite and Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) has the potential for realizing high-efficiency thin-film tandem solar cells because of the complementary tunable bandgaps and excellent photovoltaic properties of these materials. Researchers in Japan used nanoscale interface engineering of the CIGS surface and a heavily doped poly[bis(4-phenyl)(2,4,6-trimethylphenyl)amine] (PTAA) hole transport layer between the subcells that preserves open-circuit voltage and enhances both the fill factor and short-circuit current. The solar cell achieved a 22.43% efficiency, and unencapsulated devices under ambient conditions maintained 88% of their initial efficiency after 500 hours of aging under continuous 1-sun illumination… read […]
Nanoparticles Take Solar Desalination to New Heights
IEEE Spectrum August 10, 2018 Researchers in China have demonstrated that by dispersing tellurium nanoparticles into water, the water evaporation rate is improved by a factor of three under solar radiation. This makes it possible to increase the water temperature from 29 degrees to 85 degrees Celsius within 100 seconds. The Te nanoparticles perform like a plasmonic nanoparticle when it is smaller than 120 nanometers and then as a high-index all-dielectric nanoparticle when those nanoparticles are larger than 120 nm as they have a wide size distribution (from 10 to 300 nm). This enhanced absorption can cover the whole solar […]
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 […]
MIT Engineers Have Built a Device That Pulls Electricity Out of Thin Air
Science Alert February 27, 2018 Researchers at MIT designed materials that maximize the thermal effusivity by impregnating copper and nickel foams with conformal, chemical-vapor-deposited graphene and octadecane as a phase change material. These materials are ideal for ambient energy harvesting in the form of thermal resonators to generate persistent electrical power from thermal fluctuations over large ranges of frequencies. The harvestable power is proportional to the thermal effusivity of the dominant thermal mass. With 18-degree Fahrenheit temperature difference between night and day, a small sample of material produced 350 millivolts of potential and 1.3 milliwatts of power, which is enough […]
Fully screen-printed monoPoly silicon solar cell technology
Source: Phys.org, December 14, 2017 The technology developed by researchers in Singapore is applicable on both p-type and n-type silicon wafers, features homogenous junctions and standard fire-thorough screen-printed metal contacts with grids on both sides, resulting in a high-efficiency bifacial solar cell. It uses an advanced tunnel oxide and doped silicon layers, enabling excellent surface passivation in the non-contact cell regions along with very low-resistance and low-recombination screen-printed contacts. Using commercially available large-area Cz-Si wafers they recorded an average cell efficiency of 21.5%… read more.