Science Alert February 2019 China has plans to launch a test facility before 2025, pursuing space-based clean energy showing that China is committed to its ongoing push towards using more renewable energy and asserting its place among global leaders in space. The plan is to have solar arrays in space capture light from the sun and then beam electricity down to a facility on Earth in the form of a microwave or a laser. If the launch goes well and the energy-transmitting beam works like it is supposed to, the Chinese scientists have plans to test and launch bigger and […]
Tag Archives: Solar energy
Sun-soaking device turns water into superheated steam
MIT News December 11, 2018 Researchers at MIT have built and demonstrated a solar-driven evaporation system. Top layer of the system is a metal ceramic composite and the bottom layer was coated with a material that easily and efficiently emits infrared heat. A layer of reticulated carbon foam is sandwiched between the two layers. It retains the sun’s incoming heat and can further heat up the steam rising back up through the foam. A small outlet tube allows steam to exit. The structure absorbs solar radiation and re-radiates infrared photons, which are directly absorbed by the water within a sub-100 μm penetration […]
Emissions-free energy system saves heat from the summer sun for winter
Science Daily October 3, 2018 Building on their previous discovery of a molecule which could store solar energy, an international team of researchers (Sweden, Spain) has made it possible for a liquid form of the molecule made from carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen to store energy. It could be adapted for use in a solar energy system, MOST (Molecular Solar Thermal Energy Storage). The energy in the isomer can be stored for up to 18 years. The research group has developed a catalyst for controlling the release of the stored energy. MOST works in a circular manner – the liquid captures […]
Bacteria-powered solar cell converts light to energy, even under overcast skies
Science Daily July 5, 2018 Researchers in Canada have genetically engineered E. coli to produce large amounts of lycopene that is particularly effective at harvesting light for conversion to energy. The pigment‐producing cells are coated with TiO2 nanoparticles and the mixture is applied to a glass surface. With the coated glass acting as an anode at one end of their cell, they generated a current density of 0.686 milliamps per square centimetre — an improvement on the 0.362 achieved by others in the field. According to the researchers the hybrid materials can be manufactured economically and sustainably. With sufficient optimization, […]
Promising new material has the right properties to capture solar energy, split water into hydrogen and oxygen
Phys.org June 18, 2018 Using supercomputers to calculate the quantum energy states of four halide double perovskites, an international team of researchers (UK, USA – Cornell University) found that the double perovskites Cs2BiAgCl6 and Cs2BiAgBr6 are potentially promising materials for photo-catalytic water splitting. They would require controlling their surface termination to obtain energy levels appropriate for water splitting. The energy of the halogen P orbitals is found to control the conduction band level; therefore, the team proposes that mixed halides could be used to fine-tune the electronic affinity…read more. Open Access 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 […]
Sunlight funnel collects light from all directions
Physorg March 1, 2018 Researchers in Germany modeled the new light-harvesting funnels on nature’s design. The devices consist of many randomly oriented “donor” pigments that can absorb light from nearly all incident angles and funnel it onto a smaller number of “acceptor” molecules that are all oriented in a single direction to direct the light onto a photoconversion device. This concept can reduce the intrinsic losses of previous solar concentrators to below 10%. In tests the solar concentrator absorbed approximately 99% of the incident light, with minimal losses due to reabsorption and reflection. The device also has a light redirection […]
Innovative diode design uses ultrafast quantum tunneling to harvest infrared energy from the environment
Phys org February 5, 2018 Researchers in Saudi Arabia have designed a device, rectenna, that can tap into the infrared radiation in the environment and waste heat from industrial processes and transform quadrillionth-of-a-second wave signals into useful electricity. Tunneling devices, such as metal-insulator-metal (MIM) diodes, rectify infrared waves into current by moving electrons through a small barrier. They used a ‘bowtie-shaped’ nano-antenna that sandwiches the thin insulator film between two slightly overlapped metallic arms to generate the intense fields needed for tunneling… read more.
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.