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Category: energy – Page 146

Siemens Gamesa’s 14–222 DD offshore wind turbine prototype has, according to the Spanish-German wind giant today, set a world record for the most power output by a single wind turbine in a 24-hour period: 359 megawatt-hours.

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This would be enough energy, according to the company, for a mid-sized electric vehicle – think a Tesla Model 3 – to drive around 1.12 million miles (1.8 million km).

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Their results apply only to enhanced geothermal plants, like the ones Fervo and other companies such as Cambridge, Mass.–based Quaise Energy and Seattle-based AltaRock Energy are developing.

Conventional geothermal systems drill wells into naturally occurring hydrothermal reservoirs. But these pockets of hot water deep underground do not exist everywhere. In the United States, for instance, they are mostly located in the west.

Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) get around this geographical limitation by creating artificial reservoirs. Developers create fractures in hot, dry rock formations by drilling into or melting the rock, and then injecting water into the fissures. Production wells bring the heated water up for producing electricity. “For scales necessary to contribute to national or global electricity decarbonization, we need to be able to extract geothermal heat outside of conventional formations,” Ricks says.

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Osaka Metropolitan University scientists have successfully developed a new positive electrode material Na2FeS2, consisting of sodium, iron, and sulfur. During testing, batteries using the Na2FeS2 positive electrode had a high energy storage capacity and could be charged and discharged for more than 300 cycles. Because the Na2FeS2 is made of abundant inexpensive elements, it is expected to be used in all-solid-state sodium batteries with higher capacity and lower costs.

The demand for , such as lithium-ion batteries, increases every year, as society shifts toward becoming carbon neutral. Sodium-ion batteries—which have a resource advantage over —are attracting more attention, as cheap new continue to be developed.

A research group led by Associate Professor Atsushi Sakuda, President Masahiro Tatsumisago, and Professor Akitoshi Hayashi, at the Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka Metropolitan University, has successfully developed a new positive electrode, made of Na2FeS2, for all-solid-state sodium batteries. The batteries have a high energy storage capacity, high reversibility and use inexpensive elements that are readily available.

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Engineers from UNSW Sydney have successfully converted a diesel engine to run as a hydrogen-diesel hybrid engine—reducing CO2 emissions by more than 85% in the process.

The team, led by Professor Shawn Kook from the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, spent around 18 months developing the hydrogen-diesel direct injection dual-fuel system that means existing diesel engines can run using 90% hydrogen as fuel.

The researchers say that any diesel engine used in trucks and power equipment in the transportation, agriculture and mining industries could ultimately be retrofitted to the new hybrid system in just a couple of months.

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“The Ce electrolyte is highly oxidative, which poses a challenge towards the stability of anion membrane,” Daoud said. “Thus, the stability and selectivity of anion membrane require further improvement.”

The device achieved a voltage plateau of 2.3 V at 20 mA cm − 2, energy efficiency of 71.3% at 60 mA cm − 2, and a record average Coulombic efficiency of 94% during cycling.

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Writing in Nature Communications, a team led by Dr. Marcelo Lozada-Hidalgo based at the National Graphene Institute (NGI) used graphene as an electrode to measure both the electrical force applied on water molecules and the rate at which these break in response to such force. The researchers found that water breaks exponentially faster in response to stronger electrical forces.

The researchers believe that this fundamental understanding of interfacial water could be used to design better catalysts to generate from water. This is an important part of the U.K.’s strategy towards achieving a net zero economy. Dr. Marcelo Lozada-Hidalgo said, “We hope that the insights from this work will be of use to various communities, including physics, catalysis, and interfacial science and that it can help design better catalysts for green hydrogen production.”

A water molecule consists of a proton and a hydroxide ion. Dissociating it involves pulling these two constituent ions apart with an electrical force. In principle, the stronger one pulls the water molecule apart, the faster it should break. This important point has not been demonstrated quantitatively in experiments.

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