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Archive for the ‘energy’ category: Page 179

Nov 29, 2021

Corny Lithium-Ion Batteries Could Hold Quadruple the Charge

Posted by in categories: chemistry, energy, nanotechnology, sustainability, transportation

The extra juice comes from a secret ingredient…corn starch.


Could a simple materials change make electric car batteries able to four times more energy? Scientists in South Korea think so. In a new paper in the American Chemical Society’s Nano Letters, a research team details using silicon and repurposed corn starch to make better anodes for lithium ion batteries.

This team is based primarily in the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), where they’ve experimented with microemulsifying silicon, carbon, and corn starch into a new microstructured composite material for use as a battery anode. This is done by mixing silicon nanoparticles and corn starch with propylene gas and heating it all to combine.

Continue reading “Corny Lithium-Ion Batteries Could Hold Quadruple the Charge” »

Nov 28, 2021

Rogue Miners Are Using Google Cloud Servers to Mine Cryptocurrencies

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, cybercrime/malcode, energy

Google’s cybersecurity team warns that this is neither the first nor the last time.

Cryptomining is a very energy-intensive process with analysis by the University of Cambridge showing that Bitcoin consumes more electricity than the entire country of Argentina. Now, Google has released a new report stating that malicious cryptocurrency miners are using hacked Google Cloud accounts for mining purposes.

The report is called “Threat Horizons” and it aims to help organizations keep their cloud environments secure.

Continue reading “Rogue Miners Are Using Google Cloud Servers to Mine Cryptocurrencies” »

Nov 28, 2021

Scientists want to use mountains like batteries to store energy

Posted by in categories: energy, sustainability

Can we use mountains as gigantic batteries for long-term energy storage? Such is the premise of new research published in the journal Energy.

The particular focus of the study by Julian Hunt of IIASA (Austria-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) and his colleagues is how to store energy in locations that have less energy demand and variable weather conditions that affect renewable energy sources. The team looked at places like small islands and remote places that would need less than 20 megawatts of capacity for energy storage and proposed a way to use mountains to accomplish the task.

Nov 27, 2021

New Cold Storage Method Solves Freezer Burn —And Saves Energy

Posted by in categories: energy, food

12:10 minutes.

But United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) food scientists, working with a team at the University of California-Berkeley, have a method that could help solve this problem. Normal food freezing, called isobaric, keeps food at whatever pressure the surrounding air is. But what if you change that? Isochoric freezing, the new method, adds pressure to the food while lowering temperature, so the food becomes cold enough to preserve without its moisture turning into ice. No ice means no freezer burn. And, potentially, a much lower energy footprint for the commercial food industry: up to billions fewer kilowatt-hours, according to recent research.

Nov 27, 2021

ESA’s Solar Orbiter Spacecraft Is Skimming Earth for a Gravity Assist — And It’s One of the Riskiest Planetary Flybys Ever

Posted by in categories: energy, satellites

The chance that ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft will encounter space debris during its upcoming Earth flyby is very, very low. However, the risk is not zero and is greater than any other flyby ESA has performed. That there is this risk at all highlights the mess we’ve made of space – and why we need to take action to clean up after ourselves.

On November 27, after a year and eight months flying through the inner Solar System, Solar Orbiter will swing by home to ‘drop off’ some extra energy. This will line the spacecraft up for its next six flybys of Venus.

Continue reading “ESA’s Solar Orbiter Spacecraft Is Skimming Earth for a Gravity Assist — And It’s One of the Riskiest Planetary Flybys Ever” »

Nov 26, 2021

Researchers suggest battery-powered trains could very soon be economically viable

Posted by in categories: energy, sustainability, transportation

A small team of researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California has found that battery-powered trains could become economical as soon as 2023. In their paper published in the journal Nature Energy, the group argues that improved battery technology and cheap, renewable energy could soon allow battery power to compete with diesel fuel to power trains. Federico Zenith with NTNU, Trondheim, has published a News & Views piece in the same journal issue outlining the reasons for converting trains to battery power and gives an overview of the work done by the team on this new effort.

Trains, as Zenith notes, haul approximately 40 percent of intercity freight in the U.S., and sending things by train is cheaper than using trucks. Most of the freight trains in the U.S. run on , he states, spewing approximately 0.6 percent of total U.S. carbon emissions. In this new effort, the researchers suggest that switching to could prevent these emissions.

Electric trains in the U.S. get their power from overhead lines—a system that is expensive and inefficient. The team suggests that batteries could provide a better option; more specifically, they claim that a single locomotive equipped with a 14-megawatt battery system would be sufficient to replace a train powered by a diesel engine. They further claim that such a locomotive could carry a train approximately 240 kilometers on a single charge. This would consume half the energy of a diesel-powered train. And if the battery is charged using a renewable resource, it would reduce the carbon footprint of an electric train to zero.

Nov 26, 2021

Virgin Galactic announces winner of free trip to suborbital space

Posted by in categories: energy, health, space

Keisha S., a health and energy coach from the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda, just won a free trip to suborbital space with Virgin Galactic.

Nov 25, 2021

How NASA Technology Is Improving Air Travel

Posted by in categories: energy, transportation

NASA’s aircraft flight scheduling technology will start rolling out in 2023 to better coordinate aircraft movements at airports across the United States. It follows almost four years of research and testing by NASA and the FAA.

NASA’s surface metering technology is being integrated into the FAA’s airport surface management technology called the Terminal Flight Data Manager (TFDM) that will get implemented at 27 airports around the US.

The platform aims to improve efficiency, shift departure wait times from the taxiway to the gate, save fuel, reduce emissions, and give airlines and passengers more flexibility in the period before leaving the gate.

Nov 24, 2021

Nanograins: Study finds curious properties of tiny crystals hold clues to earthquake formation

Posted by in category: energy

In Earth’s crust, tectonic blocks slide and grind past each other like enormous ships loosed from anchor. Earthquakes are generated along these fault zones when enough stress builds for a block to stick, then suddenly slip.

These slips can be aided by several factors that reduce friction within a fault zone, such as hotter temperatures or pressurized gases that can separate blocks like pucks on an air-hockey table. The decreasing friction enables one tectonic block to accelerate against the other until it runs out of energy. Seismologists have long believed this kind of frictional instability can explain how all crustal earthquakes start. But that might not be the whole story.

In a study published today in Nature Communications, scientists Hongyu Sun and Matej Pec, from MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), find that ultra-fine-grained within fault zones can behave like low-viscosity fluids. The finding offers an alternative explanation for the instability that leads to crustal earthquakes. It also suggests a link between quakes in the and other types of that occur deep in the Earth.

Nov 24, 2021

It’s a Bus. It’s a Train. It’s Both!

Posted by in categories: economics, energy, transportation

Circa 2008


What do you get when you cross a bus with a train? A dual-mode vehicle that has the versatility of a bus, the speed of light rail and fuel economy vastly better than either. Toyota and its truck-making subsidiary Hino Motors have signed on with Japan Rail Hokkaido to develop the vehicles, which carry 25 […].