Lifeboat Foundation

The world needs a bridge to the renewable energy future.

The world needs more oil and gas to deal with the energy shortages it is currently facing, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at an energy conference in Norway on Monday, Bloomberg.

The comment might seem strange coming from a person who sells electric vehicles, battery packs, and solar roofing products. However, this isn’t the first time Elon Musk has made such a comment.

Continue reading “Elon Musk Says World Needs More Oil and Gas as Bridge to Renewables” »

You are looking at a methanol-fed hydrogen fuel cell that may soon be powering marine shipping around the world.

For Maersk, the 12 new ships will help it reduce CO₂ emissions by 1.5 million tons annually or 4% of what the company produced in total in 2021. Maersk’s announced commitment is for all future new builds to only burn carbon-neutral fuels. That’s why fuel cells are high on its list of technologies to make that achievement possible.

Methanol Fuel Cells Are a Step Better Than Burning Methanol

Continue reading “Maersk Earmarks $2.1 Billion for Ships That Will Run on Methanol” »

A study of Li-metal batteries by the research team led by Dr. Byung Gon Kim at Next-Generation Battery Research Center of Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI) was published as a cover paper in the international journal ACS Nano.

While the current Li-ion batteries generate energy by taking Li-ions in and out of the graphite anode based on the intercalation mechanism, the Li-metal battery does not rely on this bulky and heavy graphite but uses metallic Li itself as the anode. As the Li-metal shows 10 times higher theoretical capacity (3,860 mAh/g) than graphite (372 mAh/g), it has steadily gained much attention from areas that need high-capacity batteries, such as electric vehicles and energy storage systems.

Despite this advantage, Li can grow in the shape of a tree branch, called a Li dendrite, if it is not uniformly and effectively stored when cycling process, leading to large volume expansion of the electrode, which in turn may shorten the battery’s cycle life and cause safety issue such as fire and explosion triggered by internal short-circuits.

Continue reading “High-capacity Li-metal battery with improved rate-performance and stability” »

Intermolecular interactions are the forces that pertain between molecules. In general, these interactions scarcely extend beyond the boundaries of molecules. For the most part, they are effective over distances of less than 1 nanometer (10^-9 m).

The largest distances discovered to date were in energy transmissions, where almost 10 nanometers were reached. A team led by LMU chemist Heinz Langhals has now found intermolecular interactions which, to the astonishment of the scientists, extend beyond 100 nanometers.

The researchers were able to demonstrate this using the concentration-dependent fluorescence decay time of dyes. “In this way, molecules can not only interact with their neighbors, but do so up to almost macroscopic dimensions,” says Langhals.

An Israeli energy startup has developed a microturbine that can run on 50% hydrogen gas – next up one that runs on 100% of the clean green gas.

Researchers have demonstrated a way of measuring the electronic states of a material’s surface while avoiding signal contaminations from deeper layers.

The electronic states of a material’s surface might only be 2D, but they offer a depth of interesting physics. Such states, which are distinct from those of the material’s bulk, dominate many phenomena, such as electrical conduction, magnetism, and catalysis, and they are responsible for nontrivial surface effects found in topological materials and systems with strong spin-orbit interaction. Surface electronic states also control the properties of so-called 2D materials, such as graphene. To understand surface phenomena and harness them in practical devices, researchers chiefly rely on photoemission spectroscopy, which measures the energy and momentum of electrons emitted when photons hit the material. The high resolution with which electron energy and momentum can be characterized allows physicists to measure both the band structure and the density of states (DOS) in the few surface layers where escaping photoelectrons originate.

The media is going nuts over Elon Musk calling for more oil and gas at an energy conference in Norway, but the full quote is not being widely reported and brings some important context.

Earlier this year, Elon Musk called to drill for more oil, which raised a few eyebrows, but it was in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and how it sent gas prices skyrocketing:

Continue reading “Media goes nuts over Elon Musk calling for more oil and gas, but here’s the full quote” »

Sea Wave Energy Ltd (SWEL) has been working for more than a decade on a floating wave energy device it calls the Waveline Magnet. With several prototypes tested on-and off-shore, the company claims it delivers “ultra low cost,” with high output.

Solar electricity generation is proliferating globally and becoming a key pillar of the decarbonization era. Lunar energy is taking a lot longer; tidal and wave energy is tantalizingly easy to see; step into the surf in high wave conditions and it’s obvious there’s an enormous amount of power in the ocean, just waiting to be tapped. But it’s also an incredibly harsh and punishing environment, and we’re yet to see tidal or wave energy harnessed on a mass scale.

Continue reading “Wave-riding generators promise the cheapest clean energy ever” »

The US Navy is exploring the novel technology of Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs) against Chinese and Russian hypersonic weapons in the absence of a potent defense against these highly maneuverable missiles.

The top admiral of the US Navy, Michael Gilday stated that directed energy systems are being developed as a potential countermeasure against hypersonic missiles, calling the advancements made by Russia and China in hypersonic weapon technology “a significant concern.”

The development of devices that would use high-energy lasers or high-power microwaves to remove a threat is a major priority for the Navy, according to Adm. Michael Gilday, Chief of Naval Operations, who is also the Chief of US Missile Defense Agency.