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Archive for the ‘energy’ category: Page 222

May 9, 2019

A superior, low-cost catalyst for water-splitting

Posted by in categories: energy, transportation

In a significant step toward large-scale hydrogen production, researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have developed a low-cost catalyst that can speed up the splitting of water to produce hydrogen gas.

Splitting water using electricity is a widely-explored method to generate hydrogen gas, a long sought-after clean power source for fuel cells, batteries and zero-emission vehicles. One of two major reactions involved in this process—called the Oxygen Evolution Reaction—is notoriously slow, restricting the overall efficiency. Researchers have focused on developing better catalysts — materials that can speed up the reaction while remaining neutral. The most efficient catalysts today are made from such as ruthenium and platinum, which are both expensive and rare.

An IISc team has now developed a low-cost catalyst by combining cobalt oxide with phosphate salts of sodium. The material cost is over two hundred times less expensive than the current state-of-the-art ruthenium dioxide catalyst, and the reaction rate is also faster, says Ritambhara Gond, PhD student at the Materials Research Centre (MRC), IISc, who is the first author of the paper published in Angewandte Chemie.

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May 8, 2019

Innolith brings 1,000 km electric vehicle within range

Posted by in categories: energy, transportation

Innolith AG, a world leader in rechargeable inorganic battery technology, has announces that it is developing world’s first 1,000 Wh/kg rechargeable battery. Under development in the company’s German laboratory, the new Innolith Energy Battery would be capable of powering an electric vehicle for over 1,000 km on a single charge. The new Innolith battery would also radically reduce costs due to the avoidance of exotic and expensive materials combined with the very high energy density of the system.

In addition to its range and cost advantages, the Innolith battery will be the first non-flammable lithium-based battery for use in electric vehicles. This battery uses a non-flammable inorganic electrolyte, unlike conventional EV batteries that use a flammable organic electrolyte. The switch to non-flammable batteries removes the primary cause of battery fires that have beset the manufacturers of EVs.

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May 8, 2019

Germany opens first electric highway that lets trucks draw power from overhead cables

Posted by in categories: energy, transportation

Germany spent 84 million euros developing the Siemens-made eHighway and a hybrid truck, which Siemens say will massively lower fuel costs.

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May 7, 2019

Nanoporous aramid nanofibre separators for nonaqueous redox flow batteries

Posted by in category: energy

Redox flow batteries are attractive for large-scale energy storage due to a combination of high theoretical efficiencies and decoupled power and energy storage capacities. Efforts to significantly increase energy densities by using nonaqueous electrolytes have been impeded by separators with low selectivities. Here, we report nanoporous separators based on aramid nanofibres, which are assembled using a scalable, low cost, spin-assisted layer-by-layer technique. The multilayer structure yields 5 ± 0.5 nm pores, enabling nanofiltration with high selectivity. Further, surface modifications using polyelectrolytes result in enhanced performance. In vanadium acetylacetonate/acetonitrile-based electrolytes, the coated separator exhibits permeabilities an order of magnitude lower and ionic conductivities five times higher than those of a commercial separator. In addition, the coated separators exhibit exceptional stability, showing minimal degradation after more than 100 h of cycling. The low permeability translates into high coulombic efficiency in flow cell charge/discharge experiments performed at cycle times relevant for large-scale applications (5 h).

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May 2, 2019

Fusion power is attracting private-sector interest

Posted by in category: energy

Reactor designs are inspired by everything from smoke rings to shrimps.

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May 1, 2019

A Device That Harvests Drinking Water Out Of Plain Air Just Won $1.5 Million

Posted by in categories: energy, sustainability

Two California designers have won a $1.5 million prize after building a shipping container that can harvest water from the air. David Hertz and Rich Groden were named the winners of the Water Abundance XPrize for their innovative creation, which can produce enough water to satisfy the needs of 100 people.

The competition, which began in 2016, asked designers to build a device that could extract at least 2,000 liters of water a day from the atmosphere while only using clean energy and costing no more than 2 cents a liter. Nearly 100 teams entered the challenge, which was eventually whittled down to two finalists. Hertz and Groden’s team, called Skysource/Skywater Alliance, won the prize because their invention “demonstrated the greatest ability to create decentralized access to water,” per a press release.

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Apr 30, 2019

A Novel Liquid Battery Could Hold Potential For Unlimited Energy Storage

Posted by in category: energy

Giant tanks filled with a liquid solution are offering a novel way to create a battery with unlimited capacity.

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Apr 29, 2019

Graphene sponge helps lithium sulphur batteries reach new potential

Posted by in categories: energy, materials

To meet the demands of an electric future, new battery technologies will be essential. One option is lithium sulphur batteries, which offer a theoretical energy density more than five times that of lithium ion batteries. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, recently unveiled a promising breakthrough for this type of battery, using a catholyte with the help of a graphene sponge.

The researchers’ novel idea is a porous, sponge-like aerogel made of reduced graphene oxide that acts as a free-standing electrode in the and allows for better and higher utilisation of sulphur.

A traditional consists of four parts. First, there are two supporting electrodes coated with an active substance, which are known as an anode and a cathode. In between them is an electrolyte, generally a liquid, allowing ions to be transferred back and forth. The fourth component is a separator, which acts as a physical barrier, preventing contact between the two electrodes whilst still allowing the transfer of ions.

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Apr 28, 2019

Toyota unveils latest heavy-duty electric fuel-cell truck to haul cargo around LA

Posted by in categories: energy, transportation

The latest version of Toyota’s zero-emissions fuel-cell powered tractor truck was unveiled today in Los Angeles. Developed as part of a joint project with the Kenworth Truck Company, the Port of Los Angeles, and the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the Fuel Cell Electric heavy-duty Truck (FCET) that runs on hydrogen and produces only water as waste is intended to meet or exceed the performance of a conventional diesel truck.

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Apr 28, 2019

Earthquake science could have predicted North Korea’s nuclear climbdown

Posted by in categories: energy, existential risks, nuclear weapons, policy, science

Just days after North Korea announced it was suspending its testing programme, scientists revealed that the country’s underground nuclear test site had partially collapsed. This assessment was based on data gathered from smaller earthquakes that followed North Korea’s biggest nuclear test in 2017. A new study published in Science has now confirmed the collapse using satellite radar imaging.

The collapse may have played a role in North Korea’s change in policy. If correct, and with the hindsight of this research, we might have speculated that the North Koreans would want to make such an offer of peace. This shows how scientific analysis normally reserved for studying natural earthquakes can be a powerful tool in deciphering political decisions and predicting future policy across the globe.

In fact, another unusual in South Korea in 2017 also has the potential to affect geopolitics, this time by changing energy policy. “Seismic shift” may be a cliche often used by journalists and policymakers to describe changing political landscapes, but these recent earthquakes along the Korean Peninsula remind us there can really be authentic links between and global affairs.

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