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Batteries with high energy densities could enable the creation of a wider range of electric vehicles, including flying vehicles that can transport humans in urban environments. Past studies predict that to support the operation of vehicles capable of take-off and landing, batteries require energy densities of approximately 400 Wh kg^-1 at the cell level, which is approximately 30% higher than the energy density of most existing lithium-ion (Li-ion) cells.

In addition to powering flying vehicles, high-energy cells (i.e., single units within a battery that convert chemical into electrical energy) could increase the distance that electric cars can travel before they need to be charged again. They may also reduce overall fabrication costs for electric vehicles, as similar results could be achieved using fewer but better-performing cells.

Anode-free lithium metal cells are particularly promising for creating batteries with higher energy densities. While they use the same cathode as Li-ion cells, these cells store energy via an electroplated lithium metal instead of a graphite host, and they can have energy densities that are 60% greater than those of Li-ion cells.

A startup energy company in New Zealand believes it can power the world with a wireless electric transmission system that can bring power to hard-to-reach areas and do so at lower cost than with traditional power lines.

The startup, Emrod, has teamed up with a leading power supply company to test power transmission using a series of antennas. The only limiting factor is the antennas must be within line of sight with each other.

The system consists of a power source, a transmitting antenna, multiple relay stations, and a receiving antenna, often referred to as a “rectenna.”

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This is how a rocket consumes fuel!

Otto Aviation’s Celera 500L could carry six business passengers at 450 mph at around 20 miles per gallon thanks to a new high-efficiency piston engine.

A new space-aged propeller plane could overtake business jets at a fraction of the running costs.

Continue reading “New Luxury Prop Plane Boasts Speed of a Jet, Fuel Efficiency of a Car And Fraction of Costs” »

Reaction Engines and Britain’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) have completed a concept study into the practicality of using ammonia as a jet aviation fuel. By teaming Reaction Engines’s heat exchanger technology with STFC’s advanced catalysts, they hope to produce a sustainable, low-emission propulsion system for tomorrow’s aircraft.

Modern jet engines use a variety of fuels based on kerosene that have a very high energy density that can propel aircraft well beyond the speed of sound and carry passengers and cargoes across the globe. Unfortunately, such fuels are also derived from fossil fuels and produce significant carbon dioxide emissions, which the airline industry and many governments have pledged to reduce radically by 2050.

One way of achieving these cuts is to look at alternatives to conventional jet fuels to power airliners. The problem is that most of these alternatives have much lower energy densities than standard aviation fuels and suffer from other drawbacks. For example, present-day battery technology would require future aircraft to be very small, short-range, and with little payload capacity. Meanwhile, liquid hydrogen could be a viable alternative, but so much of it would need to be carried that planes would have to be completely redesigned and new infrastructure built.

For the first time, pressure over 100 times that found in Earth’s core has been generated in a lab, setting a new record.

Using the highest-energy laser system in the world, physicists briefly subjected solid hydrocarbon samples to pressures up to 450 megabars, meaning 450 million times Earth’s atmospheric pressure at sea level.

That’s equivalent to the pressures found in the carbon-dominated envelopes of a rare type of white dwarf star — some of the densest objects in the known Universe. It could help us to better understand the effect those pressures have on changes in the stars’ brightness.

Many have tried, none have succeeded in making it a practical success. Now New Zealand start-up Emrod says they are close.

Since the days of Nikola Tesla, engineers have tried to make it practical to transmit large amounts of electricity. A government-backed startup says they are close.

For the past 70 years, most of humanity’s rockets have been chemical rockets- with either liquid or solid fuel. However, it may be possible for future rockets to use different fuel sources.

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The Defense Department expects to stand up its first battalion of Stryker vehicles outfitted with high-powered laser weapons by some time next year, Army officials say.

“Expect to have the first battalion fielded in 2021 with four battalions by 2023,” U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command chief Lt. Gen. Dan Karbler told the audience at the virtual Space Missile Defense symposium on Tuesday.

The so-called “laser battalion,” as Defense One described it, would eventually deploy the new 50 kw Directed Energy-Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense (DE-MSHORAD) Stryker that the Army is working to field by 2022, a ten-fold power increase over the 5 kw-class system that artillery soldiers have been testing in Germany since early 2018.