The UK’s grid operator is investigating unexplained shifts in electricity frequency on Sunday
Category: energy – Page 34
More than 90 per cent of Spain’s power restored
Power in Spain and Portugal has been mostly restored after a mass blackout paralysed most of the Iberian Peninsula.
Just over 92 per cent of Spain’s power is back, REE, the country’s electricity operator said early on Tuesday, and around 80 per cent of customers in Portugal are reported to have electricity.
Spain has declared a state of emergency in what is believed to be Europe’s largest power cut.
Diamonds are forever? World-first carbon-14 diamond battery made
Scientists and engineers from the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and the University of Bristol have successfully created the world’s first carbon-14 diamond battery.
This new type of battery has the potential to power devices for thousands of years, making it an incredibly long-lasting energy source.
The battery leverages the radioactive isotope, carbon-14, known for its use in radiocarbon dating, to produce a diamond battery.
Atomically dispersed barium hydride catalysts enable deuteration of nonactivated alkylarenes
Alkali and alkaline earth metal hydrides hold great promise for hydrogen storage and hydrogen-involved chemical transformations due to the unique properties of hydridic hydrogen (H-). However, bulk hydrides often suffer from high lattice energy and limited exposure of active sites, hindering their catalytic performance.
In a study published in Nature Communications, a research group led by Prof. Guo Jianping and Prof. Chen Ping from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, collaborating with Prof. Chang Fei from Yongjiang Laboratory and Prof. Rao Li, from Central China Normal University, developed atomically dispersed barium hydride catalysts for the synthesis of deuterated alkylarenes.
Researchers synthesized atomically dispersed barium hydride catalysts on magnesium oxide (BaH/MgO) using a convenient impregnation-hydrogenation method. This (sub)nanostructured hydride material acted as an efficient, transition metal-free heterogeneous catalyst for hydrogen activation and hydrogen isotope exchange reactions across a range of nonactivated alkylarene substrates.
US’ new hydrogen fuel cell shows 1.1% power loss after 90,000 cycles
UCLA researchers have developed a groundbreaking graphene-protected catalyst that extends hydrogen fuel cell lifespans beyond 200,000 hours.
Japanese scientists’ approach can enable cheap hydrogen fuel production
Scientists have demonstrated that a surface reconstruction strategy can enable affordable hydrogen fuel production. The hydrogen fuel is created using The hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). However, scaling this process from a lab experiment to large-scale commercial production has been challenging.
Now, scientists in Japan have showcased that a surface reconstruction pathway can produce durable, non-noble metal-based cathodes that speed up the HER reaction.
Researchers highlighted that they can maintain their performance for more than 300 hours and are calculated to cost very close to the US Department of Energy’s 2026 H2 production target ($2.00 per kgH2-1).
Sun’s explosions echo in Earth’s skies: How the atmosphere synchronizes with solar flare pulsations
Earth’s atmosphere is much more sensitive to ripples of radiation from the sun than scientists previously believed, new research by Queen’s University Belfast has found.
Solar flares, which are sudden and intense bursts of energy from the sun’s magnetic field, happen regularly.
Understanding how they impact the Earth’s atmosphere is important as very powerful flares can cause inaccuracies in GPS systems and, in extreme cases, can cause total radio blackouts, where all signal is lost.