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Category: sustainability – Page 115

New technique converts excess renewable energy to natural gas

Four Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers have partnered with Los Angeles-based SoCalGas and Munich, Germany-based Electrochaea to develop an electrobioreactor to allow excess renewable electricity from wind and solar sources to be stored in chemical bonds as renewable natural gas.

When renewable electricity supply exceeds demand, electric-utility operators intentionally curtail production of renewable electricity to avoid overloading the grid. In 2020, in California, more than 1.5 million megawatt hours of renewable electricity were curtailed, enough to power more than 100,000 households for a full year.

This practice also occurs in other countries. The team’s electrobioreactor uses the renewable electricity to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen. The microbes then use the hydrogen to convert carbon dioxide into methane, which is a major component of natural gas. Methane can then be moved around in natural gas pipelines and can be stored indefinitely, allowing the renewable energy to be recovered when it is most needed.

Harnessing Hemp: Empowering Native American Economies

“There is still significant interest and potential in industrial uses of hemp,” said Dr. Jeffrey Steiner.

How can hemp production help boost local Native American economies? This is what a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture hopes to achieve as they recently awarded this grant to the Global Hemp Innovation Center at Oregon State University (OSU) to foster collaboration with 13 Native American Tribes across the western United States, including California, Montana, Nevada, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon with the goal of creating economic stimuli for those communities while improving hemp production.

The grant comes with four primary objectives in achieving collaboration with the 13 Tribal nations, including educational opportunities, technology development, building trade networks, and ensuring product quality. This grant comes as the 2018 Farm Bill helped legalize hemp, leading to hemp production reaching $824 million across the United States in 2021.

Company develops revolutionary technology that allows wind turbines to practically build themselves: ‘It will be a gamechanger’

“Gigantic aluminum spiders” might sound like the stuff of nightmares or an antagonist in an anime series. However, for one Norwegian company, they could be the future of the wind energy industry.

WindSpider, a tech company that focuses on onshore and offshore wind turbines, has developed a new self-erecting crane system that could revolutionize the way turbines are built.

The WindSpider crane uses the tower of the wind turbine itself as part of the crane while performing installation, maintenance, repowering, and decommissioning of bottom-fixed and floating offshore wind turbines. This allows operations to be performed on floating turbines on site and at sea and for a lifting capacity that can be scaled to over 1,500 tons with no height limitations.

Unveiling Cosmic Secrets and Earth’s Mysteries With NASA’s Latest CubeSat Fleet

NASA ’s CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) is sending four CubeSats to the International Space Station to advance space-based technologies in solar power, gamma-ray burst detection, and water monitoring. Developed in collaboration with universities and NASA, these satellites aim to enhance our understanding of cosmic phenomena and Earth’s environmental dynamics.

NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative is sending a group of four small satellites, called CubeSats, to the International Space Station (ISS) as ELaNa 51 (Educational Launch of Nanosatellites). These small payloads have been developed by NASA and universities and will be deployed from low Earth orbit.

Once circling Earth, the satellites will help demonstrate and mature technologies meant to improve solar power generation, detect gamma-ray bursts, determine crop water usage, and measure root-zone soil and snowpack moisture levels.

Novel Material Increases Perovskite Solar Cell Efficiency by 15.8%

In an article published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry C, Brazilian researchers describe a strategy to enhance the efficiency and stability of solar cells made of perovskite, a semiconductor material produced in the laboratory. The results of the project could be highly positive for the future of the solar power sector.

Developed by researchers at São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Bauru, Brazil, the method involves the use of a class of materials known as MXenes, a family of two-dimensional materials with a graphene-like structure combining transition metals, carbon and/or nitrogen, and surface functional groups such as fluoride, oxygen or hydroxyl. Their properties include high electrical conductivity, good thermal stability, and high transmittance (relating to the amount of light that passes through a substance without being reflected or absorbed).

New U.S. vehicle emission standards for 2027–2032

The Biden administration has today announced new vehicle emission standards for 2027–2032, as it pushes for wider adoption of hybrid and electric vehicles.

Tesla Model 3 at a charging station in Delaware, United States. Credit: K.A

Automobile emissions in the United States could be slashed by half within the next eight years, thanks to new standards finalised and published today by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The ambitious set of rules – not only aimed at reducing air pollution, but also cutting fuel costs – are to be phased in between 2027 and 2032.