Lifeboat Foundation

Now, an international team of researchers has developed a tower that uses solar energy to produce a synthetic alternative to fossil-derived fuels like kerosene and diesel. The fuel production system uses water, carbon dioxide (CO₂), and sunlight to produce aviation fuel. The team has implemented the system in the field, and the design could help the aviation industry become carbon neutral.

The solar-made kerosene is fully compatible with the existing aviation infrastructure for fuel storage, distribution, and end use in jet engines. It can also be blended with fossil-derived kerosene, says Aldo Steinfeld, a professor from ETH Zurich and the corresponding author of the paper.

The solar fuel production plant consists of 169 sun-tracking reflective panels that redirect and concentrate solar radiation into a solar reactor mounted on top of a tower. The concentrated solar energy then drives oxidation-reduction (redox) reaction cycles in the solar reactor, which contains a reticulated porous ceramic structure made of ceria. The ceria – which is not consumed but can be used over and over – convert water and CO₂ injected into the reactor into syngas, a tailored mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Subsequently, syngas is sent into a gas-to-liquid converter, where it is finally processed into liquid hydrocarbon fuels that include kerosene and diesel.

Wireless charging roads equipped with energy storage systems are promising electric vehicle solutions by virtue of their strong advantages in time saving and reduced pressure on the existing power infrastructure, according to a paper by Cornell researchers published this month in Applied Energy.

The electric vehicle (EV) industry has experienced remarkable expansion and technical development during the last decade. It is estimated that EVs will comprise 48%, 42% and 27% of light-duty vehicle sales in China, Europe and the United States, respectively, by 2030, according to co-authors H. Oliver Gao, the Howard Simpson Professor of Engineering, and Jie Shi, a former Cornell systems postdoctoral researcher.

Integration of wireless charging roads into the existing electricity market and efficient management of the corresponding energy storage system are crucial for successful implementation of the wireless charging road systems.

A scientific article just published by four Brazilian and two American scientists reports gains in electric and thermal energy obtained when brewer’s spent grain (barley bagasse), an abundant waste produced by the beer industry, is treated with ultrasound before undergoing anaerobic digestion, a microbiological process involving consumption of organic matter and production of methane.

Pre-treatment generated biogas with 56% methane, 27% more than the proportion obtained without use of ultrasound. After purification in methane, the biogas can be used as vehicle fuel with a very low carbon footprint compared to conventional fossil fuels. Moreover, in cogenerators, the methane can be burned off by the brewery to produce electricity and heat. The final waste can be used as biofertilizer instead of mineral fertilizer. The methodology is described in detail in the article, which is published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

The innovative process was developed at the Laboratory of Bioengineering and Treatment of Water and Waste (Biotar) in the State University of Campinas’s School of Food Engineering (FEA-UNICAMP). The research group lead, T nia Forster-Carneiro, is principal investigator for a project supported by FAPESP.

Photovoltaics will play a key role in the future energy supply. Conventional solar cells based, for instance, on silicon, a well-known semiconductor material, are already highly developed and in widespread use. However, their production is complex because it requires a high vacuum with high temperatures. It can take up to five years for the energy used for production to be offset by operation.

This is where solar cells based on organic semiconductors can make a difference, as they can be printed in an energy-and cost-saving way. However, there are limitations to the energy conversion that need to be examined in more detail. A research team led by the Professorship of Optics and Photonics of Condensed Matter at Chemnitz University of Technology has investigated which main factors are decisive for the power limitation of organic solar cells.

The lead author of the study is Christopher Wöpke, research associate at the Professorship of Optics and Photonics of Condensed Matter at Chemnitz University of Technology. He was joined in the study by scientists from the universities of Bayreuth, Bern (CH), Durham (UK), Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Advanced Light Source Berkeley Lab (U.S.). Among other things, the team found that transport resistance in particular severely limits the performance of organic solar cells.

A study led by UCLA researchers could help accelerate the use of hydrogen as an environmentally friendly source of energy in transportation and other applications.

The team developed a method for predicting platinum alloys’ potency and stability—two key indicators of how they will perform as catalysts in hydrogen fuel cells. Then, using that technique, they designed and produced an alloy that yielded excellent results under conditions approximating real-world use. The findings are published in the journal Nature Catalysis.

“For the sustainability of our planet, we can’t keep living the way we do, and reinventing energy is one major way to change our path,” said corresponding author Yu Huang, a professor of materials science and engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. “We have fuel cell cars, but we need to make them cheaper. In this study, we came up with an approach to allow researchers to identify the right catalysts much faster.”

Mesmerising aerial footage has captured a huge swarm of jellyfish off the coast of Israel.

The country’s marine authorities were inspecting the waters of Haifa Bay during the annual jellyfish migration, when its boat was surrounded.

Israel Parks and Nature Authority said that pollution and climate change are increasing the intensity of the jellyfish swarms.

The automotive industry has a ‘million-mile’ dream for electric vehicles, but it’s a boring one. They want to build a battery capable of being recharged over and over as many times as it takes to reach a million miles without losing its ability to retain a charge. Yawn.

We’re more interested in the cutting-edge quantum physics version of a million-mile battery: one that can last a million miles between charges.

This would effectively eliminate the need for the bulk of vehicle operators to ever charge their batteries. Even heavy-use owners could just pop into the shop for routine maintenance every couple of years to top their batteries off.

The high-flying unmanned aerial vehicle has been above Arizona for more than a month, living on batteries, solar power and a prayer.

View insights.

Since 2011, the UK government has been providing a tax-payer funded discount on the sale of battery electric vehicles. Known as the “plug-in car grant”, it was designed to help persuade motorists make the switch from diesel or petrol and commit to electric driving.

But last month the grant was scrapped with immediate effect. It wasn’t exactly a surprise, given that the amount buyers were able to claim back had gradually been whittled down from £5,000 to £1,500; or that it was recently available only for new vehicles costing less than £32,000 (the average cost of electric cars is around £43,000).

Continue reading “UK’s ‘plug-in-grant’ is no more — what happened to making EVs affordable for everyone?” »