#Floating wind turbines bring electricity where it#s needed It a balloon that lifts a wind turbine. That the easiest way to describe the technology being developed by Altaeros Energies,
led by Ben Glass, inventor and CEO of the young company. Glass has reimagined the possibilities of balloon
and airship technology to lift a wind turbine. Most wind turbine manufacturers are competing to build taller turbines to harness more powerful winds above 500 feet,
or 150 meters. Altaeros is going much higher with their novel Buoyant Airborne Turbine: the BAT.
Altaeros Energies Most wind turbine manufacturers are competing to build taller turbines to harness more powerful winds above 500 feet,
Altaeros Energies Aiming high Most wind turbine manufacturers are competing to build taller turbines to harness more powerful winds above 500 feet,
As a result, the BAT can generate more than twice the energy of a similarly rated tower-mounted turbine.
The helium-inflatable shell channels wind through a lightweight wind turbine. The shell self-stabilizes and produces aerodynamic lift, in addition to buoyancy.
Remote customers typically pay over $0. 30/kwh USD for electricity. The BAT has the potential to bring affordable wind energy to these communities and industries.
The first model will provide enough electricity for a small community, or about a dozen American homes.
Altaeros Energies Remote customers typically pay over $0. 30/kwh USD for electricity. The BAT has the potential to bring affordable wind energy to these communities and industries.
The first model will provide enough electricity for a small community, or about a dozen American homes.
Altaeros Energies The BAT automated control system ensures safe and efficient operation, the highlight of which is the capability to adjust altitude autonomously for optimal power output.
Reaching customers Diesel generators are the standard in power generation for rural and off-grid areas.
and diesel generators, though inexpensive to install, are expensive to operate and maintain. As a result, remote customers typically pay more than 30 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity.
The BAT has the potential to bring affordable wind energy to these communities and industries. The first model will provide enough electricity for a small community,
or about a dozen American homes. Combined with significant increases in energy output and the ability to install the unit in 24 hours,
the BAT substantially reduces the cost of energy and time to reach customersenergy needs. In the future, Altaeros expects to deploy the BAT alongside first responders in emergency response situations
when access to the electric grid is unavailable. Much like other tethered balloons, the Altaeros BAT can lift communication,
and to develop its modular wind turbine for power performance and ease of installation. Altaeros recently received Series A funding of $7 million dollars for the continued development and commercialization of its technology. he new products being developed by the team at Altaeros are exciting
because they have the potential to offer a new method for energy generation which is portable, reliable,
energy storage devices that are important for portable, flexible electronics. The Rice lab of chemist James Tour discovered last year that firing a laser at an inexpensive polymer burned off other elements and left a film of porous graphene, the much-studied atom-thick
The sections are stacked then with solid electrolytes in between for a multilayer sandwich with multiple microsupercapacitors.
Capacitors use an electrostatic charge to store energy they can release quickly, to a camera flash, for example.
Unlike chemical-based rechargeable batteries, capacitors charge fast and release all their energy at once when triggered.
But chemical batteries hold far more energy. Supercapacitors combine useful qualities of both the fast charge/discharge of capacitors and high-energy capacity of batteries into one package.
LIG supercapacitors appear able to do all that with the added benefits of flexibility and scalability.
The flexibility ensures they can easily conform to varied packages they can be rolled within a cylinder,
Ripples, wrinkles and sub-10-nanometer pores in the surface and atomic-level imperfections give LIG its ability to store a lot of energy.
while thin-film lithium ion batteries are able to store more energy, LIG supercapacitors of the same size offer three times the performance in power (the speed at which energy flows).
And the LIG devices can easily scale up for increased capacity. ee demonstrated that these are going to be excellent components of the flexible electronics that will soon be embedded in clothing and consumer goods,
#Carbon nanotube finding could lead to flexible electronics with longer battery life University of Wisconsin-Madison materials engineers have made a significant leap toward creating higher-performance electronics with improved battery life and the ability to flex
#Chemists one step closer to new generation of electric car battery Lithium sulphur (Li-S) batteries can theoretically power an electric car three times further than current lithium-ion batteries for the same weight at much
Chemistry Professor Linda Nazar and her research team in the Faculty of science at the University of Waterloo have announced a breakthrough in Li-S battery technology based on chemical process discovered 170 years ago. his is a major step forward
and brings the Li-S battery one step closer to reality, said Nazar, who also holds the Canada Research Chair in Solid State Energy Materials
and is a Thomson Reutershighly Cited Researcher. Their discovery that nanosheets of manganese dioxide can maintain a rechargable sulphur cathode helps to overcome a primary hurdle to building a Li-S battery.
Their research appears in this week issue of Nature Communications. The fundamental mechanism at work is similar to the chemical process behind Wackenroder Solution discovered in 1845 during a golden age of German sulphur chemistry. ery few researchers study
Nazar group is known best for their 2009 Nature Materials paper demonstrating the feasibility of a Li-S battery using nanomaterials.
Sulphur as a battery material is extremely abundant, relatively light, and very cheap. Unfortunately, the sulphur cathode exhausts itself after only a few cycles
because the sulphur dissolves into the electrolyte solution as it reduced by incoming electrons to form polysulphides.
BASF International Scientific Network for Electrochemistry and Batteries funded the research. The paper co-authors include Arnd Garsuch and Thomas Weiss of BASF n
If you incinerate them at the end of their life cycle they produce additional energy without leaving residues. Nevertheless their durability and stability don't reach that of carbon fibers. epending on the application we are therefore combining carbon with various bio-based textile fibersexplains Prof.
In other cases, battery-operated radio sensors are used. But changing batteries in structures that have several windows can lead to a considerable maintenance expense.
Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems IMS in Duisburg therefore developed a pragmatic alternative:
The tiny sensor is coated with a solar cell and it supplies itself with power. Sensors differentiate between ball and crowbar At ten millimeters,
Thanks to this window space, the solar cell obtains adequate light, even in the darkness of winter.
First of all, they succeeded in depositing the solar cell directly onto the uneven surface of the chip.
Secondly, the chip consumes power so meagerly that energy from the miniscule solar cell spans the dark hours.
like a street profile, prior to coating it with the solar cell, vom Bögel says. Currently IMS sensor prototypes can store enough power for up to 30 hours of darkness.
In addition, the researchers constructed switches that consume little energy, and engineered very short radio protocols. e have extracted every possible microampere,
which was asking for solar cells on chips at IMS around two years ago, provided the impetus to developing the solar radio chip.
Andreas Goehlich group of developers succeeded in integrating the solar cells on the surface of the chips.
Using these solar cells, SOLCHIP seeks to monitor the street traffic for example, or the climate conditions in vineyards. s you can see,
#A Battery That Last Twice as Long A Solidenergy startup has developed a lithium-ion battery that stores far more energy.
which enables ultra-high energy density and high-efficiency electrolyte which enables high current density at room temperature.
Solid Polymer Ionic Liquid (SPIL) electrolyte enables the ultra-thin lithium metal anode and improves the cell-level energy density by 50%compared to graphite anodes
and 30%compared to silicon-composite anodes. Batteries are safe nonflammable and nonvolatile and can operate at elevated temperatures.
It can be manufactured using existing Li-ion manufacturing facility leveraging mature infrastructure. The company says its prototype can be recharged 300 times while retaining 80%of its original storage capacityloser to
#High efficiency concentrating solar cells move to the rooftop Ultra-high efficiency solar cells similar to those used in space may now be possible on your rooftop thanks to a new microscale solar concentration technology developed by an international team
of researchers. solar cells oncentrating photovoltaic (CPV) systems leverage the cost of high efficiency multi-junction solar cells by using inexpensive optics to concentrate sunlight onto them,
which is where the majority of solar panels throughout the world are installed. Giebink notes that the falling cost of typical silicon solar cells is making them a smaller and smaller fraction of the overall cost of solar electricity,
which also includes oftcosts like permitting, wiring, installation and maintenance that have remained fixed over time.
because increasing the power generated by a given system reduces the overall cost of the electricity that it generates.
the researchers combined miniaturized, gallium arsenide photovoltaic cells, 3d printed plastic lens arrays and a moveable focusing mechanism to reduce the size,
and create something similar to a traditional solar panel that can be placed on the south-facing side of a building roof.
very efficient multi-junction solar cells, said Giebink. hese cells are less than 1 square millimeter, made in large,
With each tiny solar cell located in the focus of this duo, sunlight is intensified more than 200 times.
the middle solar cell sheet tracks by sliding laterally in between the lenslet array. Previous attempts at such translation-based tracking have worked only for about two hours a day
because the focal point moves out of the plane of the solar cells, leading to loss of light and a drop in efficiency.
which allows small motors using a minimal amount of force for the mechanical tracking. he vision is that such a microtracking CPV panel could be placed on a roof in the same space as a traditional solar panel
and 99 percent of it everything except the solar cells and their wiring consists of acrylic plastic or Plexiglas,
solved one of the major challenges surrounding silicene by demonstrating that it can be made into transistors emiconductor devices used to amplify and switch electronic signals and electrical power.
These stations also have 16 charging slots for the badge flat batteries. In Medsense HQ, individuals can track, for instance,
have longer battery life and generate less heat than existing mobile devices. The first supercomputers using silicon photonics already under development at companies such as Intel
The new machine mimics the pumping mechanism of life-sustaining proteins that move small molecules around living cells to metabolize and store energy from food.
For its food, the artificial pump draws power from chemical reactions, driving molecules step-by-step from a low energy state to a high-energy state far away from equilibrium.
Youtube video screenshotur molecular pump is radical chemistry an ingenious way of transferring energy from molecule to molecule,
The artificial pump is able to syphon off some of the energy that changes hands during a chemical reaction
but the researchers believe it won be long before they can extend its operation to tens of rings and store more energy.
that allows molecules to flow phillenergetically. his is non-equilibrium chemistry, moving molecules far away from their minimum energy state,
they intend to use the energy stored in their pump to power artificial muscles and other molecular machines.
solar panels that could be integrated into windows, and membranes to desalinate and purify water. But all these possible uses face the same big hurdle:
According to HUS, this amount of hydrogen fuel should provide as much energy as 3 kg worth of lithium batteries.
The lightweight lithium-polymer hybrid fuel cell that converts the hydrogen gas into electricity to power the rotors was developed by a sister company,
called Horizon Energy systems. y removing the design silos that typically separate the energy storage component from UAV frame development,
in-between battery and combustion engine systems, said Wankewycz. The HUS was launched this year to merge the energy systems coming from HES with UAV platforms built from the ground up.
One of the key advertised benefits of this novel quadcopter is its low operational costs:
rones are a special case of the limitations of current energy storage technology because, even more than in cars and other gadgets, there is a direct penalty for adding more batterieshe drone becomes heavier.
#Semiliquid Battery Almost As good as its Lithium Ion Counterparts and Supercapacitators Developed by researchers at the University of Texas, Austin,
the new membrane-free semiliquid battery, consisting of a liquid ferrocene electrolyte, a liquid cathode and a solid lithium anode, exhibited encouraging early results,
encompassing many of the features desired in a state-of-the-art energy storage device. A new semiliquid battery combines all that is best about its lithium ion counterparts
and supercapacitators (pictured above) to bring us closer to the next generation of energy storage devices. Findings of the study were published in a recent issue of the science journal Nano Letters. he greatest significance of our work is that we have designed a semiliquid battery based on a new chemistry,
said lead author and Assistant professor Guihua Yu. he battery shows excellent rate capability that can be charged fully
or discharged almost within one minute while maintaining good energy efficiency and reasonable energy density, representing a promising prototype liquid redox battery with both high energy density and power density for energy storage.
Combining the best elements of lithium ion batteries the most common power sources in consumer electronics with supercapacitators (a relatively new type of battery valued for its capacity to discharge energy in large bursts) has been one of the focal point of much recent
work on energy storage devices. A successful technology of this type would not only make things significantly more powerful,
but also much smaller and lighter, too, allowing them to be charged in mere minutes, rather than several hours,
as is customary today. The new battery high power density (1400 W/L) and good energy density (40 Wh/L) put it in the uniquely favorable position of combining a power density that is as high as that of current supercapacitors with an energy density on par with those of state-of-the-art
redox flow batteries and lead-acid batteries, though slightly lower than that of lithium-ion batteries. This combination is a real winner considering that the battery is designed mostly for use in hybrid electric vehicles and energy storage for renewable energy sources.
Yu and his team attribute the battery stellar performance in large part to its liquid electrode design. he ions can move through the liquid battery very rapidly compared to in a solid battery,
and the redox reactions in which the electrons are transferred between electrodes also occur at very high rates in this particular battery.
For comparison, the values used to measure these rates (the diffusion coefficient and the reaction constant) are orders of magnitude greater in the new battery than in most conventional flow batteries,
explained Lisa Zyga, reporting on the discovery for Phys. org. Before the new battery hits the shelves, researchers still have a lot of work ahead of them considering the lithium anode
which has to be made much safer than it currently is. As long as the electrolyte compatibility is resolved,
the team is also considering the use of other metals, such as zinc and magnesium that could serve as the anode in a battery of this type. e also expect that other organometallic compounds with multi-valence-state metal centers (redox centers) may also function as the anode,
which eventually would make the battery fully liquid. t
#Scientists teach robot to learn new skills via trial and error Scientists at University of California, Berkeley have taught robots to learn.
New technique, called eep learning is a system of algorithms that enable robots to learn motor tasks through trial and error.
It is very similar concept to how humans learn behaviours and get to know how things work around them in early childhood.
It is called already a major milestone in the field of artificial intelligence. Scientists posing with robot they nicknamed BRETT.
It is a major milestone in the field of artificial intelligence as this is robot that can learn by itself
#Taking remote control of your electricity Householders may soon be able to keep real-time track of their electricity usage
and in conjunction with Ergon Energy Retail in regional Queensland. Using an online interface on a computer,
smartphone or tablet Eddy keeps track of electricity use, collects and analyses the data, and makes recommendations to help users save money.
users can also take part in demand management programs offered by their energy company and receive rewards in return,
such as discounts on their energy bill. his unique tool is all about giving people more control over their energy
people can see how their energy use is tracking and make adjustments to reduce costs. he tool really highlights how easy it is for people to make big savings on their energy bill without impacting on their lifestyle. y viewing
when their home is exporting excess energy to the grid, households with solar PV systems can save additional money by programming their system to run certain appliances
when the sun is shining. ith the option of taking part in demand management schemes, the system can also reward households for using less electricity during peak energy periods.
The technology was developed at CSIRO energy centre in Newcastle, where scientists are working with some of the most sophisticated energy technology found anywhere in the world.
The system uses cloud-based software and mini smart meters that look just like the regular circuit breakers found in your meter box.
The smart meters connect to the cloud via a small internet communication device in the house.
The technology is sophisticated based on CSIRO Energy management system, which has also been adapted for use on King Island Smart grid. e want to give households an energy management tool that is simple to use
and unlocks lasting benefits, Habidapt CEO Stephen Kubicki said. ddy gives households control over their energy
and saves them money. s well as giving households tools to understand and manage their energy,
Eddy lets people participate in the energy market by reducing peak demand in ways that, until now, have only been available to large-scale commercial consumers.
Habidapt is currently trialling the technology in homes with solar PV systems in Perth and is also rolling the system out with Ergon Energy in Townsville,
where it is being offered to customers as omesmart e
#Scientists discover key to what causes immune cell migration to wounds Immune cells play an important role in the upkeep
Superconductors are used for many applications including in magnetic resonance imaging devices and for magnetic energy storage. The basis for all superconductors is the formation of electron pairs.
Propelling the electrons in silicene requires minimal energy input, which means reducing power and cooling requirements for electronic devices. f silicene could be used to build electronic devices,
so it can be integrated it into ultra-small renewable energy devices, such as solar cells, data storage hardware and advancing quantum computing. uow195685 o one in the scientific community believed silicene paper could be made
the same design principles could be used to modify materials using other stimuli such as through application of an electric charge,
#An origami battery that generates power from bacteria An engineer at Binghamton University has created a flexible, origami-style battery.
A battery that can create energy from a drop of bacteria-containing liquid is already a fantastic achievement,
bacteria-powered battery made from paper. Just like origami sculptures. This device is not a conventional battery we all know and use.
It generates power from microbial respiration. To explain simply, it extracts power from bacteria the process delivers enough energy to run a paper-based biosensor with nothing more than a drop of bacteria-containing liquid.
The inventor himself said that ny type of organic material can be the source of bacteria for the bacterial metabolism This is great news,
Scientists hope that these new batteries would eliminate such need. Seokheun Choi has envisioned a self-powered system in
which a paper-based battery would create enough energy to run the biosensor. Such sensors do not require a lot of power few microwatts would be enough.
This paper battery costs around 5 U s. dollar cents. Only 5 cents costing device that is so innovative that can produce power from dirty water would seem as science fiction some time ago,
Such simple and cost effective device could change how we look at batteries for variety of different sensors.
However, more research will have to be done until the origami battery will find its practical application. Source:
These challenges have now been met with a new technique developed by researchers at the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI
and the BP energy company. ee combined chemical catalysis with life-cycle greenhouse gas modeling to create a new process for producing bio-based aviation fuel as well as automotive lubricant base oils,
a chemical engineer with joint appointments at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley. he recyclable catalysts we developed are capable of converting sugarcane biomass into a new class of aviation fuel and lubricants with superior cold
and lubricants from biomass optimized using life-cycle greenhouse gas assessment. Corinne Scown, a research scientist with Berkeley Lab Energy Analysis and Environmental impacts Division,
and Dean Toste, a chemist with joint appointments at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley, are the other two corresponding authors.
Biofuels synthesized from the sugars in plant biomass help mitigate climate change. However jet fuels have stringent requirements that must be met. et fuels must be oxygen-free,
because batteries and fuel cells simply aren practical. The process developed at EBI can be used to selectively upgrade alkyl methyl ketones derived from sugarcane biomass into trimer condensates with better than 95-percent yields.
These condensates are deoxygenated then hydro into a new class of cycloalkane compounds that contain a cyclohexane ring and a quaternary carbon atom.
sugar and electricity, says PNAS paper co-author Gokhale, a chemical engineer, who is managing the research project from BP side. xpanding the product slate to include aviation fuels
The rest of the waste biomass can be combusted to produce process heat and electricity to operate the refinery.
This new EBI process for making jet fuel and lubricants could also be used to make diesel
the strategy behind the process could also be applied to biomass from other non-food plants
and agricultural waste that are fermented by genetically engineered microbes. lthough there are some additional technical challenges associated with using sugars derived entirely from biomass feedstocks like Miscanthus
In contrast to the massive and energy-intensive industrial process currently used to separate rare earths, the Penn team method works nearly instantaneously at room temperature and uses standard laboratory equipment.
Connor A. Lippincott, an undergraduate student in the Vagelos Integrated Program in Energy Research, and Patrick J. Carroll, director of the University of Pennsylvania X-ray Crystallography Facility, also contributed to the study.
whereas the neodymium magnet in a wind turbine generator only has two. Currently, whether purifying the neodymium and dysprosium out of minerals or out of an old power tool motor
the same costly and energy-intensive process is used. The technique, known as liquid-liquid extraction, involves dissolving the composite material
#UCLA chemists devise technology that could transform solar energy storage The materials in most of today residential rooftop solar panels can store energy from the sun for only a few microseconds at a time.
A new technology developed by chemists at UCLA is capable of storing solar energy for up to several weeks an advance that could change the way scientists think about designing solar cells.
The scientists devised a new arrangement of solar cell ingredients, with bundles of polymer donors (green rods) and neatly organized fullerene acceptors (purple, tan.
UCLA Chemistrythe new design is inspired by the way that plants generate energy through photosynthesis. iology does a very good job of creating energy from sunlight,
and keeping positive and negative charges separated, Tolbert said. hat separation is the key to making the process so efficient. o capture energy from sunlight, conventional rooftop solar cells use silicon, a fairly expensive material.
There is currently a big push to make lower-cost solar cells using plastics, rather than silicon,
but today plastic solar cells are relatively inefficient, in large part because the separated positive and negative electric charges often recombine before they can become electrical energy. odern plastic solar cells don have well-defined structures like plants do
because we never knew how to make them before, Tolbert said. ut this new system pulls charges apart
you can vastly improve the retention of energy. he two components that make the UCLA-developed system work are a polymer donor and a nanoscale fullerene acceptor.
the process generates electrical energy. The plastic materials, called organic photovoltaics, are organized typically like a plate of cooked pasta a disorganized mass of long, skinny polymer paghettiwith random fullerene eatballs.
But this arrangement makes it difficult to get current out of the cell because the electrons sometimes hop back to the polymer spaghetti
Schwartz said. o there no additional work. he researchers are already working on how to incorporate the technology into actual solar cells.
#Access to electricity and artificial light shortened time of our sleep Science knows that nowadays people tend to sleep less than they used to before modern times.
and electricity has shortened the amount of sleep humans get each night. Lead author Horacio de la Iglesia, said verything we found feeds
but differ in one key aspect access to electricity. They wanted to see if such simple factor of electricity and artificial light could lead to a smaller amount of sleep during an average week in both the summer and winter.
Scientists found these two groups in Argentina. One has a 24hour access to free electricity
and can turn on the light at any desired time, while another relies only on natural sunlight.
The community that had access to electricity slept about an hour less than their counterparts with no electricity.
when electricity became available. However because both of these groups, despite one having electricity, still live in very primitive conditions.
This must mean that with our access to electricity and technology the impact on our sleep habits is even greater.
Scientists, of course, could not watch people sleep and observe their sleeping habits directly. So they used technology.
Now scientists are thinking about ways to expand the research to get more information about links between electricity and sleep patterns in such communities.
whether the later sleep onset and reduced sleep in the community with electricity is due to a shift in the biological clock by measuring melatonin levels in the two communities.
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