#Solarcity Has a New Plan to Make Distributed Energy an Integral Part of the Grid Solarcity has an idea for how to help California utilities tap their own customers as an integral part of their billion-dollar distribution grid plans:
The plan is called a istribution loading ordera variation of the state longstanding loading order that puts renewables and efficiency ahead of fossil fuel-fired power for large-scale power procurements and transmission planning.
As part of the experiment, the worms were surrounded by fluid containing tiny gas-filled bubbles. Low-intensity ultrasound waves he same type used in sonography ere amplified by the bubbles before propagating into the worms.
#Insanely Fuel efficient Engine Could Go to Mars And Back On One Tank Of Fuel An ion engine that smashes the fuel efficiency record has been registered for an innovation patent.
Inventor Patrick Neumann told University of Sydney student newspaper Honi Soit the drive could go to ars
and back on a tank of fuel but its first application may be shunting networks of small satellites around in Earth orbit.
Neumann says metal fuels have advantages besides efficiency. Hipep uses Xenon, and as Neumann says,
Spaceships using his drive might find capturing fuel made from a dead satellite a handy way to refuel,
but the fuel tank would be empty when you got there. In the second case a return journey would require either scavenging material locally
or parking fuel in Mars orbit, or on a refuelling station established at Phobos or Deimos, preparatory to the voyage.
Visit to BMW factory fuels further rumours of possible partnership During the visit executives from the technology company asked detailed questions about tooling and production,
#GE scientist creates new fuel-saving material NISKAYUNA, N y. For nearly three decades Krishan Luthra stubbornly labored away in a General electric research lab on a long-shot effort to cook up a new type of ceramic that few consumers will ever see or use.
and promises to save billions of gallons of fuel in the coming decades by reducing weight
It has helped GE win jet engine orders worth $100 billion so far from airlines looking to shave their huge fuel bills.
Pratt & Whitney, CFM main competition, is trying to achieve similar fuel savings with a new type of jet engine that uses a gear system never tried before.
and fuel consumption could improve by 10 percent extraordinary gains for a technology that counts a single percentage point of improvement as a huge advance.
It will also almost certainly be used in gas-fired power plants and perhaps in nuclear reactors as well.
a pollutant gas commonly found in vehicle exhaust that also results from fossil fuel combustion. Prolonged exposure to nitrogen dioxide can be dangerous to human health,
and filter harmful gas from air.""This sensor can bring a significant change to our daily life
unlike the gas sensors invariably developed with the existing solid substrates, "says Hyung-Kun Lee,
#New Material Could Turn Water into Fuel Scientists have designed theoretically a new material that could help supply the world with clean energy by turning water into fuel,
the complex new material could also be used to turn carbon dioxide from the air into a carbon-based fuel,
"Finding a material that can help create readily available fuels is one of the holy grails of science,
environmentally-friendly fuels to power the future.""Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen is an energy-intensive process,
which currently requires much more energy in from electricity than comes out in usable fuel. To make the process more efficient,
The Reading-led team used supercomputer simulations to look at many different candidates as potential photocatalysts for fuel production reactions.
With applications for both the food packaging and cosmetic industries, the new bioactive film is a green alternative to traditional petroleum-based plastics
including a small polymer panel that literally goes"poof,"changing from a solid into a gas.
Modumetal's corrosion-resistant metal laminates have won already over the oil and gas industry, which require longer-lasting materials for the construction of oil rigs.
Car companies, the aviation industry as well as bridge manufacturers could be next in line. Corrosion resistance isn't the only super-trait of these metals.
But in gas sensing applications, copper oxide was much less widely investigated compared to other metal oxide materials.
The researchers detected carbon monoxide indirectly, by measuring the change in the resulting circuit electrical resistance in presence of the gas.
Compared to other options being explored in gas sensing which are bulky and difficult to miniaturize,
nanowire gas sensors will be cheaper and potentially easier to mass produce. The main energy cost in operating this kind of a sensor will be the high temperatures necessary to facilitate the chemical reactions for ensuring certain electrical response.
But in gas sensing applications, copper oxide was much less widely investigated compared to other metal oxide materials.
The researchers detected carbon monoxide indirectly, by measuring the change in the resulting circuit electrical resistance in presence of the gas.
Compared to other options being explored in gas sensing which are bulky and difficult to miniaturize,
nanowire gas sensors will be cheaper and potentially easier to mass produce. The main energy cost in operating this kind of a sensor will be the high temperatures necessary to facilitate the chemical reactions for ensuring certain electrical response.
Synthesis of graphene via chemical vapour deposition (CVD) of methane gas onto a copper substrate is the most common way of producing the quantity
In this process, the researchers start with methane, which adsorbs to the germanium surface and decomposes to form various hydrocarbons.
when it explored dramatically slowing the growth rate of the graphene crystals by decreasing the amount of methane in the chemical vapor deposition chamber.
affiliated with the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) Center for Artificial Low Dimensional Electronic systems (CALDES), reported a tunable band gap in black phosphorus (BP),
Like graphene, BP is a semiconductor and also cheap to mass produce. The one big difference between the two is BP natural band gap
allowing the material to switch its electrical current on and off. The research team tested on few layers of BP called phosphorene
which is an allotrope of phosphorus. Keun Su Kim, an amiable professor stationed at POSTECH speaks in rapid bursts when detailing the experiment,
therefore we tuned BP band gap to resemble the natural state of graphene, a unique state of matter that is different from conventional semiconductors.
Their porous properties have led to proposed application in carbon capture, hydrogen storage and toxic gas separations,
to enable solid structures with uses in gas separation and storage. Dr Thomas Bennett from the Department of Materials science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge says:
#Butterfly wings help break the status quo in gas sensing The unique properties found in the stunning iridescent wings of a tropical blue butterfly could hold the key to developing new highly selective gas detection sensors.
has replicated the surface chemistry found in the iridescent scales of the Morpho butterfly to create an innovative gas sensor.
This selective response to vapour molecules is the key to this bio-inspired gas sensor.
and Air force Research Laboratory, produced these new kind of colorimetric sensors that favourably compete with conventional gas sensor arrays in simplicity, stability,
but meaningful gas leaks in a multitude of industrial processes remain an unmet environmental, health,
The research team believe this highly selective colorimetric sensor could represent a significant advancement in gas leak detection performance in the future.
This technique flows a mixture of methane, hydrogen, and argon gases into a tube furnace.
At high temperatures, methane decomposes into carbon atoms that settle onto the germanium's surface to form a uniform graphene sheet.
gas bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen are formed. If this voltage is generated by sunlight in a solar cell,
then you could store solar energy by generating hydrogen gas. This is because hydrogen is a versatile medium of storing
She uses a chemical vapour coating technique (sprayed ion-layer gas reaction/Spray-ILGAR) that was developed
In this process, the titanium dioxide and platinum precursors are dissolved in ethanol and converted to a fog using an ultrasonic bath.
The produced aerosol is directed over the heated substrate using a stream of nitrogen gas resulting into a polycrystalline thin film grown on the chalcopyrite substrate over time with embedded nanoparticles of platinum.
"Because oil and water don't mix, the oil wets the particles and creates capillary bridges between them
so that the particles stick together on contact, "said Orlin Velev, INVISTA Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular engineering at NC State and the corresponding author of the paper."
Chilling the oil is like drying the sandcastle. Reducing the temperature from 45 degrees Celsius to 15 degrees Celsius freezes the oil
and makes the bridges fragile, leading to breaking and fragmentation of the nanoparticle chains. Yet the broken nanoparticles chains will reform
the oil liquefies and an external magnetic field is applied to the particles.""In other words, this material is temperature responsive,
In this process, the researchers start with methane, which adsorbs to the germanium surface and decomposes to form various hydrocarbons.
when it explored dramatically slowing the growth rate of the graphene crystals by decreasing the amount of methane in the chemical vapor deposition chamber.
#Artificial leaf harnesses sunlight for efficient fuel production Generating and storing renewable energy, such as solar or wind power, is a key barrier to a clean energy economy.
a cost-effective method of producing fuels using only sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide, mimicking the natural process of photosynthesis in plants
and storing energy in the form of chemical fuels for use on demand. Over the past five years, researchers at JCAP have made major advances toward this goal,
safe, integrated solar-driven system for splitting water to create hydrogen fuels.""This result was a stretch project milestone for the entire five years of JCAP as a whole,
generating protons and electrons as well as oxygen gas. The photocathode recombines the protons and electrons to form hydrogen gas.
A key part of the JCAP design is the plastic membrane, which keeps the oxygen and hydrogen gases separate.
the membrane lets the hydrogen fuel be collected separately under pressure and safely pushed into a pipeline.
so cannot be used to directly generate fuel. A major advance that allowed the integrated system to be developed was previous work in Lewis's laboratory,
Another key advance is the use of active, inexpensive catalysts for fuel production. The photoanode requires a catalyst to drive the essential water-splitting reaction.
converts 10 percent of the energy in sunlight into stored energy in the chemical fuel,
"Our work shows that it is indeed possible to produce fuels from sunlight safely and efficiently in an integrated system with inexpensive components,
Scientists have developed a simple process to treat waste coffee grounds to allow them to store methane Scientists have developed a simple process to treat waste coffee grounds to allow them to store methane.
Scientists have developed a simple process to treat waste coffee grounds to allow them to store methane London,
Methane capture and storage provides a double environmental return-it removes a harmful greenhouse gas from the atmosphere that can then be used as a fuel that is cleaner than other fossil fuels.
if we can use this for methane storage?'"'"he continues. The absorbency of coffee grounds may be the key to successful activation of the material for carbon capture."
Activated carbon derived from waste coffee grounds for stable methane storage About Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics is a leading scientific society.
a chemical produced by steam cracking of naphtha or by catalytic cracking of gas oil. Butadiene is an impurity in propene streams that must be removed from the stream through hydrogenation
Berkeley Lab researchers find a better way to store natural gas as a transportation fuel Researchers with the U s. Department of energy (DOE)' s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a variety
of metal-organic frameworks (MOFS)- sponge-like 3d crystals with an extraordinarily large internal surface area-that feature flexible gas-adsorbing pores.
This flexibility gives these MOFS a high capacity for storing methane, which in turn has the potential to help make the driving range of an adsorbed-natural-gas (ANG) car comparable to that of a typical gasoline-powered car."
"Our flexible MOFS can be used to boost the usable capacity of natural gas in a tank,
reduce the heating effects associated with filling an ANG tank, and reduce the cooling effects upon discharging the gas from the ANG tank,
"says Jeffrey Long, a chemist with Berkeley Lab's Materials sciences Division and the University of California (UC) Berkeley who is leading this research."
"This ability to maximize the deliverable capacity of natural gas while also providing internal heat management during adsorption and desorption demonstrates a new concept in the storage of natural gas that provides a possible path forward for ANG applications where none was envisioned before."
"Long is the corresponding author of a Nature paper that describes this work entitled,"Methane storage in flexible metal-organic frameworks with intrinsic thermal management."
"The lead author is Jarad Mason, a member of Long's research group. See below for a complete list of co-authors.
The United states holds a vast amount of proven natural gas reserves-some 360 trillion cubic feet and climbing.
While compressed natural gas-fueled vehicles are already on the road, the widespread use of natural gas as a transportation fuel has been hampered by cumbersome and expensive onboard gas storage tanks and the cost of dispensing compressed natural gas to vehicles.
The storage issue is especially keen for light-duty vehicles such as cars, in which the space available for onboard fuel storage is limited.
ANG has the potential to store high densities of methane within a porous material at ambient temperature and moderate pressures
but designing such high-capacity systems while still managing the thermal fluctuations associated with adsorbing
and desorbing the gas from the adsorbent has proven to be difficult. The key to the success of the MOFS developed by Long,
Mason and their colleagues is stepped a"adsorption and desorption of methane gas.""Most porous materials that would be used as adsorbents exhibit classical Langmuir-type isotherm adsorption,
where the amount of methane adsorbed increases continuously but with a decreasing slope as the pressure is raised so that,
upon discharging the methane down to the minimum delivery pressure, much of it remains in the tank,
because the gas must force its way into the MOF crystal structure, opening and expanding the pores.
This means the amount of methane that can be delivered to the engine, i e.,, the usable capacity, is higher than for traditional, non-flexible adsorbents."
when methane is delivered to accelerate the vehicle.""Crystallites that experience higher external pressures will have a greater free energy change associated with the phase transition
Combined gas adsorption and in situ powder X-ray diffraction experiments performed under various pressures of methane at 25°C (77°F) showed that there is minimal adsorption of methane by the cobalt-bpd MOF at low pressures,
When the methane pressure decreased to between 10 bar and 5 bar the framework fully converted back to the collapsed phase,
pushing out all of the adsorbed methane gas. Long says that it should be possible to design MOF adsorbents of methane with even stronger gas binding sites and higher energy phase transitions for next generation ANG vehicles.
He and his group are working on this now and are also investigating whether the strategy can be applied to hydrogen,
and packing strategies should also allow further reductions to external thermal-management requirements and optimization of the overall natural gas storage system performance. c
"Carbon dioxide is 15 percent of the gas coming off a power plant, so a carbon-capture unit is going to be said big
"From flue gas to submarines Power plants that capture CO2 today use an old technology whereby flue gases are bubbled through organic amines in water, where the carbon dioxide binds to amines.
The liquid is heated then to 120-150 degrees Celsius (250-300 degrees Fahrenheit) to release the gas, after
That would pave the way for eventual scale up to capturing CO2 from natural gas plants, which produce emissions containing about 5 percent CO2, to the higher concentrations of coal fired power plants."
which can be a problem in flue gas. And it just happens we got the right length in the amine to make these one-dimensional chains that bind CO2IN a cooperative manner."
as they use the rare gas xenon as a propellant, which also needs pressurization for storage.
Now, engineers from the University of Pennsylvania and Exxonmobil have teamed up to answer this question. With a vested interest in the chemistry and performance of lubricants, scientists at Exxonmobil worked with scientists at Penn
whose research focuses on nanoscale measurements of friction and lubrication. The team conducted research to probe nanoscale properties and mechanisms of lubricant films and ultimately uncovered the molecular mechanisms behind a common anti-wear additive.
Motor oil contains chemical additives that extend how long engines can run without failure, but, despite decades of ubiquity, how such additives actually work to prevent this damage have remained a mystery.
Now, engineers from the University of Pennsylvania and Exxonmobil have teamed up to answer this question. In their experiments, the tip of an atomic force microscope stands in for an individual point of roughness on engine surfaces.
while members of Carpick's lab. They collaborated with two researchers at Corporate Strategic Research, Exxonmobil Research and Engineering Company:
In their experiment, the researcher immersed the entire cantilever-tip apparatus in ZDDP-infused oil,
and sheared the ZDDP-containing oil between the tip and sample, the faster the films grew.
as they would otherwise quickly use up the small amount of ZDDP in the oil.""The tribofilm knows
"Ultimately we hope this will help us to rationally design even smarter engine oils; there's a lot of opportunity to improve fuel economy in vehicles,
but the scientific understanding of how all the additives work is still in development. So the challenge now is to put this new knowledge to good use
the researchers flowed methane through a tube furnace at 1, 000 degrees C over a copper foil that catalyzed its decomposition into carbon and hydrogen.
and react to make a precursor compound that is deposited on a substrate by an argon carrier gas.
controllable stimuli have applications in various fields, from biomedical science to the oil industry. Now, A*STAR researchers have created a self-assembling polymeric material that changes its structure
The researchers anticipate that their smart material will have other potential applications in enhanced oil recovery and biomedical science n
which require a lot of fuel. With further R&d, future AUVS and other marine vehicles can adopt this mechanism to help it evade threats or track something fast stealthily underwater without the need for much energy.
#Engineers invent two-dimensional liquid (Nanowerk News) Where water and oil meet, a two-dimensional world exists.
Their soft nanoparticles stick to the plane where oil and water meet, but do not stick to one another.
"The researchers created a 2-D liquid consisting of nanoparticles at the interface between a drop of oil and the surrounding water.
By sucking the oil back into a pipette, they could infer some of the physical rules that govern this system.
The researchers created a 2-D liquid consisting of nanoparticles at the interface between a drop of oil and the surrounding water.
By sucking the oil back into a pipette, they could infer some of the physical rules that govern this system.
and an oil-loving tail, and the way they are attached to the central particle allows them to contort themselves so both sides are happy
the researchers dripped a particle-containing an oil droplet out of a pipette into water.
which point the researchers could change their packing density by sucking some of the oil back into the pipette.
Some rely on gas-filled chambers; others work only in narrow frequency bands, limiting their utility. Synthetic diamonds with nitrogen vacancies (NVS) defects that are extremely sensitive to magnetic fields have held long promise as the basis for efficient, portable magnetometers.
This work is a significant advance towards developing more efficient electrocatalysts for water-splitting reactions and fuel generation.
#Scientists a step closer to developing renewable propane (Nanowerk News) Researchers at The University of Manchester have made a significant breakthrough in the development of synthetic pathways that will enable renewable biosynthesis of the gas propane.
In this latest study, published in the journal Biotechnology for Biofuels("A microbial platform for renewable propane synthesis based on a fermentative butanol pathway"),scientists at the Universitys Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB
working with colleagues at Imperial College and University of Turku, have created a synthetic pathway for biosynthesis of the gas propane.
Their work brings scientists one step closer to the commercial production of renewable propane, a vital development as fossil fuels continue to dwindle.
Professor Nigel Scrutton, Director of the MIB, explains the significance of their work: The chemical industry is undergoing a major transformation as a consequence of unstable energy costs, limited natural resources and climate change.
Natural metabolic pathways for the renewable biosynthesis of propane do not exist but scientists at the University have developed an alternative microbial biosynthetic pathway to produce renewable propane.
The team led by Nigel Scrutton and Dr Patrik Jones from Imperial College, modified existing fermentative butanol pathways using an engineered enzyme variant to redirect the microbial pathway to produce propane as opposed to butanol.
The team was able to achieve propane biosynthesis creating a platform for next-generation microbial propane production.
Propane has very good physicochemical properties which allow it to be stored and transported in a compressed liquid form.
While under ambient conditions it is a clean-burning gas, with existing global markets and infrastructure for storage,
distribution and utilization in a wide range of applications ranging from heating to transport fuel.
Consequently, propane is an attractive target product in research aimed at developing new renewable alternatives to complement currently used petroleum-derived fuels.
Professor Scrutton comments: This study focused on the construction and evaluation of alternative microbial biosynthetic pathways for the production of renewable propane.
It also expands the metabolic toolbox for renewable propane production, providing new insight and understanding of the development of next-generation biofuels
which one day could lead to commercial production n
#Scientists use nanotechnology to visualize potential brain cancer treatments in real time (Nanowerk News) Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute scientists have developed new imaging techniques to watch dangerous brain tumor
Attempts to use polymers with benzene-like delocalised electron bonding alleviated issues around the thermal durability to a certain extent.
They used a fused ring system of molecules with benzene-like delocalised electron bonding so that the material would readily crystallise.
#'Parachuting'boron on benzene rings (Nanowerk News) Tuning the para position of benzene moieties is significant for creating biologically active compounds and optoelectronic materials.
Yet, attaching a functional handle specifically at the para position of benzene has been challenging due to multiple reactive sites on the ring.
Chemists at ITBM, Nagoya University have developed a novel iridium catalyst that enables highly para-selective borylation on benzene,
Itami and his coworkers have generated a new catalyst that uses steric interactions with the benzene substituent,
making it possible to conduct late stage diversification of core structures containing benzene. The study, published online on April 10, 2015 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society("para-CH Borylation of Benzene derivatives by a Bulky Iridium Catalyst),
The positions right next to the substituent on the benzene i e. the ortho-(2-or 6-)positions are blocked usually by the substituent during C-H borylation.
However, a mixture of meta-(3-or 5-)products and para-(4-)products are observed usually in a 2: 1 ratio upon C-H borylation of a monosubstituted benzene.
and materials science for creating benzene-containing functional molecules, I figured that para-selective C-H functionalization would be an extremely useful technique for the late-stage diversification of core structures.
Caramiphen, an anticholinergic agent used for the treatment of Parkinson's disease contains a monosubstituted benzene moiety along with ester and amine groups.
"More than 80 percent of our energy today comes from burning fossil fuels, which is both harmful to our environment and unsustainable as well.
#Nature-inspired nanotechnology mesh captures oil but lets water through (Nanowerk News) The unassuming piece of stainless steel mesh in a lab at The Ohio State university doesn't look like a very big deal,
but oil doesn't, thanks to a nearly invisible oil-repelling coating on its surface. In tests, researchers mixed water with oil and poured the mixture onto the mesh.
The water filtered through the mesh to land in a beaker below. The oil collected on top of the mesh
and rolled off easily into a separate beaker when the mesh was tilted. This mesh, which is covered in a coating invented at The Ohio State university, captures oil (red) while water (blue) passes through.
Photo by Jo Mcculty, courtesy of The Ohio State university. The mesh coating is among a suite of nature-inspired nanotechnologies under development at Ohio State
and described in two papers in the journal Nature Scientific Reports("Mechanically durable, superoleophobic coatings prepared by layer-by-layer technique for anti-smudge and oil-water separation"and"Nanomechanical behavior of Mos2 and WS2 multi-walled nanotubes and Carbon nanohorns").
"Potential applications range from cleaning oil spills to tracking oil deposits underground.""If you scale this up,
you could potentially catch an oil spill with a net, "said Bharat Bhushan, Ohio Eminent Scholar and Howard D. Winbigler Professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio State.
The work was inspired partly by lotus leaves, whose bumpy surfaces naturally repel water but not oil.
To create a coating that did the opposite, Bhushan and postdoctoral researcher Philip Brown chose to cover a bumpy surface with a polymer embedded with molecules of surfactant--the stuff that gives cleaning power to soap and detergent.
"He explained that certain combinations of layers yield nanoparticles that bind to oil instead of repelling it.
Such particles could be used to detect oil underground or aid removal in the case of oil spills.
The shape of the nanostructures plays a role, as well. In another project, research assistant Dave Maharaj is investigating
which mix well with oil. The nanotubes are approximately a thousand times smaller than a human hair.
"Bhushan envisions that the molybdenum compound's compatibility with oil, coupled with its ability to reduce friction,
In addition, for micro-and nanoscale devices, commercial oils may be too sticky to allow for their efficient operation.
"To repel synthetic materials like oils, we need to bring in another level of chemistry that nature doesn't have access to
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