The company initiated its own R&d programme focused on biomass conversion. In particular using sugar and starch based products to replace the petrochemical feedstock generated from oil.
'We also derive electricity from solar energy but who ever heard of getting cold from sun?
This machine cools a water-glycol mixture up to negative temperatures of about-10°C."By using heat instead of electricity,
Within 42 months thisambitious initiative intends to build a plantcapable of producing electricity heat coolingand desalinated water by using solar energyintegrated with other energy sources whichare available locally.
The last phase will be devoted toexperimental demonstration in the plantwhich is expected to produce each year morethan 3. 000 MWH of electricity and about8. 900 MWH of thermal energy.
They include biomass producers advancedbiomass pre-treatment specialists catalyticand enzymatic reactions developers and finalchemical and biochemical producers and endusers.
Theproject will provide an efficient bridge betweenthe agriculture and chemical industries byintegrating the entire biomass chain in asingle concept adaptable for use in a rangeof locations.
The new processing route uses European biomass as feedstock which will help to secure and increase the internal EU energy supply.
Jobs will be created for the whole value chain from the initial biomass feedstock producers to the final end users.
BIOCOUP will also help to make a significant contribution to the reduction of CO2 EMISSIONS in the transportation sector through the efficient utilisation of biomass material.
and food from existing industries and the processing of upgraded biomass-derived liquids in existing mineral oil refineries.
This will encourage the acceptance of biomass and further the technological development of biomass production routes.
and water to synthesis gas (syngas) in a high-temperature solar reactor containing metal-oxide based materials developed at ETH Zürich.
In the next phase of the project, the partners plan to optimise the solar reactor and assess
These results enable the operation to be estimated for a particular reactor and allow access to details that could not have been gained through measurements alone.
A detailed analysis of results enables engineers to improve reactor design for higher energy efficiency. Such reactors not only improve operating conditions
but also allow for a more sustainable use of resources. These outstanding results were possible thanks to a partnership between Prof.
The comment period on the proposed carbon standard for electric power plants closed Monday. In a letter coordinated by the nonprofit sustainability advocacy organization, Ceres, 223 companies including industry giants such as Ikea,
and recently announced the purchase of a 165-megawatt Texas wind farm that will boost the home furnishing company total wind production capacity to nearly 1, 000 gigawatts of electricity per year.
and the internet of things and combine test beds projects and activities from different sectors including smart manufacturing healthcare smart energy intelligent transportation and disaster response.
Because biochar can be produced from various waste biomass including agricultural residues this new technology provides an alternative
Potassium and sodium contribute the ions that control electricity in the brain. Researchers added fundamental physics principles of conservation of energy charge
and mass to an older theory of this electricity. They kept track of the energy required to run a nerve cell and kept count of the ions passing into and out of the cells.
But providing electric power to implants without wires or batteries has been a big obstacle. Now engineers are developing a way to send power safely
convert the incoming sound waves into electricity process and execute medical commands and report the completed activity via a tiny built-in radio antenna."
which is caused electricity by pressure. In a piezoelectric material pressure compresses its molecular structure much like a child jumping on a bed compresses the mattress.
or delivering therapeutic jolts of electricity right where a patient feels pain. Finally the"smart chip"contains a radio antenna to beam back sensor readings or signal the completion of its therapeutic task.
and requires no electrical power. A companion smartphone application can automatically correlate the visual results to specific blood hemoglobin levels.
Because of its simplicity and ability to deliver results without electricity the device could also be used in resource-poor nations.
she says. hese proteins could accomplish that same task enzymatically, without the need for reactors and formation of dangerous byproducts.
and 83 percent after 20000 cycles. e see anodization as a route to materials for multiple platforms in the next generation of alternative energy devicestour says. hese could be fuel cells supercapacitors and batteries.
or electrical parts it uses no electricity and requires no batteries. That feature allows Tang to make devices that are smaller and cheaper than current sensors.
and has been shown to cause cancer. ecause biochar can be produced from various waste biomass including agricultural residues this new technology provides an alternative and cost-effective way for arsenic removalsays Bin Gao associate professor of agricultural
#This fusion reactor could be cheaper than coal University of Washington Posted by Michelle Ma-Washington on October 16 2014fusion energy almost sounds too good to be true#zero greenhouse gas emissions no long-lived radioactive waste a nearly unlimited fuel supply.
They have designed a concept for a fusion reactor that when scaled up to the size of a large electrical power plant would rival costs for a new coal fired plant with similar electrical output.
The team published its reactor design and cost-analysis findings last spring and will present results this week at the International atomic energy agency s Fusion energy Conference in St petersburg Russia. ight now this design has the greatest potential of producing economical fusion power of any current conceptsays Thomas Jarboe a professor
of aeronautics and astronautics and an adjunct professor in physics. The reactor called the dynomak started as a class project taught by Jarboe two years ago.
After the class ended Jarboe and doctoral student Derek Sutherland#who previously worked on a reactor design at the Massachusetts institute of technology#continued to develop
and refine the concept. The design builds on existing technology and creates a magnetic field within a closed space to hold plasma in place long enough for fusion to occur allowing the hot plasma to react and burn.
The reactor itself would be largely self-sustaining meaning it would continuously heat the plasma to maintain thermonuclear conditions.
Heat generated from the reactor would heat up a coolant that is used to spin a turbine
and generate electricity similar to how a typical power reactor works. his is a much more elegant solution because the medium in
which is crucial to keeping a fusion reactor going. The new design is known as a spheromak meaning it generates the majority of magnetic fields by driving electrical currents into the plasma itself.
and actually allows researchers to shrink the overall size of the reactor. Other designs such as the experimental fusion reactor project that s currently being built in France#called Iter#have to be much larger than the dynomak
because they rely on superconducting coils that circle around the outside of the device to provide a similar magnetic field.
When compared with the fusion reactor concept in France the dynomak is much less expensive#roughly one-tenth the cost of Iter
Jarboe and colleagues factored the cost of building a fusion reactor power plant using their design and compared that with building a coal power plant.
because the commercial reactor unit already looks economicalsutherland says. t s very exciting. ight now the concept is about one-tenth the size and power output of a final product
The team has filed patents on the reactor concept and plans to continue developing and scaling up its prototypes.
#This atomically thin material generates electricity Columbia University Georgia Institute of technology rightoriginal Studyposted by John Toon-Georgia Tech on October 16 2014engineers have demonstrated that a single atomic layer of molybdenum disulfide
#and ultimately wearable. his material#just a single layer of atoms#could be made as a wearable device perhaps integrated into clothing to convert energy from your body movement to electricity
They monitored the conversion of mechanical to electrical energy and observed voltage and current outputs. The researchers also noted that the output voltage reversed sign
and gives scientists a way to potentially produce high amounts of oil and biomass. In terms of human medicine this discovery gives scientists a promising new model to study tumor suppression and growth.
In the case of solar flares the build up of magnetic energy is emitted in sudden bursts. The sun consists of hot plasma made of electrons and ions.
#New polymer makes solar cells more efficient Solar cells made from polymers have the potential to be cheap and lightweight
but scientists are struggling to make them generate electricity efficiently. A polymer is a type of large molecule that forms plastics
Now a team of researchers led by Yu has identified a new polymer that allows electrical charges to move more easily through the cell boosting electricity production. olymer solar cells have great potential to provide low-cost lightweight
The active regions of such solar cells are composed of a mixture of polymers that give and receive electrons to generate electrical current
The new polymer developed by Yu s group called PID2 improves the efficiency of electrical power generation by 15 percent
when added to a standard polymer-fullerene mixture. ullerene a small carbon molecule is one of the standard materials used in polymer solar cellslu says. asically in polymer solar cells we have a polymer as electron donor
and fullerene as electron acceptor to allow charge separation. n their work the researchers added another polymer into the device resulting in solar cells with two polymers and one fullerene.
when an optimal amount of PID2 was added the highest ever for solar cells made up of two types of polymers with fullerene
The group which includes researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory is now working to push efficiencies toward 10 percent a benchmark necessary for polymer solar cells to be viable for commercial application.
In order for a current to be generated by the solar cell electrons must be transferred from polymer to fullerene within the device.
The fibers serve as a pathway to allow electrons to travel to the electrodes on the sides of the solar cell. t s like you re generating a street
Small cantilever motion harvesters are placed on the bellows and convert this kinetic energy into electrical energy. This powers sensors that also are placed on the bellows
A fuel cell combines stored hydrogen gas with oxygen from the air to produce electricity which powers the car.
could eventually save hydrogen producers billions of dollars in electricity costs according to Gong. His next goal is to improve the durability of the device. he electrodes are fairly stable
That goal is achievable based on my most recent resultshe researchers also plan to develop a water splitter than runs on electricity produced by solar energy. ydrogen is an ideal fuel for powering vehicles buildings
The lowinginfrared light is guided to the edge of the plastic where it is converted to electricity by thin strips of photovoltaic solar cells. ecause the materials do not absorb
The discovery could potentially help engineers make more efficient solar cells and energy storage systems. It also injects new evidence into an ongoing uantum biologydebate over exactly how photosynthesis manages to be so efficient.
and use it to generate electricity or some other useable energy source such as biofuels. CHARGE SEPARATION It takes about one-third of a second to blink your eye.
a critical component of many nuclear power reactors. Production of lithium-7 was banned in the United states due to environmental concerns.
and a disruption could cause the shutdown of reactors. Other isotopes can be used to detect dangerous nuclear materials arriving at US ports.
professor of chemistry and director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute. uch organic flow batteries will be game-changers for grid electrical energy storage in terms of simplicity, cost, reliability,
Solar panels can only generate power when the sun shining, and wind turbines can only generate power when the wind blows.
which could make it a much lighter weight replacement for copper transmission lines. In addition, the researchers believe that the material lends itself to many kinds of highly sensitive sensors. e found this graphene oxide fiber was very strong
#Solar cell spikes let in 99%of sunlight The more light absorbed by a solar panel active elements,
A new one-step process to etch nanoscale spikes into silicon lets the maximum amount of sunlight reach a solar cell,
#Can nano dots outshine current solar cells? University of Toronto rightoriginal Studyposted by Marit Mitchell-Toronto on June 9 2014those flat glassy solar panels on your neighborâ#roof may be getting a more efficient makeover thanks to a new class of solar-sensitive nanoparticles.
This new form of solid stable light-sensitive nanoparticles called colloidal quantum dots could lead to cheaper and more flexible solar cells as well as better gas sensors infrared lasers infrared light emitting diodes and more.
The work appearsâ in Nature Materials. Collecting sunlight using these tiny colloidal quantum dots depends on two types of semiconductors:
-and p-type layers simultaneously not only boosts the efficiency of light absorption it opens up a world of new optoelectronic devices that capitalize on the best properties of both light and electricity.
and with this new material we can build new device structuressays Ning odide is almost a perfect ligand for these quantum solar cells with both high efficiency
But improved performance is just a start for the new quantum dot-based solar cell architecture. The powerful little dots could be mixed into inks
and chemical energy in plants and solar cells and in the future it may enable metals to function as active elements in optical communications.
Geobacter removes any waste produced during glycerol fermentation to generate electricity. It is a win-win situation.
These fuel cells do not harvest electricity as an output. Rather, they use a small electrical input platform to generate hydrogen and increase the MEC efficiency even more.
and converts it into electricity. Vast amounts of excess heat are generated by industrial processes and by electric power plants.
Researchers have spent decades seeking ways to harness some of this wasted energy. Most such efforts have focused on thermoelectric devicesâ##solid-state materials that can produce electricity from a temperature gradientâ
##but the efficiency of such devices is limited by the availability of materials. Now researchers have found a new alternative for low-temperature waste-heat conversion into electricityâ##that is in cases where temperature differences are less than 100 degrees Celsius.
When the battery has cooled it actually delivers more electricity than was used to charge it. That extra energy doesn t appear from nowhere explains Cui.
The process resulted in an electricity-conversion efficiency of 5. 7 percent almost double the efficiency of conventional thermoelectric devices.
and deployed to use it. he results are very promising says Peidong Yang a professor of chemistry at the University of California Berkeley who was involved not in the study. y exploring the thermogalvanic effect the researchers were able to convert low-grade heat to electricity with decent efficiencyhe says. his is a clever idea
This possibility is one of the reasons for the current interest in building the capacity to store electrical energy directly into a wide range of products such as a laptop
or a home where the dry wall and siding store the electricity that runs the lights
and discharge significant amounts of electricity while they are subject to realistic static loads and dynamic forces such as vibrations or impactssays Cary Pint assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Vanderbilt University.
The new device that Pint and Westover have developed is a supercapacitor that stores electricity by assembling electrically charged ions on the surface of a porous material instead of storing it in chemical reactions the way batteries do.
One area where supercapacitors lag behind batteries is in electrical energy storage capability: Supercaps must be larger and heavier to store the same amount of energy as lithium-ion batteries.
and solar cells but Pint and Westover are confident that the rules that govern the load-bearing character of their design will carry over to other materials such as carbon nanotubes and lightweight porous metals like aluminum.
and viruses. ur motors extract chemical energy from RNA molecules decorated on the nanotubes and use that energy to fuel autonomous walking along the carbon nanotube trackchoi says.
what s technically known as the triboelectric effect to create surprising amounts of electric power by rubbing or touching two different materials together.
which leads to a current flow in the external load allowing the charge to be used. his generator can convert random mechanical energy from our environment into electric energy. ince their first publication on the research Wang
because they re very poor conductors. nter graphene the single-atom-thick sheet of carbon that both conducts electricity and because it s so thin allows radio frequencies to pass unhindered.
and Volman recognized the potential. ristine graphene transmits electricity ballistically and would not produce enough heat to melt ice
and processing radio-frequency signals are much harder to miniaturizesays project co-leader Kenneth Shepard an electrical engineering professor. hese off-chip components take up a lot of space and electrical power.
For the battery project Chao added tiny nanoparticles of carbon to the polymer so it would conduct electricity. e found that silicon electrodes lasted 10 times longer
silicon electrodes swell to three times their normal size and shrink back down again each time the battery charges and discharges.
Researchers in Cui s lab and elsewhere have tested a number of ways to keep silicon electrodes intact
and solar cell industry is the first solution that seems to offer a practical road forward Cui says.
#Crystal structure could push the limits of solar cells University of Pennsylvania right Original Studyposted by Evan Lerner-Pennsylvania on November 13 2013 A new model for solar cell construction may ultimately make them less expensive easier to manufacture
and more efficient at harvesting energy from the sun. For solar panels wringing every drop of energy from as many photons as possible is imperative.
As reported in the journal Nature existing solar cells all work in the same fundamental way:
or polarity solar cells need to be made of two materials. Once an excited electron crosses over the interface from the material that absorbs the light to the material that will conduct the current it can't cross back giving it a direction. here's a small category of materials
and of materials science and engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. e call this the bulk photovoltaic effect rather than the interface effect that happens in existing solar cells.
since the 1970s but we don't make solar cells this way because they have only been demonstrated with ultraviolet light
and infrared spectrum. â#Finding a material that exhibits the bulk photovoltaic effect for visible light would greatly simplify solar cell construction.
Moreover it would be a way around an inefficiency intrinsic to interfacial solar cells known as the Shockley-Queisser limit where some of the energy from photons is lost as electrons wait to make the jump from one material to the other. hink of photons coming from the sun
Moreover the ability to tune the final product's bandgap via the percentage of barium nickel niobate adds another potential advantage over interfacial solar cells. he parent's bandgap is in the UV rangesays Jonathan E. Spanier
which is another very useful trait. nother way to get around the inefficiency imposed by the Shockley-Queisser limit in interfacial solar cells is to effectively stack several solar cells with different bandgaps on top of
These multi-junction solar cells have a top layer with a high bandgap which catches the most valuable photons
and cost of the solar cell. he family of materials we've made with the bulk photovoltaic effect goes through the entire solar spectrumrappe says. o we could grow one material
but gently change the composition as we're growing resulting in a single material that performs like a multi-junction solar cell.?
and earth-abundant elements unlike compound semiconductor materials currently used in efficient thin-film solar cell technology. he research was supported by the Energy Commercialization Institute of Ben Franklin Technology Partners the Department of energy's Office of Basic Sciences
and tuned to capture microwave signals researchers have designed a power harvesting device with efficiency similar to that of modern solar panels.
It operates on a similar principle to solar panels which convert light energy into electrical current. But this versatile energy harvester could be tuned to harvest the signal from other energy sources including satellite signals sound signals
and copper energy conductors wired together on a circuit board to convert microwaves into 7. 3v of electrical energy.
what is achieved in solar cells.?It s possible to use this design for a lot of different frequencies
and sound energy harvestingkatko says. ntil now a lot of work with metamaterials has been theoretical. We are showing that with a little work these materials can be useful for consumer applications
In fact it should be possible to construct these power cells out of the excess silicon that exists in the current generation of solar cells sensors mobile phones
. ut we ve found an easy way to do it. nstead of storing energy in chemical reactions the way batteries do upercapsstore electricity by assembling ions on the surface of a porous material.
Supercapacitors still lag behind the electrical energy storage capability of lithium-ion batteries so they are too bulky to power most consumer devices.
since it is very expensive and wasteful to produce thin silicon wafers. int s group is currently using this approach to develop energy storage that can be formed in the excess materials or on the unused backsides of solar cells and sensors.
The supercapacitors would store excess electricity that the cells generate at midday and release it when the demand peaks in the afternoon. ll the things that define us in a modern environment require electricitysays Pint. he more that we can integrate power storage into existing materials
#Ceramic converter tackles solar cell problem Stanford university rightoriginal Studyposted by Mark Shwartz-Stanford on October 21 2013coating a solar cell component in ceramics makes it more heat resistant
which can be absorbed by solar cells to make electricity a technology known as thermophotovoltaics. Unlike earlier prototypes that fell apart before temperatures reached 2200 degrees Fahrenheit (1200 degrees Celsius) the new thermal emitter remains stable at temperatures as high as 2500 F
A typical solar cell has a silicon semiconductor that absorbs sunlight directly and converts it into electrical energy.
But silicon semiconductors only respond to infrared light. Higher energy light waves including most of the visible light spectrum are wasted as heat
while lower energy waves simply pass through the solar panel. n theory conventional single-junction solar cells can only achieve an efficiency level of about 34 percent
Instead of sending sunlight directly to the solar cell thermophotovoltaic systems have an intermediate component that consists of two parts:
which is beamed then to the solar cell. ssentially we tailor the light to shorter wavelengths that are ideal for driving a solar cellfan explains. hat raises the theoretical efficiency of the cell to 80 percent
and his colleagues at Stanford who confirmed that devices were still capable of producing infrared light waves that are ideal for running solar cells. hese results are unprecedentedsays former Illinois graduate student Kevin Arpin the lead author of the study. e demonstrated for the first time that ceramics
and determine if the experimental thermal emitters can deliver infrared light to a working solar cell. e ve demonstrated that the tailoring of optical properties at high temperatures is possiblebraun says. afnium
which may make it useful for protecting solar cells from the elements Lou says. ssentially this can be a very useful structural material coating
CNTS are long chains of carbon atoms that are extremely efficient at conducting and controlling electricity.
Depending on how the CNTS grow a fraction of these carbon nanotubes can end up behaving like metallic wires that always conduct electricity instead of acting like semiconductors that can be switched off.
Then they pumped the semiconductor circuit full of electricity. All of that electricity concentrated in the metallic nanotubes
which grew so hot that they burned up and literally vaporized into tiny puffs of carbon dioxide.
Researchers say the discovery could one day lead to bigger harvests of biomass for renewable energy.
and thus better harvest bioenergy. ong and Daniel Cosgrove professor and chair in biology at Penn State are the lead authors.
#Colonies of wired microbes turn sewage into electricity Stanford university rightoriginal Studyposted by Tom Abate-Stanford on September 19 2013a new way to generate electricity from sewage uses naturally occurring ired microbesas mini power plants
to produce electricity as they digest plant and animal waste. Scientists hope the icrobial batterycan be used in places such as sewage treatment plants
and produce electricity that is captured by the battery s positive electrode. e call it fishing for electronssays Craig Criddle a professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford university.
Engineers estimate that the microbial battery can extract about 30 percent of the potential energy locked up in wastewater.
That is roughly the same efficiency at which the best commercially available solar cells convert sunlight into electricity.
because it could offset some of the electricity now used to treat wastewater. That use currently accounts for about 3 percent of the total electrical load in developed nations.
Most of this electricity goes toward pumping air into wastewater at conventional treatment plants where ordinary bacteria use oxygen in the course of digestion just like humans and other animals.
when graphite is broken down into layers one atom thick is very strong chemically stable and an excellent conductor of electricity.
maintaining the minute space between the graphene sheets and conducting electricity. Unlike in traditional#hard#porous carbon where space is wasted with unnecessarily large pores density is maximized without compromising porosity in Li s electrode.
and sterilization are enormous obstacles without reliable electricity, says Naomi Halas, director of the Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) at Rice university. olar steam efficiency at converting sunlight directly into steam opens up new possibilities for off-grid sterilization that simply aren available today In a previous study last year,
Photovoltaic solar panels, by comparison, typically have an overall energy efficiency of around 15 percent. When used in the autoclaves in the tests,
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