Currently cars are pieced together on long assembly lines inside large factories that use massive amounts of energy.
#New tidal energy system could help POWER UK, say developers A British company, in conjunction with Oxford university researchers, believes it has devised a way to overcome this obstacle by creating a new type of horizontal axis turbine that can be used underwater at depths of up to 30 meters, at an economical cost.
Conventional propeller-type turbines are like underwater wind turbines and the number of suitable sites for them are reduced vastly by the size of their large blades,
limiting their use to waters at least 30 meters deep. The THAWT (Transverse Horizontal Axis Water turbine) technology
Developed by Oxford university's Department of Engineering science in conjunction with Kepler Energy, THAWT uses a stressed truss configuration with carbon composite hydrofoil blades.
as the water flows past the fence a head of water is produced that increases the turbine's efficiency.
The phenomenon is called a'blockage'of the turbines and gets larger in proportion to the length of the fence.
Guy Houlsby, professor of civil engineering at Oxford university, says their design is an improvement on the vertical Darrieus wind turbine used in some turbine systems."
"The original Darrieus turbine has blades that are parallel to the axis of rotation, and that means that the loads in the blades are carried entirely by bending of the blades.
"The water flows at right angles to the axis of the turbine so, as the turbine turns, lift is generated by these blades,
"explained Houlsby. Peter Dixon, chairman of Kepler Energy, says the patented turbine is the most efficient yet designed.
According to Dixon,"the rotor is suited to lower velocity, shallower waters, which are areas where you can't put conventional axial flow turbines,
because to make them powerful enough you need to make them very big in diameter
So this turbine goes places other turbines cannot and generates electricity at an economical cost."
"A one kilometer (0. 6 mile) long tidal energy fence, capable of creating 30 megawatts at peak performance,
has been proposed for installation in the Bristol Channel, a major inlet and river estuary between England and Wales.
they could supply up to five percent of the energy requirements of the UK.""The design we have at the moment
which is a chain of these turbines in the Bristol Channel, and if we can build up to say ten kilometers worth,
or six hundred megawatts and just to visualize that that's like one small nuclear reactor's worth of electricity being generated from the tides in the Bristol Channel,
with each rotor having a 25 year design life and the columns and electricity connectors 100 years.
He says that THAWT's electrical output would be equal to that of a nuclear power station, without any of the risk,
tidal lagoon system, consisting of circular retaining walls embedded with turbines which capture the tide's energy."
"A lagoon generates maximum at the turn of the tide when a tidal turbine like ours is actually static, not turning,
so together they constructively interfere, as the scientists would say. Very effective...it's very advantageous to have said both
'Twenty-six-year-old Kuniako Sato and his team at Cocoa Motors recently unveiled the lithium battery-powered"Walkcar"transporter,
Weigel also hopes that it could one day be possible to incorporate an energy harvesting system that would power iskin via the wear's body.
more than fifteen million new miles worldwide, according to the International Energy Agency. That the kind of thing, according to Laurence, that care s the hell out of ecologists. g
where an additional amount of energy is required to strip electrons out of the material. For years, physicists have debated the origin of the pseudogap
and this confers to them the ability to convert glutamine into energy and building blocks to support their growth.
and enables them to conduct electricity. This allowed the plastic sensor to mimic human skin,
which transmits pressure information as short pulses of electricity, similar to Morse code, to the brain.
allowing more electricity to flow through the sensor, and those varied impulses are sent as short pulses to the sensing mechanism.
a flexible electronic circuit that could carry pulses of electricity to nerve cells. Bao's team has been developing flexible electronics that can bend without breaking.
#New solar battery outperforms conventional lithium-iodine batteries By combining a solar cell and a battery into a single device,
researchers in the US have made the first truly viable solar batteries. Not only can this battery compete with regular lithium-iodine batteries,
it can actually outperform them, producing the same output with less charging, achieving an energy saving of 20 percent.
That 20 percent comes directly from sunlight, which is harvested by a flat solar panel on top of the battery.
Below, the researchers have installed a new type of electrolyte that replaces the lithium-cobalt oxide or lithium iron phosphate of regular battery electrolytes with water."
"The truly important innovation here is that we've successfully demonstrated aqueous flow inside our solar battery,"one of the team,
Yiying Wu from Ohio State university, said in a press release.""It's also totally compatible with current battery technology,
very easy to integrate with existing technology, environmentally friendly and easy to maintain.""The team is the same one that debuted the world first solar air battery last year,
and theye now improved on the design, by making the solar panel a solid sheet rather than a mesh,
because it no longer needs air flow to function, and by adding the water-based electrolyte.
Called an aqueous solar flow battery, this world-first design could be the basis of an entirely new class of batteries,
with or without the solar component installed.""In the original version, the researchers used a more conventional liquid electrolyte consisting of part salt
and part solvent (perchlorate mixed with organic solvent dimethyl sulphoxide, to be precise),"Nick Lavars reports for Gizmag."
"This has been replaced with water as the solvent and lithium iodide as the salt, which offers low-cost, high-energy storage capabilities."
"The solar cell is also super-efficient, known as a dye-sensitised solar cell. The team used a red dye called ruthenium to tune the wavelength of light it captures
According to the press release, these electrons are used then to supplement the voltage stored in the lithium-anode portion of the solar battery.
When they tested their solar batteries against conventional lithium-iodine batteries, they charged and discharged them 25 times to see how much electricity they would discharge each round.
Each time, both batteries discharged around 3. 3 volts. But as Lavars reports at Gizmag while the typical battery needed to be charged to 3. 6 volts to discharge 3. 3 volts,
the solar battery only needed to be charged to 2. 9 volts, while the solar panel made up the other 20 percent.
The team now wants to work on increasing this percentage, and are working towards 100 percent energy savings,
which would make it a fully solar-chargeable battery. But as they are, these solar batteries are already looking pretty damn practical."
"This solar flow battery design can potentially be applied for grid-scale solar energy conversion and storage, as well as producing'electrolyte fuels'that might be used to power future electric vehicles,"one of the team,
doctoral student Mingzhe Yu, said in the press release. The design is now patent pending, and the team reports the results of their testing in the Journal of the American Chemical Society S
#Amateur radio enthusiast makes contact with the International space station In the century or so since radio technology has been with us,
it's spawned a huge community of amateur enthusiasts and tinkerers alongside the professionals, and those part-time hobbyists are as active as ever in 2015.
Case in point: 52 year-old UK resident Adrian Lane, who recently had a brief but exhilarating conversation with the astronauts on board the International space station (ISS.
Remember that the ISS is orbiting more than 320 km (200 miles) above Earth and travelling at around 29,772 km h (18,500 mph),
The device is powered by lithium batteries and comes in both indoor and outdoor models. It only weighs between 2 to 3 kg (4. 4 to 6. 6 pounds) depending on the model
#New zealand will shut down its last large coal fired power generators in 2018 New zealand electricity company Genesis Energy has announced that it will shut down its last two coal fired power generators by December 2018-a bold step towards the country
the country will no longer be burning coal to generate electricity, and will stop pumping around 1,
"the Energy and Resources Minister Simon Bridges said in a press release. Because the majority of New zealand's energy already comes from geothermal, hydro,
and natural gas, giving up coal isn't as big a deal as it would be for other countries(*cough*Australia, the United states*cough),
*but the move is still a significant step towards a world where burning coal is no longer the cheapest and most reliable way to generate electricity."
"Historically, coal has played an important role in ensuring the security of New zealand electricity supply, particularly in dry years where our hydro-lake levels are said low
"What's really cool is that the decision was made by Genesis Energy solely on the basis of profits,
In fact, Genesis Energy Chief executive Albert Brantley estimated in a press release that the company will save around NZ$20 to 25 million (US$13 to 16.5 million) each year by not running the coal fired generators.
The two remaining coal-burning generators are located at Genesis Energy's Huntly Power station in Waikato on the country's North Island.
The power station itself will continue to run on natural gas for the foreseeable future. Over the past year and a half, New zealand has increased significantly the amount of electricity it produces from renewable energy,
with nearly 80 percent of its electricity coming from renewable sources in 2014 thanks to huge expansion in geothermal.
In comparison, the average OECD country only gets 22 percent of its electricity from renewables."
"Geothermal generation has doubled more than over the past decade, and for the first time in 40 years, geothermal electricity generation contributed more electricity than natural gas during 2014,
"Bridges announced to the press.""New zealand share of renewable electricity generation is already the fourth largest in the world
and the shift from coal will help us to achieve our ambitious goal of having 90 percent of New zealand electricity supply generated by renewables by 2025."
"Obviously the country's significant geothermal activity and small population gives it a unique advantage
#Whoa, researchers have levitated liquid droplets on glowing plasma French researchers have found a new way to levitate liquid droplets by using a stream of electricity to create a tiny cushion of plasma.
But researchers from The french Alternative energies and Atomic energy commission have devised now a new method managing to float liquid droplets using plasma.
More than just a cool party trick, the new technique provides some important insight into the production of plasma.
It works in a very similar way to something called the Leidenfrost effect, where liquid droplets sitting on an incredibly hot surface begin to levitate on a hot cushion of vapour.
But after further research, they found that by using electricity to make the vapour cushion instead of heat,
they'd actually managed to ionise the gas into plasma.""This method is probably an easy and original way to make a plasma,
"lead researcher and physicist Cedric Poulain said in a press release. But he admits that this was far from the original reason for the experiment,
"Although they weren't expecting to generate plasma at all, what surprised the team most of all was the blue light emission,
which gave rise to the very high electric field necessary to generate a long-term and dense plasma with little energy.
The next step is for the team to analyse the composition of the plasma cushion, which appears to be a superposition of two types of plasma-something that scientists known very little about."
"It's very exciting, "said Poulain of the research's unexpected turn. Even though it wasn't
their results could could provide some fascinating insight into the physics of plasma and potentially lead to new,
The tests come after a feasibility study looking into how dynamic battery charging could solve the problem of electric vehicles running out of juice,
and now a record-breaking solar device made by Australian scientists could mean a whole new category of clean energy production is just around the corner.
Success in the field of artificial photosynthesis normally means achieving an energy efficiency of above 10 percent.
with hydrogen suitable for powering all kinds of technologies. ydrogen can be used to generate electricity directly in fuel cells,
said Macfarlane. ars driven by fuel cell electric engines are becoming available from a number of car manufacturers.
Hydrogen could even be used as an inexpensive energy storage technology at the household level to store energy from rooftop solar cells.
as it would require us to create huge amounts of gravitational energy-something we don't yet know how to do.
and manipulating electromagnetic energy, and so the team from the Autonomous University of Barcelona decided to see
by using metamaterial and metasurfaces to build their tunnel. That meant that they could make the magnetic field from a source,
The researchers call their new method agnetic field human body communication The technique uses the body as a vehicle to deliver magnetic energy between wearable electronic gadgets.
The primary benefit is lower power consumption. Whereas Bluetooth devices worn on the body transmit data via radio signals,
meaning they only have very small batteries in the first place. By sending data via magnetic fields directly through our bodies,
whether sending magnetic energy through your body is a good idea, the researchers say you have nothing to worry about.
#This transparent lithium-ion battery charges itself with sunlight Researchers in Japan have invented a rechargeable lithium-ion battery that can charge itself using sunlight-no solar cell required.
and the team behind it hopes to see the technology integrated into a mart windowthat can act as both a large rechargeable battery and a photovoltaic cell all at once.
Theye since been working towards a battery-integrated window that can store energy from sunlight while also changing its structure automatically to provide a tint during the day.
when the battery is exposed to sunlight, it becomes tinted to about 30 percent light transmittance,
and this allows the energy to be captured more efficiently.""The trick in getting them to be nearly transparent is in making them really thin-the electrodes are just 80 nm
Back in 2013, the main component of the electrolyte for the battery's positive electrode was lithium iron phosphate,
and for the electrolyte used for the negative electrode, they used lithium titanate and lithium hexafluorophosphate-both
of which are used commonly in rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. For the prototype that was put on display in Tokyo last month,
the team reports an output from the battery of 3. 6 volts, and say they managed to successfully complete 20 charge/discharge cycles.
another possibility for the technology is self-charging smartphone screens made from transparent lithium-ion batteries.
when a US ARMY vet used the battery-powered prosthetic to scale a rock-climbing wall, using nothing but his brain power.
Now the team behind the technology has demonstrated how the battery-powered device can impart the feeling of touch on top of grip, movement,
and the vaporisation part of the process doesn't require any electricity. This means the new method is both inexpensive and suitable for areas without a regular power supply-both factors that are very important for developing countries.
The cloak works by employing specially devised metamaterials, which unlike natural materials can bend or curve the reflection of light via their physical structure rather than their chemical composition,
advancements in metamaterial layers have resulted now in the first real invisibility cloak technology that could be scaled up to hide actual people (as long as everybody stands perfectly still, that is.
and consumes a whole lot of extra energy, which actually makes it less efficient than if we just used electrons in the first place.
running them on light instead of electricity, and this new light-based computer chip brings us one step closer to that goal.
and as hydrogen storage materials in next generation batteries,"he added. Last year, scientists used metallic glass to create an iphone case that was 50 times harder than plastic.
"Classified as a metamaterial because it displays properties that have yet to be found in nature,
tailored phase transitions could enable metamaterials to be adapted specifically for different needs in future, "says Heyderman.
'while the high-energy state where the magnets are strongly interacting with their neighbours allows for the movement of information through quantum dynamics.
expensive, require unbroken refrigeration from manufacture to use and up to 12 hours from testing to confirmed diagnosis The test provides rapid, inexpensive, accurate detection of Ebola viral antigens based on colour change within 30 minutes in individuals
No refrigeration required. She then used these silk-stabilised chemicals to design a paper-based test that requires only a serum sample (the clear part of the blood after the red blood cells have been removed) and water to run.
#London is now recycling energy from train brakes to power their stations London has just finished testing a new system that can collect
and recycle energy generated by their Tube trains when they brake, and it already powering their stations completely for more than two days per week.
The city reports that it already shaving 5 percent off the annual energy bill which might not sound like much,
"The trial puts London at the cutting edge of this kind of technology and clearly demonstrates how energy from trains can be recovered to power Tube stations,
Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, said in a press statement.""This complements our wider work to make other forms of public transport cleaner
The system works by collecting energy generated by the trains when they brake before feeding it back into the power mains as electricity."
"In hybrid and electric cars, such recovery systems can help improve range, but in large heavily-packed passenger trains running regularly in one of the most heavily traveled cities in the world,
According to the London transport authority, it collected an average of 1 Megawatt hour (MWH) of energy each day,
Another benefit of the inverter system is that by collecting up the energy and turning it into electricity
"This state-of-the-art regenerative braking system has the potential to transform how we power stations across the...
and significantly reducing our energy bills,"Chris Tong, LU's Head of Power and Cooling, said in a press release."
"We are committed to doing more to reduce our energy use, and this technology-a world-first for metro railways-is one of a number of innovations we're embracing to lower our environmental impact."
Earlier this year, they announced that the Greenwich Power station in southeast London would be converted into a low-carbon power generator for the Tube network,
and still have energy left when leaving the office, "he told Fast Company. The thinking behind the move is that
and have more energy to get more done in a shorter period of time. Feldt reports that not only has stayed productivity the same,
While impressions of staff being happier and full of energy aren exactly scientific basis for declaring 6-hour work days as'better'than the 8. 7-hour work day endured by the average American,
In addition to Tu's malaria drug, Artemisinin, China has pioneered also development of solar and wind technology, and is working on trains that will reach 500 km h.
direct air capture works just like these new solar cells that split water into a hydrogen fuel-the CO2 recycling plant extracts CO2 from the air using a giant complex of fans,
A major limitation of solar and wind technologies, on the other hand, is that they require specific technologies to capture
and disperse energy.""The nice thing about the technology is that there are no real limitations for it to ultimately,
#Researchers create lithium-air battery that could be 10x more powerful than lithium-ion A new lithium-air battery created by researchers at the University of Cambridge points the way to the ultimate battery packs of the future,
the new test battery could prove an important stepping stone in the development of this essential technology.
If you're getting tired of announcements about breakthroughs in battery technology, that's understandable: as they're so essential to modern life,
Any new battery has to improve on what we already have, be safe to use in consumer gadgets,
and that's why many'miracle'batteries have fallen since by the wayside once the initial lab work is done,
not just for smartphones but for electric cars and solar power, where batteries are essential for storing energy to use
The idea of a lithium-air or lithium-oxygen battery isn't new scientists have known for a while that these types of batteries can hold up to 10 times the charge of today's lithium-ion packs (imagine not having to charge your phone for a whole week.
The new battery from the Cambridge university lab has a higher capacity, better efficiency and improved stability compared with previous attempts this stability,
crucial if we're to put these batteries into millions of cars and smartphones, was reached by using a'fluffy'carbon electrode made from graphene.
What's more, by changing the chemical mix from earlier versions of lithium-air batteries,
the researchers were able to prevent the battery from degrading significantly over time.""What we've achieved is a significant advance for this technology
The demonstration battery produced by the scientists still needs pure oxygen in order to charge not something many of us have a ready supply of
and there's still the risk of the battery exploding due to the dendrites (spindly lithium metal fibres) created during the charging process.
using little energy at a low cost, it is now possible with Mexican technology, thanks to the creation of a solar cooling system designed by Susana Elvia Toledo Flores.
where there are areas without electricity and the system could adapt well to preserve their foods
meaning the electricity going in was only slightly less than the heat coming out. Since the 1960's there have been incremental advancements in alloy technology used in Peltier devices.
it is becoming increasingly necessary to have more efficient systems for localized electrical power generation and effective cooling mechanisms.
#Researchers discover N-type polymer for fast organic battery The discovery relies upon a"conjugated redox polymer"design with a naphthalene-bithiophene polymer,
which has traditionally been used for applications including transistors and solar cells. With the use of lithium ions as dopant, researchers found it offered significant electronic conductivity
and discharging energy. The breakthrough, described in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and featured as ACS Editors'Choice for open access, addresses a decades-long challenge for electron-transport conducting polymers,
and discharging energy, Yao said. The discovery could lead to a cheaper alternative to traditional inorganic-based energy devices,
including lithium batteries. Ultimately Yao said, it could translate into less expensive consumer devices and even less expensive electric cars.
Yao's research group focuses on green and sustainable organic materials for energy generation and storage.
He is also a principal investigator for the Texas Center for Superconductivity at UH. Yanliang Liang, a research associate at UH and first author on the paper, said researchers aren't trying to compete directly with conventional lithium-ion batteries."
"We are trying to demonstrate a new direction, "he said. Liang said conventional inorganic metal-based batteries
and energy storage devices are expensive partly because the materials used to make them, including cobalt and silicon-based compounds,
require huge energy expenditures to process. Organic polymers can be processed at relatively low temperatures, lowering the cost.
They also produce less CO2, he said, adding to their environmental advantage. And while conventional materials are finite,
organic polymers could potentially be synthesized from biomass.""Organic-conjugated polymers are emerging as a materials class for energy-related applications,
enabling a path to a more sustainable energy landscape without the need of energy-intensive, expensive and sometimes toxic metal-based compounds,
"the researchers wrote, concluding that"a model polymer, P (NDI2OD-T2), was stably and reversibly n-doped to a high doping level of 2. 0,
and see widespread applications, especially in energy-related ones such as batteries, supercapacitors and thermoelectrics.""The basic polymer used in the work was discovered in 2009;
allowing a battery to be charged 80 percent within 6 seconds and fully charged in another 18 seconds,
Conventional inorganic batteries still are capable of holding more energy than the organic battery, and Yao said work will continue to improve the storage capacity of the material.
"This means we have demonstrated the most important step toward a hydrogen economy--producing distributed and affordable green hydrogen from local biomass resources,
and how it plays into the future of alternative energy production.""Joe Rollin, a former doctoral student of Zhang's at Virginia Tech and cofounder with Zhang of the start-up company Cell-free Bioinnovations, is the lead author on the paper.
the Virginia Tech team used dirty biomass--the husks and stalks of corn plants--to create their fuel.
#First metal-free catalyst created for rechargeable zinc-air batteries Zinc-air batteries are expected to be safer, lighter, cheaper and more powerful and durable than lithium-ion batteries common in mobile phones and laptops and increasingly used in hybrid and electric cars.
This carbon-based catalyst works efficiently in both the oxygen reduction reaction and oxygen evolution reaction, making the battery rechargeable.
The catalyst is also inexpensive, easy to make and more ecological than most of the alternative materials.
"With batteries, cost is always an issue and metal-free catalysts can reduce cost while improving performance,"said Liming Dai,
"These batteries could be used in computers, data stations, for lighting--anyplace batteries are used now.""Dai worked with Case Western Reserve postdoctor Jintao Zhang,
who performed experimental work; and North Texas University's Zhenhai Xia, professor of materials science and engineering, and Zhenghang Zhao, a Phd student, who performed theoretical simulations.
Zinc-air batteries mix oxygen from the air with zinc in a liquid alkaline electrolyte to create a charge.
The batteries can have three times the energy density of lithium-ion batteries, but have been sluggish. To counter that problem,
or foam, with pores ranging from 2 to 50 nanometers in diameter, providing enormous surface area and room for the battery electrolyte to diffuse.
or non-rechargeable battery and a rechargeable battery matched or surpassed that of expensive platinum/metal oxide-based catalysts.
while also investigating other graphitic carbon materials co-doped with different elements for possible use in other energy and environmental technologies.
or better than more expensive metal-based catalysts used in alkaline and acidic fuel cells and in dye-sensitized solar cells."
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