#Electrolyte Genome Could Be Battery Game-Changer A new breakthrough batteryne that has significantly higher energy,
But Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientist Kristin Persson says she can take some of the guesswork out of the discovery process with her Electrolyte Genome.
A battery scientist looking for a new electrolyte would specify the desired parameters and properties
and the Electrolyte Genome would return a short list of promising candidate molecules, dramatically speeding up the discovery timeline. lectrolytes are a stumbling block for many battery technologies,
whether the platform is designed for electric vehicles or a flow battery for grid applications, Persson said. hat we can do is calculate the properties of a large number of molecules
and give experimentalists a much better set of materials to work with than if they were to explore all possible combinations.
The electrolyte is a chemical substance that carries electrical charge between the battery anode and cathode to charge
Persson Electrolyte Genome, launched more than two years ago, uses high-throughput computer screening to calculate the properties
not only of these three components but also their interactions with each other. f we can come up with an electrolyte that has a higher electrochemical window for multivalent batteries,
the Electrolyte Genome offers two other significant advantages to battery scientists. The first is that it could generate novel ideas. hile there are some amazing organic chemists out there,
The second advantage of the Electrolyte Genome is that it can add to scientistsfundamental understanding of chemical interactions. t adds explanations to why certain things work
How it works funnel method The Electrolyte Genome uses the infrastructure of the Materials Project, a database of calculated properties of thousands of known materials,
The methodology has been validated with known electrolytes. Using the supercomputers at Berkeley Lab National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC),
the researchers can screen hundreds of molecules per day. To date more than 15,000 molecules for electrolytesncluding 10,000 redox active molecules, hundreds of conductive network molecules,
Early success stories The Electrolyte Genome first major scientific findinghat magnesium electrolytes are very prone to forming ion pairs,
They had another success screening molecules for redox capabilities for flow batteries for fellow Berkeley Lab scientist Brett Helms. e basically gave us a chemical space of organogelator molecules and asked
which plants use the energy in sunlight to synthesize carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water. However
Yang, who also holds appointments with UC Berkeley and the Kavli Energy Nanosciences Institute (Kavli-ENSI) at Berkeley
Yet fossil fuels, especially coal, will remain a significant source of energy to meet human needs for the foreseeable future.
and combined with water for the synthesis of molecular products that form biomass, says Chris Chang, an expert in catalysts for carbon-neutral energy conversions. n our system,
nanowires harvest solar energy and deliver electrons to bacteria, where carbon dioxide is reduced and combined with water for the synthesis of a variety of targeted, value-added chemical products.
#Researchers Identify Calorie-Burning'Beige'Fat in Humans For the first time, a research team, led by a UC San francisco biologist,
has isolated energy-burning eigefat from adult humans, which is known to be able to convert unhealthy white fat into healthy brown fat.
white, which stores energy and is linked with diabetes and obesity, and brown, which produces heat by burning energy
and is associated with leanness. Human babies are born with brown fat as a natural defense against cold,
it generally caused by an imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure, Kajimura said. o far,
all of the approved anti-obesity medications reduce energy intake by decreasing appetite. They work in the short term,
If we have a compound that increases energy expenditure by recruiting new brown fat and activating brown fat thermogenesis,
This would be a novel approach to modulating whole-body energy balance. o
#An electronic micropump to deliver treatments deep within the brain Many potentially efficient drugs have been created to treat neurological disorders,
Department of energy Conversion and storage (DTU Energy) has discovered a new way to stabilize an ion conducting material with a 100 times faster ion conductivity than all previous known ion conductors. he new
head of the research in electro functional materials at DTU Energy and one of the co-authors of this paper.
which are the basic charges to make the building blocks of ionic devices such as to name only a few can be, fuel cells, electrolysis cells, batteries, gas sensors,
the researchers of DTU Energy also managed to give the material new properties, which it didn have before.
with applications for everything from fuel cells to biological implants. t a huge step for nanofabrication, said Jan Schroers, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Yale,
Manufacturers will be able to optimize the design to a desired electrochemical behavior for a battery or fuel cell, for example.
Finally, the structures are treated with oxygen plasma to remove graphene. Scanning electron micrographs of the structures reveal extremely small nanogaps between the gold layers.
the electromagnetic field that is confined within the gap becomes enormously enhanced. This enhanced electromagnetic field, in turn, increases the signal produced by any molecule within the gap. f some disease marker comes in and bridges the gap between the nanostructures
you would observe a change in the light scattering from the nanogap that would correspond to
Raman spectroscopic measurements of the gold nanostructures reveal that small amounts of graphene still remain between the gold layers after being treated with oxygen plasma.
you dissipate the crack energy. A manufacturing process that transferable and scalable When scientists first started trying to make glass-like spinel,
his fiber can remote the energy from the laser, which is inside the platform, to a device on the outside,
so that an electromagnetic field can interact with them. This interaction is measured then, which gives vital information on the molecule mass-to-charge ratio.
Cells'energy plant also plays key role in stem cell development Researchers at NYU Langone Medical center have discovered that mitochondria, the major energy source for most cells,
also play an important role in stem cell development a purpose notably distinct from the tiny organelle traditional job as the cell main source of the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) energy needed for routine cell metabolism.
because ATP synthase energy production is common among all cells that have a nucleus, it is highly likely that its structural role in early mitochondrial development is the same for all mammals,
not just for outlining a new role for the mitochondria beyond energy production, but also because it appears that ATP synthase role in stem cell development is independent of its power-generating role, first described in the 1960s and subject of the 1997 Nobel prize in Chemistry.
and lattice vibrations in a crystal of lithium niobate and to observe how a laser focused onto a glass plate creates a hot, rapidly expanding plume of plasma.
#Against the Stream Scientists have created microbe-sized beads that can utilize energy in the environment to self-propel upstream by purely physical means.
Under blue light the hematite conducts electricity and when bathed in hydrogen peroxide will catalyze a chemical reaction to split oxygen from hydrogen.
Experimental flexibility will be provided by swapping mirror packs with different energy responses. Extensive simulations and off-line testing of the system optics and other components have produced good results
a major step toward the goal of reducing energy dissipation in modern electronics. o reduce the power draw
A large portion of the energy used in computing is spent on transferring data from one type of memory to another.
Doing that quickly takes more energy and generates more heat. In past research, Salahuddin and his colleagues found that directing electrical current through the rare metal tantalum creates polarity in magnets without an external magnetic field.
#Power grid forecasting tool reduces costly errors Accurately forecasting future electricity needs is tricky, with sudden weather changes and other variables impacting projections minute by minute.
and the potential to save millions in wasted energy costs has been developed by researchers at the U s. Department of energy Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
PNNL's Power grid Integrator has demonstrated up to a 50 percent improvement in forecasting future electricity needs over several commonly used tools.
which could save millions in wasted electricity costs. PNNL Power grid Integrator has demonstrated up to a 50 percent improvement in forecasting future electricity needs over several commonly used tools.
Project lead Luke Gosink, right, consults on the use of the new tool, which could save millions in wasted electricity costs.
Performance of the tool, called the Power Model Integrator, was tested against five commonly used forecasting models processing a year worth of historical power system data. or forecasts one-to-four hours out,
we saw a 30-55 percent reduction in errors, said Luke Gosink, a staff scientist and project lead at PNNL. t was with longer-term forecasts the most difficult to accurately make where we found the tool actually performed best.
The advancement is featured this week as a best conference paper in the power system modeling and simulation session at the IEEE Power & Energy Society general meeting in Denver.
A delicate balancing act Fluctuations in energy demand throughout the day, season and year along with weather events and increased use of intermittent renewable energy from the sun
put stress on power generators and lead to instabilities in the power system. Grid coordinators have the daily challenge of forecasting the need for
and scheduling exchanges of power to and from a number of neighboring entities. The sum of these future transactions, called the net interchange schedule,
Accurate forecasting of the schedule is critical not only to grid stability, but a power purchaser bottom line. magine the complexity for coordinators at regional transmission organizations who must accurately predict electricity needs for multiple entities across several states,
Gosink noted. ur aim was to put better tools in their hands. Five heads better than one Currently
Each model tends to excel at capturing certain grid behavior characteristics, but not necessarily the whole picture.
what was occurring on the grid at any given moment. First, the team developed a statistical framework capable of guiding an iterative process to assemble,
and in real time to address a variety scenarios that impact electricity use, from peak periods during the day to seasonal swings.
To do this, the tool accesses short-and long-term trends on the grid as well as the historical forecasting performance of the individual and combined models.
making it possible to process a year worth of historical grid data within a few days.
and trapping molecules in recent years has opened up an entirely new energy regime for studying chemical reactivity at temperatures below one micro-Kelvin,
bacteria could be reprogrammed to convert readily available sources of natural energy into pharmaceuticals, plastics and fuel products. he basic idea is that we want to accelerate evolution to make awesome amounts of valuable chemicals,
Subramanian Sankaranarayanan and Sanket Deshmukh at CNM used the high-performance computing resources at DOE National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center and the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF
the researchers unveil how one of a battery of chemical warfare agents used by the immune system to fight off infection can itself create DNA mutations that lead to cancer.
Superfluids are thought to flow endlessly, without losing energy, similar to electrons in a superconductor. Observing the behavior of superfluids
and develop energy-efficient methods for transporting electricity. But superfluids are temperamental, and can disappear in a flash
such as extraordinary strength (it is about 200 times stronger than steel by weight), almost transparent nature and conductivity of heat and electricity with great efficiency.
which is not as efficient in conducting electricity and dissipating heat. However, to use graphene in such applications is not easy
which conducts electricity and heat with such efficiency that it is likely to revolutionize electronics.
with Trends Continuing into 2015 The installed price of distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems in the United states continues to fall precipitously.
notes Galen Barbose of Berkeley Lab Electricity Markets and Policy Group, the report lead author.
The Installed Price of Residential and Nonresidential Photovoltaic systems in the United states, is the eighth edition in Berkeley Lab Tracking the Sun report series.
specifically how it relates to brown and beige fat tissue and energy use. Irisin discovery in 2012 was exciting
A robot requires between ten and 100 times more energy than an animal to do the same thing.
or corrosion damage or in energy technology to build new electrolytes for rechargeable batteries or enhanced dielectrics for supercapacitors.
#Flexible, biodegradable device can generate power from touch Longstanding concerns about portable electronics include the devicesshort battery life and their contribution to e waste.
& Interfaces the development of a biodegradable nanogenerator made with DNA that can harvest the energy from everyday motion and turn it into electrical power.
and tapping on our keyboards release energy that largely dissipates, unused. Several years ago, scientists figured out how to capture some of that energy
and convert it into electricity so we might one day use it to power our mobile gadgetry.
Achieving this would not only untether us from wall outlets, but it would also reduce our demand on fossil-fuel-based power sources.
To improve the material energy harvesting ability, they added DNA, which has good electrical properties and is biocompatible and biodegradable.
ultra-miniaturized energy-processing chips and pens filled with high-tech inks for Do it yourself chemical sensors.
By scattering faint laser light from the quantum dot, the noise of part of the electromagnetic field was reduced to an extremely precise and low level
This was done at the expense of making other parts of the electromagnetic field less measurable, meaning that it became possible to create a level of noise that was lower-than-nothing, in keeping with Heisenberg uncertainty principle,
which fluctuations in the electromagnetic field could be measured on a graph creates a shape where the uncertainty of one part has been reduced,
battery-operated device that might deliver answers in minutes, instead of days. Identification takes place within a microscopically small channel in a chip made from glass and silicone polymer.
The blood samples would be spun on a simple mechanical device resembling an eggbeater to separate the plasma from the blood cells.
The plasma would then be placed into a test tube or other container with a pellet containing the modified E coli.
Once mixed with the plasma, the E coli would multiply, producing the color corresponding to the level of zinc in the blood plasma.
when the plasma sample is added, though we are hoping to accelerate that, said Styczynski. The testing wouldn be done to identify individuals in need of treatment,
Revealed by a brand new lectron camera, one of the world speediest, this unprecedented level of detail could guide researchers in the development of efficient solar cells, fast and flexible electronics and high-performance chemical catalysts.
This animation explains how researchers use high-energy electrons at SLAC to study faster-than-ever motions of atoms and molecules relevant to important materials properties and chemical processes.
and an extraordinary ability to conduct electricity and heat. But how do these monolayers acquire their unique characteristics?
Understanding these dynamic ripples could provide crucial clues for the development of next-generation solar cells, electronics and catalysts.
and could be used in future solar cells. Because of this strong interaction with light, researchers also think they may be able to manipulate the material properties with light pulses. o engineer future devices,
where critical resources, including reliable electric power, laboratory space, and computational server capacity, are limited often severely,
energy harvesters that would convert waste heat to electricity and ultimately for a new way to efficiently capture solar energy.
and believe that a rectenna with commercial potential may be available within a year. e could ultimately make solar cells that are twice as efficient at a cost that is ten times lower,
we could apply it to energy conversion technologies and solar energy capture. The research, supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) Systems Center and the Army Research Office (ARO
or other material that would produce flexible solar cells or photodetectors. Cola sees the rectennas built so far as simple proof of principle.
which was understood already to help convert fat into energy, and to be involved in brain formation,
at times requiring a battery of different tests. That because current tests aren sensitive enough to detect low levels of viral bugs
#Making Batteries with Portabella Mushrooms Can portabella mushrooms stop cell phone batteries from degrading over time?
They have created a new type of lithium-ion battery anode using portabella mushrooms, which are inexpensive, environmentally friendly and easy to produce.
The current industry standard for rechargeable lithium-ion battery anodes is synthetic graphite, which comes with a high cost of manufacturing
With the anticipated increase in batteries needed for electric vehicles and electronics, a cheaper and sustainable source to replace graphite is needed.
Using biomass a biological material from living or recently living organisms, as a replacement for graphite, has drawn recent attention because of its high carbon content, low cost and environmental friendliness.
UC Riverside engineers were drawn to using mushrooms as a form of biomass because past research has established they are highly porous,
That porosity is important for batteries because it creates more space for the storage and transfer of energy, a critical component to improving battery performance.
In addition, the high potassium salt concentration in mushrooms allows for increased electrolyte-active material over time by activating more pores
gradually increasing its capacity. A conventional anode allows lithium to fully access most of the material during the first few cycles
and current-collector free approach to anode fabrication. ith battery materials like this, future cell phones may see an increase in run time after many uses, rather than a decrease,
Hierarchically Porous Carbon Anodes for Li-ion Batteries, published on Sept. 29 in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
which is important for battery electrodes because such architectures possess a very large surface area for the storage of energy, a critical component to improving battery performance.
One of the problems with conventional carbons, such as graphite, is that they are prepared typically with chemicals such as acids
such as the skin of the caps of portabella mushrooms, for making batteries. It is expected that nearly 900,000 tons of natural raw graphite would be needed for anode fabrication for nearly six million electric vehicle forecast to be built by 2020.
This paper involving mushrooms is published just over a year after the Ozkan labs developed a lithium-ion battery anode based on nanosilicon via beach sand as the natural raw material.
Ozkan team is currently working on the development of pouch prototype batteries based on nanosilicon anodes. The UCR Office of Technology Commercialization has filed patents for the inventions above o
LHON is one of many diseases tied to gene mutations that damage the tiny energy factories that power our cells,
Mitochondria are as complex as any modern manufacturing facility, with specialized machinery for converting nutrients and oxygen into cellular energy.
In fact, it could literally reshape solar cells. Scientists could potentially create ight antennasthin, pole-like devices that could absorb light from all directions,
Devices such as solar cells and photosensors work better if the crystals grow vertically because vertical crystals can be packed more densely in the semiconductor,
The hemapen is a prototype blood collection and storage device which enables users to take blood samples at home in a safe and portable application.
#Discovery about new battery overturns decades of false assumptions New findings at Oregon State university have overturned a scientific dogma that stood for decades,
by showing that potassium can work with graphite in a potassium-ion battery a discovery that could pose a challenge and sustainable alternative to the widely-used lithium-ion battery.
Lithium-ion batteries are ubiquitous in devices all over the world, ranging from cell phones to laptop computers and electric cars.
But there may soon be a new type of battery based on materials that are far more abundant and less costly.
A potassium-ion battery has been shown to be possible. And the last time this possibility was explored was
or other bulk carbon anodes in a battery, said Xiulei (David) Ji, the lead author of the study
because they open some new alternatives to batteries that can work with well-established and inexpensive graphite as the anode,
or high-energy reservoir of electrons. Lithium can do that, as the charge carrier whose ions migrate into the graphite
The new findings show that it can work effectively with graphite or soft carbon in the anode of an electrochemical battery.
Right now, batteries based on this approach don have performance that equals those of lithium-ion batteries,
he said. t safe to say that the energy density of a potassium-ion battery may never exceed that of lithium-ion batteries,
and be ready to take the advantage of the existing manufacturing processes of carbon anode materials. lectrical energy storage in batteries is essential not only for consumer products such as cell phones and computers,
but also in transportation industry power backup, micro grid storage, and for the wider use of renewable energy. OSU officials say they are seeking support for further research
#Next-generation perovskite solar cells made stable by metal oxide andwichucla professor Yang Yang, member of the California Nanosystems Institute, is renowned a world innovator of solar cell technology
whose team in recent years has developed next-generation solar cells constructed of perovskite, which has remarkable efficiency converting sunlight to electricity.
Despite this success, the delicate nature of perovskite a very light, flexible, organic-inorganic hybrid material stalled further development toward its commercialized use.
When exposed to air, perovskite cells broke down and disintegrated within a few hours to few days.
This is a significant advance toward stabilizing perovskite solar cells. Their new cell construction extends the cell effective life in air by more than 10 times, with only a marginal loss of efficiency converting sunlight to electricity.
The study was published online in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. Postdoctoral scholar Jingbi You and graduate student Lei Meng from the Yang Lab were the lead authors on the paper. here has been much optimism about perovskite solar cell technology
Meng said. In less than two years, the Yang team has advanced perovskite solar cell efficiency from less than 1 percent to close to 20 percent. ut its short lifespan was a limiting factor we have been trying to improve on since developing perovskite cells with high efficiency.
Yang, who holds the Carol and Lawrence E. Tannas, Jr. Endowed Chair in Engineering at UCLA, said there are several factors that lead to quick deterioration in normally layered perovskite solar cells.
The most significant, Yang said, was that the widely used top organic buffer layer has poor stability
because electricity generated by the cell is extracted through them. Meng said that in this study the team replaced those organic layers with metal oxide layers that sandwich the perovskite layer,
The next step for the Yang team is to make the metal oxide layers more condensed for better efficiency and seal the solar cell for even longer life with no loss of efficiency.
reducing energy costs for ink curing. Once dry, the lectric inkis also waterproof and adheres to its substrate extremely well.
energy harvesters and RFID tags s
#Transplanting from Pig to Human Never before have scientists been able to make scores of simultaneous genetic edits to an organism genome.
electrical devices (pacemakers or defibrillators) or drugs (eg beta blockers. However, these methods are relatively crude: they can stop
Alternative energy Solutions/New Materials Research: Finding new and more efficient solutions to energy harvesting, nanoporous membranes for water desalinization, solar thermal fuels and more.
Fluid Turbulent Physics: Supercomputers can create highly detailed simulations to track ocean currents or improve industry methods related to the discharge of pollutants
memristors require less energy since they work at lower voltages, explains Jennifer Rupp, Professor in the Department of Materials at ETH Zurich and holder of a SNSF professorship grant. hey can be made much smaller than today memory modules,
electrical devices (pacemakers or defibrillators) or drugs (eg beta blockers. However, these methods are relatively crude: they can stop
is central to most electric power plants, heating and cooling systems, and desalination plants. Now, for the first time, researchers at MIT have found a way to control this process, literally with the flick of an electrical switch.
which could improve the efficiency of electric power generation and other processes, is described in a paper by Department of Mechanical engineering Professor Evelyn Wang, graduate student Jeremy Cho,
That could make it possible to make more efficient boilers for powerplants or other applications, since present designs require a substantial safety margin to avoid the possibility of hot spots that could seriously damage the equipment.
While most such power plants operate at a steady rate most of the time being able to control the heat transfer rates dynamically could improve their efficiency
he says. aving a boiler that can respond to quick changescould provide extra flexibility to the electric grid,
The carbonic anhydrase would be immobilized with solvent inside a reactor vessel that serves as a large purification column.
#Molecular Switch Generates Calorie-Burning Brown Fat A research team led by UC San francisco scientists has identified a molecular switch capable of converting unhealthy white fat into healthy, energy-burning
white, which stores energy and is linked with diabetes and obesity; and brown, which produces heat by burning energy
and is associated with leanness. Human babies are born with brown fat as a natural defense against cold.
Many obesity researchers hope to harness the energy-burning capacity of brown fat to help patients lose weight:
enhancing people baseline stores of energy-burning brown fat, known as the rowningof white fat. In the new paper, Kajimura team collaborated with the laboratory of Yasushi Ishihama, Phd, of the University of Kyoto, Japan,
which appears to be responsible for preventing white fat from burning energy for heat in cold conditions.
becoming calorie burners like their brown and beige brethren. t was quite surprising, Kajimura said. his one protein turned out to be the switch that regulates
whether fat cells burn energy or not. CK2 activity is heightened also in obese mice, the team discovered, suggesting a link between obesity
and significantly increasing the amount of energy mice burned when researchers turned down the temperature in their living quarters.
and whether they can be used alongside next-generation drugs that mimic the effects of cold to trigger brown fat to burn energy in humans.
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