This discovery is 400 years in the making.
Category: energy
Dirty water boosts prospects for clean hydrogen
Wastewater can replace clean water as a source for hydrogen, eliminating a major drawback to hydrogen fuel and reducing water treatment costs of hydrogen production by up to 47%, according to new research from Princeton Engineering.
The findings, reported Sept. 24 in the journal Water Research, are a step toward making hydrogen a practical pathway to decarbonize industries that are difficult to electrify, such as steel and fertilizer production.
Z. Jason Ren, the senior study author, said that current electrolytic hydrogen production requires a large amount of clean water, increasing costs and straining local water supplies. His research team wanted to find out whether treated water processed by wastewater plants could be substituted.
Ammonia could power ships, industries with 70% more efficient tech
“No one has showcased that ammonia can be used to power things at the scale of ships and trucks like us,” said CEO Seonghoon Woo, who founded the company with Hyunho Kim, Jongwon Choi, and Young Suk Jo. “We’ve demonstrated this approach works and is scalable.”
The company is targeting power-hungry industries like maritime shipping, power generation, construction, and mining for its early systems as the power density advantages of ammonia over renewables and batteries.
With a manufacturing contract secured with Samsung Heavy Industries, Amogy is set to start delivering more of its systems to customers next year. The company will deploy a 1-megawatt ammonia-to-power pilot project with the South Korean city of Pohang in 2026, with plans to scale up to 40 megawatts at that site by 2028 or 2029, according to a press release.
Physicist delineates limits on the precision of quantum thermal machines
Quantum thermal machines are devices that leverage quantum mechanical effects to convert energy into useful work or cooling, similarly to traditional heat engines or refrigerators. Thermodynamics theory suggests that increasing the reliability with which all thermal machines produce the same thermodynamic processes in time comes at a cost, such as the wasted heat or the need for extra energy.
Drawing from theories and concepts rooted in thermodynamics, physicist Yoshihiko Hasegawa at the University of Tokyo recently set out to pinpoint the limits that would constrain the precision of finite-dimensional quantum thermal machines. In a recent paper, published in Physical Review Letters, he delineates these limits and shows that quantum coherence could reduce fluctuations, improving the accuracy of quantum thermal machines.
“Thermodynamic uncertainty relations have clarified an important ‘no free lunch’ principle: if you want an operation to be more precise, you must pay more thermodynamic cost, i.e., entropy production,” Hasegawa told Phys.org. “However, those thermodynamic uncertainty relations do not forbid, in principle, pushing entropy production arbitrarily high.
OLEDs can now switch light’s handedness with an electrical signal
Researchers from the University of Oxford have for the first time discovered an approach to electrically switch organic LEDs (OLEDs) to emit either left- or right-handed circularly polarized light without changing the light-emitting molecules. This could be useful for a range of technological applications, from more energy efficient OLED displays, to optical information transfer.
Anomalous electronic state opens pathway to room-temperature superconductivity
Superconductive materials can conduct electricity with no resistance, but typically only at very low temperatures. Realizing superconductivity at room temperature could enable advanced, energy-efficient electronics and other technologies.
Now, an international research team is one step closer to such an achievement. The researchers made the first observation of a special electronic state known as a “nodal metal,” which provides more insight into electronic behavior at different temperatures, in a multilayer system comprising copper and oxygen.
The team, which includes researchers based in Japan, Taiwan and the United States, published their results in Nature Communications.
Hidden high-energy water reveals a new molecular force
Water trapped inside tiny molecular cavities behaves in a surprisingly energetic way, pushing outward like people crammed in an elevator. When a new molecule enters these narrow spaces, the confined water forces its way out—boosting the strength of the molecular bond that forms in its place. Researchers from KIT and Constructor University have now proven this effect both experimentally and theoretically, showing that these “highly energetic” water molecules can dramatically influence how other molecules interact.
Narcissism and its role in sexually motivated serial killers
Researchers at the University of Bamberg have traced a darkly intricate form of narcissism in sexually motivated male serial killers, reporting that many offenders combine brittle sensitivity with a craving for admiration and dominance leans on the killers’ own words from confessions and interrogations rather than psychiatric labels alone.
Serial killers have fascinated and frightened audiences for centuries, with media portrayals ranging from monstrous to romanticized. According to the FBI’s Serial Murder Symposium, serial murder involves the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender in separate events.
For decades, many police and forensic teams have grouped serial killers into categories by motive: visionary killers driven by psychosis and hallucinations, thrill killers who pursue excitement and pleasure through killing, mission-oriented offenders who believe they must eliminate specific groups, power/control killers who seek total dominance over their victims, often including sexual abuse, and those whose crimes revolve around lust.
China’s 1-second film speeds rapid charge for EVs, high-power lasers
Chinese scientists claim to have reported a major jump in capacitor manufacturing earlier this month. The group has cut the production time for dielectric energy storage parts to one second.
The announcement has drawn widespread attention because it points to fast, stable energy storage for advanced defense systems and electric vehicles.
The team used a flash annealing method that heats and cools material at a rate of about 1,832°F (1,000°C) per second. This speed allows crystal films to form on a silicon wafer in a single step. Other techniques require far more time and can take from 3 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the film quality.