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Category: energy – Page 10

UK lab promises air-con revolution without polluting gases

The soft, waxy “solid refrigerant” being investigated in a UK laboratory may not look very exciting, but its unusual properties promise an air-conditioning revolution that could eliminate the need for greenhouse gases.

The substance’s temperature can vary by more than 50 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit) under pressure, and unlike the gases currently used in appliances solid refrigerants, it does not leak.

“They don’t contribute to , but also they are potentially more energy efficient,” Xavier Moya, a professor of materials physics at the University of Cambridge, told AFP.

Advances in ceramic electrochemical cells promise more reliable hydrogen production and clean energy storage

Researchers from the University of Oklahoma have made significant advances in a promising technology for efficient energy conversion and chemical processing. Two recent studies involving protonic ceramic electrochemical cells, called PCECs, address significant challenges in electrochemical manufacturing and efficiency. These innovations are a crucial step toward reliable and affordable solutions for hydrogen production and clean energy storage.

The studies were led by Hanping Ding, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Oklahoma.

PCECs have traditionally struggled to maintain performance under the required for commercial use. In a study featured in Nature Synthesis, Ding and his colleagues reported a new approach that eliminates the need for cerium-based materials, which are prone to breakdown under high steam and heat.

New quantum gravity discovery could unite quantum mechanics and relativity

Two recent advances—one in nanoscale chemistry and another in astrophysics—are making waves. Scientists studying the movement of molecules in porous materials and researchers observing rare cosmic events have uncovered mechanisms that could reshape both industry and our view of the universe.

One of the most promising fields in material science centers on molecular diffusion. This is the way molecules move through small, confining spaces—a key process behind technologies like gas separation, catalysis, and energy storage. Materials called MOFs, short for metal-organic frameworks, have emerged as powerful tools because of their flexible structure and tunable chemistry.

Yet predicting how molecules behave inside these frameworks isn’t simple. Pore size, shape, chemical reactivity, and even how the material flexes all play a role. Studying these factors one by one has been manageable. But understanding how they work together to control molecular flow remains a major hurdle for material designers.

Urine-powered electrolysis systems offer energy-efficient green hydrogen production

Researchers have developed two unique energy-efficient and cost-effective systems that use urea found in urine and wastewater to generate hydrogen.

The unique systems reveal pathways to economically generate “green” hydrogen, a sustainable and renewable energy source, and the potential to remediate nitrogenous waste in aquatic environments.

Typically, we generate hydrogen through the electrolysis of water where water is split into oxygen and hydrogen. It is a promising technology to help solve the global energy crisis, but the process is energy intensive, which renders it cost-prohibitive when compared to extracting hydrogen from fossil fuels (gray hydrogen), itself an undesirable process because of the it generates.

Record-setting lithium-ion conductors: Researchers develop new material for solid-state batteries

Researchers at TUM and TUMint. Energy Research have taken a significant step towards improving solid-state batteries. They developed a new material made of lithium, antimony and scandium that conducts lithium ions more than 30% faster than any previously known material. The work is published in the journal Advanced Energy Materials.

The team led by Prof. Thomas F. Fässler from the Chair of Inorganic Chemistry with a Focus on Novel Materials partially replaced lithium in a lithium antimonide compound with the metal scandium. This creates specific gaps, so-called vacancies, in the crystal lattice of the conductor material. These gaps help the lithium ions to move more easily and faster, resulting in a new world record for ion conductivity.

Since the measured conductivity far exceeded that of existing materials, the team collaborated with the Chair of Technical Electrochemistry under Prof. Hubert Gasteiger at TUM to confirm the result.

Warm metalworking turns brittle semiconductors into flexible, high-performance electronic films

Inorganic semiconductors form the backbone of modern electronics due to their excellent physical properties, including high carrier mobility, thermal stability, and well-defined energy band structures, which enable precise control over electrical conductivity. Unfortunately, their intrinsic brittleness has traditionally required the use of costly, complex processing methods like deposition and sputtering—which apply inorganic materials to rigid substrates and limit their suitability for flexible or wearable electronics.

Now, however, a recent breakthrough by researchers from the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shanghai Jiao Tong University in the warm processing of traditionally brittle semiconductors offers tremendous potential to expand applications for inorganic semiconductors into these fields.

In their study recently published in Nature Materials, the researchers report achieving plastic warm metalworking in a range of inorganic semiconductors traditionally considered too brittle for such processing. These findings open new avenues for efficient and cost-effective semiconductor manufacturing.

Scientists develop next-gen energy storage technologies that enable high power and capacity simultaneously

A research team has developed a high-performance supercapacitor that is expected to become the next generation of energy storage devices. With details published in the journal Composites Part B: Engineering, the technology developed by the researchers overcomes the limitations of existing supercapacitors by utilizing an innovative fiber structure composed of single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and the conductive polymer polyaniline (PANI).

Compared to conventional batteries, supercapacitors offer faster charging and higher power density, with less degradation over tens of thousands of charge and discharge cycles. However, their relatively low energy density limits their use over long periods of time, which has limited their use in practical applications such as and drones.

Researchers led by Dr. Bon-Cheol Ku and Dr. Seo Gyun Kim of the Carbon Composite Materials Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and Professor Yuanzhe Piao of Seoul National University (SNU), uniformly chemically bonded single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs), which are highly conductive, with polyaniline (PANI), which is processable and inexpensive, at the nanoscale.

Innovative approaches advance search for ice on the moon

Scientists and space explorers have been on the hunt to determine where and how much ice is present on the Moon. Water ice would be an important resource at a future lunar base, as it could be used to support humans or be broken down to hydrogen and oxygen, key components of rocket fuel. University of Hawai’i at Manoa researchers are using two innovative approaches to advance the search for ice on the Moon.

ShadowCam scouts for surface ice.

Water ice was previously detected in the permanently shaded regions of the Moon’s north and south poles by Shuai Li, assistant researcher at the Hawai’i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) in the UH Manoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). A new study led by Jordan Ando, planetary sciences graduate student in Li’s laboratory, examined images from a specialized camera, the “ShadowCam,” that was on board the Korea Aerospace Research Institute Korea Lunar Pathfinder Orbiter.

After the apocalypse: Urban and near-urban farming may be enough to sustain mid-size cities

A new study suggests that, in the case of global catastrophe, urban agriculture alone could sustain only about one fifth of the population of a temperate, median-sized city, but the whole city could be fed by also farming land within a short distance of the urban area.

Matt Boyd of Adapt Research Ltd, New Zealand, and Nick Wilson of the University of Otago, New Zealand, present these findings in PLOS One.

Abrupt global catastrophes—such as nuclear wars, extreme pandemics, or solar storms—could severely hamper . Shortages of resources like could disrupt food production and transport, possibly leading to famine. Prior research has suggested that this impact could be mitigated by , which includes such approaches as home, community, and rooftop gardens.