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Energy bills have gone up, but there are some easy ways households can reduce costs.

“The Ce electrolyte is highly oxidative, which poses a challenge towards the stability of anion membrane,” Daoud said. “Thus, the stability and selectivity of anion membrane require further improvement.”

The device achieved a voltage plateau of 2.3 V at 20 mA cm − 2, energy efficiency of 71.3% at 60 mA cm − 2, and a record average Coulombic efficiency of 94% during cycling.

Limitless renewable energy would offer tantalising benefits: emissions-free heating, greener fertiliser and electric transport. But overcoming the obstacles will not be easy.

Writing in Nature Communications, a team led by Dr. Marcelo Lozada-Hidalgo based at the National Graphene Institute (NGI) used graphene as an electrode to measure both the electrical force applied on water molecules and the rate at which these break in response to such force. The researchers found that water breaks exponentially faster in response to stronger electrical forces.

The researchers believe that this fundamental understanding of interfacial water could be used to design better catalysts to generate hydrogen fuel from water. This is an important part of the U.K.’s strategy towards achieving a net zero economy. Dr. Marcelo Lozada-Hidalgo said, “We hope that the insights from this work will be of use to various communities, including physics, catalysis, and interfacial science and that it can help design better catalysts for green hydrogen production.”

A water molecule consists of a proton and a hydroxide ion. Dissociating it involves pulling these two constituent ions apart with an electrical force. In principle, the stronger one pulls the water molecule apart, the faster it should break. This important point has not been demonstrated quantitatively in experiments.

That’s because as a white dwarf draws material away from its hydrogen-burning partner, the stolen gas follows the star’s magnetic field lines in a big, curving arc toward its new home. And in the process, it drains energy from the stars’ whirling dance (so do the gravitational waves produced by their rotation). When that happens, both stars fall toward the shared center of gravity they’re orbiting. Closer orbits also mean shorter orbits, so it takes the stars less time to complete a single lap.

And the closer the stars get, the stronger the gravitational waves they produce, which drains away more energy, so they fall even closer together. By the time they’re close enough to complete an orbit in just a handful of minutes, the donor star has usually run out of hydrogen. That’s why the really close, fast-orbiting cataclysmic binaries tend to be a white dwarf and a helium-burning star.

The plant was developed by the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics (IET) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and can generate more than 132 million kWh of electricity annually. This will see 40,000–60,000 households equipped with power during peak electricity consumption. From an environmental perspective, it also offers promising results, saving 42,000 tons of standard coal and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 109,000 tons annually, stated IET.

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Continue reading “The world’s largest advanced compressed air energy storage is ready for commercial operation” »

Our Next Energy Inc., an electric-car battery startup involving several former leaders of Apple secretive car project, is planning to invest $1.6 billion into a factory in Michigan to make enough battery cells for about 200,000 EVs annually.

The state of Michigan on Wednesday approved a $200 million grant for the project that promises to create 2,112 new jobs once the facility in Van Buren Township, about 10 miles west of the Detroit airport, is fully operational by the end of 2027. The company must create and maintain the jobs or face a clawback of the funds.

The project will take 7–8 years.

An 853-mile-long (1,373 km) undersea electricity cable connecting Egypt with Europe has been touted to help Europe’s impending energy crisis amidst Russia’s war with Ukraine.

Imaginima/iStock.

Continue reading “EU energy crisis: Egypt to deliver 3,000 MW of electricity through an 853-mile-long undersea cable” »

Millions of people could suddenly lose electricity if a ransomware attack just slightly tweaked energy flow onto the U.S. power grid.

No single power utility company has enough resources to protect the entire grid, but maybe all 3,000 of the grid’s utilities could fill in the most crucial security gaps if there were a map showing where to prioritize their security investments.

Purdue University researchers have developed an algorithm to create that map. Using this tool, regulatory authorities or cyber insurance companies could establish a framework that guides the security investments of power utility companies to parts of the grid at greatest risk of causing a blackout if hacked.