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Category: energy – Page 167

Boron-powered Chinese missile will work in the air and underwater

Boron as rocket fuel has been a tough nut to crack.

Rocket scientists in China are working to develop a boron-powered supersonic missile that can fly like a commercial airliner and then swim in the water to act as a torpedo, South China Morning Post.

IStock/AlexLMX

Boron is a highly reactive light element that reacts equally well with water as it does with air to release vast amounts of heat. The U.S. Air Force experimented with boron in the 1950s to increase the power of its supersonic bombers. However, the project was shelved since ignited boron is hard to control and also forms a layer of debris that impacts rocket performance.

This Canadian company wants to build a train-plane ‘hybrid’ that can go 620 miles per hour—take a look

Move over, Elon Musk and Richard Branson: A Canadian company wants to join the fight for better high-speed train travel.

Toronto-based TransPod recently unveiled plans for a “FluxJet,” a fully-electric transportation system that’s “a hybrid between an aircraft and a train.” The project, currently in the conceptual stage, would involve 82-foot-long, magnetically levitated trains that would carry passengers at roughly 621 miles per hour.

That’s faster than a commercial jet, and roughly three times the speed of most high-speed trains — with zero emissions, no less. The FluxJet would rely on “contactless power transmission,” where the train would pull power from the existing electric grid through magnetic fields, the company says.

China plans 3 moon missions to investigate a potential new source of energy

The country’s space agency aims to overtake NASA with its ongoing Chang’e lunar program and future crewed missions to Mars.

China announced its plans to launch three new uncrewed missions to the Moon after the discovery of a new lunar mineral that could be harvested as an energy source in the future, a report from Bloomberg.

China’s National Space Administration announced on Saturday, September 10, that it was given the green light to start planning the launch of three new orbiters to the Moon over the next decade. The new missions will form a part of the country’s ongoing Chang’e lunar program.

China lists nearly 9,000 “little-giants” to become a bigger tech powerhouse than the U.S.

These companies operate in strategically important areas such as semiconductors, manufacturing, energy, and minerals.

The Chinese government has selected 8,997 little-known industrial enterprises that will enjoy preferential treatment from central and provincial governments as the country prepares to supersede the technological prowess of the U.S., South China Morning Post.

Rawf8/iStock.

Who are little giants?

T-Omega re-thinks floating offshore wind turbines for huge cost savings

Most of the world’s greatest wind power resources are offshore – often a long way offshore, where the water’s so deep that it’s impractical to build typical fan-on-a-stick wind turbines with bases sunk deep into the sea floor. Floating wind, at this stage, is so vastly expensive to build, deploy and maintain that it ends up costing two to three times as much per kilowatt-hour of energy as fixed-bottom offshore installations.

There’s a huge opportunity here for technological advancement, and companies like Norway’s World Wide Wind are proposing some pretty radical ideas in the space. A lot of the energy cost comes down to the size, weight and materials involved in the structure of the turbine, along with the logistical issues and specialized equipment needed to build, install and maintain the things.

Boston startup T-Omega Wind says it’s model-tested a unique floating offshore wind turbine design that can withstand massive storms and hundred-foot waves, but at 20% the weight and around 30% the price of conventional designs – not to mention super-simple deployment and installation – unlocking an affordable way to exploit the world’s best wind resources.

Five INL innovations that are changing the world

One of the biggest contributions in the near future could come from smaller, more compact reactors. Several microreactor designs are currently under development in the United States that will be smaller in size, more flexible to operate and versatile enough to provide energy to end users for a variety of services ranging from electricity production to water purification.

New energy harvesters show potential that fits like a glove

A group of University of Texas at Dallas researchers and their colleagues have made significant improvements to energy-harvesting yarns they invented called twistrons, which are made from carbon nanotubes and produce electricity when repeatedly stretched.

The researchers describe the improved twistrons and some potential applications of the technology in an article published in the July 7 print issue of Advanced Materials.

In a proof-of-principle experiment, Zhong Wang, Ph.D., lead author of the article and a research associate in the Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute at UT Dallas, sewed the new twistron yarns into a glove. As someone wearing the glove formed different letters and phrases in American Sign Language, the hand gestures generated electricity.

Engineers Turn a Laser Beam into a Stream of Liquid

Circa 2017 I think with a light into matter laser we could create water but this idea could be a first step.

Lasers are one of the iconic breakthroughs of 20th century science. They produce coherent photons in tight beams of specific energy. They can transmit data, detect molecules, and burn through metal. The photons they produce also have significant momentum.

And that raises an interesting question. Is it possible to transfer this momentum to generate matter rays such as a liquid flow? Not until now.

Lattice distortion of perovskite quantum dots induces coherent quantum beating

A research group led by Prof. WU Kaifeng from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in collaboration with Dr. Peter C. Sercel from the Center for Hybrid Organic Inorganic Semiconductors for Energy, recently reported the utilization of lattice distortion in lead halide perovskite quantum dots (QDs) to control their exciton fine structure.

The study was published in Nature Materials (“Lattice distortion inducing exciton splitting and coherent quantum beating in CsPbI 3 perovskite quantum dots”).

Lattice distortion of perovskite quantum dots induces coherent quantum beating. (Image: DICP)