OMG? Are we going to have super cheap electric vehicles in a few years that charge in a few seconds/minutes?
I hope so! This is very exciting.
Australia has supercapacitors made from graphene oxide. They can can store as much energy per kilogram as a lithium battery, but charges in minutes, or even seconds, and uses carbon instead of expensive lithium.
Large-scale production of the graphene that would be needed to produce these high-performance supercapacitors was once unachievable.
Nice.
Lawrence Livermore scientists have collaborated with an interdisciplinary team of researchers including colleagues from Sandia National Laboratories to develop an efficient hydrogen storage system that could be a boon for hydrogen powered vehicles.
Hydrogen is an excellent energy carrier, but the development of lightweight solid-state materials for compact, low-pressure storage is a huge challenge.
Complex metal hydrides are a promising class of hydrogen storage materials, but their viability is usually limited by slow hydrogen uptake and release. Nanoconfinement—infiltrating the metal hydride within a matrix of another material such as carbon—can, in certain instances, help make this process faster by shortening diffusion pathways for hydrogen or by changing the thermodynamic stability of the material.
Nice find on nanoparticles and energy transfer — important in scalable devices, energy conservation, etc.
The development, design and the performance evaluation of rare-earth doped host materials is important for further optical investigation and industrial applications. Herein, we successfully fabricate KLu2F7 upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) through hydrothermal synthesis by controlling the fluorine-to-lanthanide-ion molar ratio. The structural and morphological results show that the samples are orthorhombic-phase hexagonal-prisms UCNPs, with average side length of 80 nm and average thickness of 110 nm. The reaction time dependent crystal growth experiment suggests that the phase transformation is a thermo-dynamical process and the increasing F−/Ln3+ ratio favors the formation of the thermo-dynamical stable phase — orthorhombic KLu2F7 structure. The upconversion luminescence (UCL) spectra display that the orthorhombic KLu2F7:Yb/Er UCNPs present stronger UCL as much as 280-fold than their cubic counterparts. The UCNPS also display better UCL performance compared with the popular hexagonal-phase NaREF4 (RE = Y, Gd). Our mechanistic investigation, including Judd-Ofelt analysis and time decay behaviors, suggests that the lanthanide tetrad clusters structure at sublattice level accounts for the saturated luminescence and highly efficient UCL in KLu2F7:Yb/Er UCNPs. Our research demonstrates that the orthorhombic KLu2F7 is a promising host material for UCL and can find potential applications in lasing, photovoltaics and biolabeling techniques.
Posted in energy
Magnetohydrodynamics involves magnetic fields (magneto) and fluids (hydro) that conduct electricity and interact (dynamics). MHD technology is based on a fundamental law of electromagnetism: When a magnetic field and an electric current intersect in a liquid, their repulsive intersection propels the liquid in a direction perpendicular to both the field and the current.
“Launched in 2007, the Fuller Challenge has defined an emerging field of practice: the whole systems approach to understanding and intervening in complex and interrelated crises for wide-scale social and environmental impact. The entry criteria have established a new framework through which to identify and measure effective, enduring solutions to global sustainability’s most entrenched challenges. The rigorous selection process has set a unique standard, gaining renown as “Socially-Responsible Design’s Highest Award.”
The Fuller Challenge attracts bold, visionary, tangible initiatives focused on a well-defined need of critical importance. Winning solutions are regionally specific yet globally applicable and present a truly comprehensive, anticipatory, integrated approach to solving the world’s complex problems.”
Deadline is March 31, 2017
Science mimicking nature’s dew in a lab. Important btw in how we looking at H2O harvesting and improving how we advance green energy; however, I see usage of this research in other emerging technologies as well.
Understanding how droplet condensation happens plays an essential role for our fundamental insights of wetting behaviors in nature and numerous applications. Since there is a lack of study of the initial formation and growing processes of condensed droplets down to nano-/submicroscale, relevant underlying mechanisms remain to be explored. We report an in situ observation of vapor condensation on nano-/microtextured superhydrophobic surfaces using optical microscopy. An interesting picture of the vapor condensation, from the initial appearance of individual small droplets (≤1 μm) to a Cassie-Baxter wetting state (30 μm), are exhibited. It is found that individual droplets preferentially nucleate at the top and the edge of single micropillars with very high apparent contact angles on the nanotextures. Scenarios of two distinguished growing modes are reported statistically and the underlying mechanisms are discussed in the view of thermodynamics. We particularly reveal that the formation of the Cassie-Baxter wetting state is a result of a continuous coalescence of individual small droplets, in which the nanotexture-enhanced superhydrophobicity plays a crucial role. We envision that these fundamental findings can deepen our understanding of the nucleation and development of condensed droplets in nanoscale, so as to optimize design strategies of superhydrophobic materials for a broad range of water-harvesting and heat-transfer systems.
(Phys.org)—Researchers have developed a type of rechargeable battery called a flow cell that can be recharged with a water-based solution containing dissolved carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from fossil fuel power plants. The device works by taking advantage of the CO2 concentration difference between CO2 emissions and ambient air, which can ultimately be used to generate electricity.
The new flow cell produces an average power density of 0.82 W/m, which is almost 200 times higher than values obtained using previous similar methods. Although it is not yet clear whether the process could be economically viable on a large scale, the early results appear promising and could be further improved with future research.
The scientists, Taeyong Kim, Bruce E. Logan, and Christopher A. Gorski at The Pennsylvania State University, have published a paper on the new method of CO2-to-electricity conversion in a recent issue of Environmental Science & Technology Letters.
