The fabric of spacetime is roiling with vibrating quantum fields, known as vacuum energy. It’s right there, everywhere we look. But could we ever get anything out of it?
A New Zealand-based startup has developed a method of safely and wirelessly transmitting electric power across long distances without the use of copper wire, and is working on implementing it with the country’s second-largest power distributor.
The dream of wireless power transmission is far from new; everyone’s favorite electrical genius Nikola Tesla once proved he could power light bulbs from more than two miles away with a 140-foot Tesla coil in the 1890s – never mind that in doing so he burned out the dynamo at the local powerplant and plunged the entire town of Colorado Springs into blackout.
Tesla’s dream was to place enormous towers all over the world that could transmit power wirelessly to any point on the globe, powering homes, businesses, industries and even giant electric ships on the ocean. Investor J.P. Morgan famously killed the idea with a single question: “where can I put the meter?”
To produce light, lasers typically rely on optical cavities, pairs of mirrors facing each other that amplify light by bouncing it back and forth. Recently, some physicists have been investigating the generation of “laser light” in open air without the use of optical cavities, a phenomenon known as cavity-free lasing in atmospheric air.
Built by Natron Energy, the Edgecombe County facility is planned for 24 GWh of annual capacity, which would turn Natron from a startup into the first sodium-ion battery production juggernaut on US soil.
Sodium-ion batteries are cheaper, safer, with much longer lifespan and faster charging than conventional Li-ion packs.
Chinese companies are already using them in grid-level energy storage systems of local utilities, to balance their renewable energy mix. Some sodium-ion battery packs are even making their way into electric vehicles there, even though the chemistry offers lower energy density than Li-ion batteries.
Japan is ignoring EVs and hydrogen, and has a good reason: They are producing the first-ever magnetic levitation engine, and works like that.
Lithium iron phosphate is one of the most important materials for batteries in electric cars, stationary energy storage systems and tools. It has a long service life, is comparatively inexpensive and does not tend to spontaneously combust. Energy density is also making progress. However, experts are still puzzled as to why lithium iron phosphate batteries undercut their theoretical electricity storage capacity by up to 25% in practice.
In order to utilize this dormant capacity reserve, it would be crucial to know exactly where and how lithium ions are stored in and released from the battery material during the charging and discharging cycles.
Researchers at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) have now taken a significant step in this direction. Using transmission electron microscopes, they were able to systematically track the lithium ions as they traveled through the battery material, map their arrangement in the crystal lattice of an iron phosphate cathode with unprecedented resolution and precisely quantify their distribution in the crystal.
Australia can still reach its net-zero energy goal by 2050, according to BloombergNEF (BNEF), but there is no time to waste, with a need for significant investments in solar, wind, and energy storage to stay on track.
Researchers at the School of Engineering of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have developed an eco-friendly refrigeration device with record-breaking cooling performance, setting the stage for transforming industries reliant on cooling and reducing global energy use.
With a boost in efficiency of over 48%, the new elastocaloric cooling technology opens a promising avenue for accelerating the commercialization of this disruptive technology and addressing the environmental challenges associated with traditional cooling systems.
Traditional vapor compression refrigeration technology relies on refrigerants of high global warming potential. Solid-state elastocaloric refrigeration based on latent heat in the cyclic phase transition of shape memory alloys (SMAs) provides an environmentally friendly alternative, with its characteristics of greenhouse gas-free, 100% recyclable and energy-efficient SMA refrigerants.
American energy storage technology newcomer Form Energy says it has received funding to deploy a groundbreaking 85 MW/8.5 GWh iron-air multi-day battery, which will be capable of up to 100 hours of storage and will be the world’s biggest battery once built.
The US Department of Energy last week announced $US389 million ($A579 million) in funding for the Power Up New England project which seeks to unlock up to 4.8GW of additional offshore wind and innovative battery energy storage systems in the local grids to boost resilience and optimise the delivery of renewable energy.
Part of the Power Up New England project, and easily the most exciting, is the 85 MW/8,500 MWh iron-air battery system to be built on the site of a former paper mill in rural Maine.
A new technology can extract lithium from brines at an estimated cost of under 40% that of today’s dominant extraction method, and at just a fourth of lithium’s current market price. The new technology would also be much more reliable and sustainable in its use of water, chemicals, and land than today’s technology, according to a study published in Matter by Stanford University researchers.
Global demand for lithium has surged in recent years, driven by the rise of electric vehicles and renewable energy storage. The dominant source of lithium extraction today relies on evaporating brines in huge ponds under the sun for a year or more, leaving behind a lithium-rich solution, after which heavy use of potentially toxic chemicals finishes the job. Water with a high concentration of salts, including lithium, occurs naturally in some lakes, hot springs, and aquifers, and as a byproduct of oil and natural gas operations and of seawater desalination.
Many scientists are searching for less expensive and more efficient, reliable, and environmentally friendly lithium extraction methods. These are generally direct lithium extraction that bypasses big evaporation ponds. The new study reports on the results of a new method using an approach known as “redox-couple electrodialysis,” or RCE, along with cost estimates.
