TechBlog

In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine.

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With this announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Continue reading ‘Major Discovery - From MIT Primed To Unleash Solar Revolution’ »

Energy now lost as heat during the production of electricity could be harnessed through the use of silicon nanowires synthesized via a technique developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) at Berkeley.

Continue reading ‘Researchers Make Thermoelectric Breakthrough In Silicon Nanowires’ »

The recent energy crisis and soaring oil prices have compelled the human race to look for alternate energy sources, such solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear and bio fuels. Harnessing of nuclear power is getting new impetus.

Continue reading ‘Solar Cell Growth Flaring’ »

The biggest impediments to widespread adoption of photovoltaic cells as a routine source of energy are the cells’ inadequate efficiency and high cost. According to EE Times, IBM has taken a major step toward removing those barriers. Critical to the new development is the devices’ cooling mechanism, which employs a liquid metal layer of gallium and indium between the chip logic and a cooling block. The technology will eventually allow constructing applications that generate much more electricity with many fewer chips. Larger lenses are increasing the concentration of solar rays by a factor of ten, raising power levels significantly.

Cleveland Botanical Garden and Kent State University’s Liquid Crystal Institute today officially launched a pioneering research project to explore the potential of liquid crystal technology for creating more sustainable, energy-efficient greenhouses.

At an event held on Wade Oval, the Garden and the University unveiled the two greenhouses that will be used in the first phase of the project. One contains liquid crystal panels and the other, a control, has plain glass. A demonstration revealed how the panes “switch” to manage the amount of sunlight that enters the greenhouse.

Continue reading ‘Smart - Greenhouse Research Partnership Unveiled’ »

A new catalyst developed by Hitachi Maxell Ltd. can generate about 4.8 times the oxygen-reduction current per unit area than existing platinum catalysts. The new catalyst, for use at the cathode of a polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC), is a gold-platinum particle 2 to 3 nm in size. Platinum is a common catalyst for the oxygen-reduction reaction in PEFCs, but it is an extremely expensive precious metal, so reducing material cost for PEFCs by minimizing the amount of platinum used, while improving its catalytic effect is an important R&D topic.

Besides reducing particle size to increase surface area, the addition of base metals such as iron, cobalt, and nickel to platinum also improves the oxygen-reduction reaction rate. But these metals dissolve easily in the acidic environment of a PEFC where the catalyst is working, which is a problem. Maxell’s new catalyst is resistant to acidic environments.
It was difficult to synthesize gold particles smaller than 5 nm due to its relatively low melting point. However, a proprietary nano-level particle-synthesizing technology, allowed Maxell to develop a high-activity structure in which the gold and platinum are not fully alloyed in the new catalyst. Using citric acid as a reducing agent, the gold-platinum catalyst particles were synthesized at 373°K. Maxell intends to continue nano-technology R&D towards practical applications in polymer-electrolyte and direct-methanol fuel cells.

Carbon cages can hold super-dense volumes of nearly metallic hydrogen. Hydrogen could be a clean, abundant energy source, but it’s difficult to store in bulk.

In new research, materials scientists at Rice University have made the surprising discovery that tiny carbon capsules called buckyballs are so strong they can hold volumes of hydrogen nearly as dense as those at the center of Jupiter.

The research appears on the March 2008 cover of the American Chemical Society’s journal Nano Letters.

Continue reading ‘Tiny buckyballs squeeze hydrogen like giant Jupiter’ »

Taking a page out of a science fiction story, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Webb Research Corporation (Falmouth, Mass.) have successfully flown the first environmentally powered robotic vehicle through the ocean. The new robotic “glider” harvests heat

WHOI associate scientist Dave Fratantoni (background) and WHOI postdoctoral scholar Benjamin Hodges prepare to lower the thermal glider into the ocean in December 2007. (John Lund, Woods Hole  Oceanographic Institution)

Continue reading ‘Environmentally Powered Robotic Vehicle’ »

If you could hold a giant magnifying glass in space and focus all the sunlight shining toward Earth onto one grain of sand, that concentrated ray would approach the intensity of a new laser beam made in a University of Michigan laboratory.
“That’s the instantaneous intensity we can produce,” said Karl Krushelnick, a physics and engineering professor. “I don’t know of another place in the universe that would have this intensity of light. We believe this is a record.”

The pulsed laser beam lasts just 30 femtoseconds. A femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second. The beam is twice as intense as one the researchers produced in 2004.

Such intense beams could help scientists develop better proton and electron beams for radiation treatment of cancer, among other applications.

Continue reading ‘Michigan Laser Beam Believed To Set Record For Intensity’ »

It’s one of those everyday annoyances, finding yourself with a flat battery in any one of the gadgets we carry around constantly now. I would love the option of charging your phone or your ipod while you’re out and about. And it looks like that may be possible soon, with a recent report in Nature on power production from nanotextiles (watch me carefully avoid the use of the pun ‘power dressing’!) The textiles consist of zinc oxide nanowires which generate electricity by the piezoelectric effect, in other words, produce electricity when under mechanical stress. The zinc oxide nanowires are embedded around a Kevlar fibre to produce something looking like a bottle-brush. Some are then coated in a nanolayer of gold, to act as an electrode. These are aligned and the ‘bristles’ rub past each other, creating the electrical current (see picture). Once optimised, this nanotextile should provide a simple and cheap way to convert energy of walking into electrical energy. This report follows an earlier report of a knee brace designed to harvest energy from walking. Maybe one day we will be able to throw our old chargers out and simply plug in and go for a stroll!