Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: energy – Page 155

Orion moonship operating in near-flawless fashion, mission managers say

NASA’s unpiloted Orion moonship, sailing smoothly toward a remote lunar orbit after a spectacular low-altitude flyby Monday, is operating in near-flawless fashion, mission managers reported Monday, out-performing expectations on a flight to pave the way toward the first piloted mission in 2024.

An analysis of the huge Space Launch System rocket that boosted the Orion capsule on its way early Wednesday showed it performed almost exactly as expected, taking off atop 8.8 million pounds of thrust and producing a ground-shaking shock wave that literally blew the doors off launch pad elevators.

The core stage’s four upgraded space shuttle main engines and twin solid-fuel boosters propelled the 322-foot-tall rocket out of the atmosphere and into space almost exactly as planned. At main engine cutoff, the SLS was within 3 miles of its target altitude and within 5 mph of the predicted velocity.

Leading gas importer Japan says LNG is sold out until 2026, as energy-squeezed countries battle over dwindling supplies

“The LNG procurement environment has changed completely. Procurement can also be said to be in a state of war,” they told the ministry.

A dwindling supply of natural gas worldwide has sent countries racing to secure shipments of the key fuel. The squeeze is due to a lack of investment in LNG export projects, according to the trade ministry.

At the same time, European buyers are set to step up their imports of LNG from next year after Moscow cut off pipeline-borne gas flows to the continent in retaliation to Western sanctions. They have already been in “huge competition” with Asian buyers for exports from Qatar to replace the Russian supplies.

Algae-Powered Soft Devices Glow in the Dark When Squished or Stretched

The devices are so sensitive that even a soft tap is enough to make them glow. The researchers also made the devices glow by vibrating them, drawing on their surfaces, and blowing air on them to make them bend and sway—which shows that they could potentially be used to harvest airflow to produce light. The researchers also inserted small magnets inside the devices so that they can be magnetically steered, glowing as they move and contort.

The devices can be recharged with light. The dinoflagellates are photosynthetic, meaning they use sunlight to produce food and energy. Shining light on the devices during the day gives them the juice they need to glow during the night.

The beauty of these devices, noted Cai, is their simplicity. “They are basically maintenance-free. Once we inject culture solution into the materials, that’s it. As long as they get recharged with sunlight, they can be used over and over again for at least a month. We don’t need to change out the solution or anything. Each device is its own little ecosystem—an engineered living material.”

Researchers turn asphaltene into graphene for composites

Asphaltenes, a byproduct of crude oil production, are a waste material with potential. Rice University scientists are determined to find it by converting the carbon-rich resource into useful graphene.

Muhammad Rahman, an assistant research professor of materials science and nanoengineering, is employing Rice’s unique flash Joule heating process to convert asphaltenes instantly into turbostratic (loosely aligned) graphene and mix it into composites for thermal, anti-corrosion and 3D-printing applications.

The process makes good use of material otherwise burned for reuse as fuel or discarded into tailing ponds and landfills. Using at least some of the world’s reserve of more than 1 trillion barrels of as a feedstock for graphene would be good for the environment as well.

Recreating photosynthesis for unlimited hydrogen energy

face_with_colon_three circa 2020.

“I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable.” – Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island (1874).

We have come a long way since science fiction writer Jules Verne wrote this visionary sentence, but hydrogen has still not emerged as a major source of energy. ESA is setting out to change this through the latest Open Space Innovation Platform (OSIP) call for ideas.

Not only are fossil fuels a limited resource, when burned they also pollute the air with greenhouse gases that warm up our planet. In recent years, we have increased our use of renewable energy – from sunlight, wind and waves, for example – but the machines that generate energy from these sources are made from rare materials that we must dig ever deeper underground to find.

Engineers designed a new nanoscale 3D printing material that can be printed at a speed of 100 mm/s

It’s all thanks to nanoclusters.

A new nanoscale 3D printing material developed by Stanford University engineers may provide superior structural protection for satellites, drones, and microelectronicsAn improved lightweight, a protective lattice that can absorb twice as much energy as previous materials of a similar density has been developed by engineers for nanoscale 3D printing.

According to the study led by Stanford University, a nanoscale 3D printing material, which creates structures that are a fraction of the width of a human hair, will enable to print of materials that are available for use, especially when printing at very small scales.

Phuchit/iStock.

An improved lightweight, a protective lattice that can absorb twice as much energy as previous materials of a similar density has been developed by engineers for nanoscale 3D printing.

World’s first CO2-based energy storage solution will be available in the US soon

Commercial deployment could be achieved as early as 2024.

Energy Dome, the Italian company that uses carbon dioxide for long-duration energy storage, has now entered the U.S. energy market, Electrek.

Countries around the world are looking to switch to sources of renewable energy in a bid to reduce their carbon emissions. Recently, the world’s largest floating offshore wind farm went online in Norway and will use the harnessed energy to reduce emissions from its oil and gas production facilities.