Instead of needing constant power, new system adjusts to use whatever’s available.
Category: energy – Page 38
The Tewksbury earthquake’s minimal local damage but widespread impact was due to its rupture direction, funneling shaking from New Jersey towards New York City, with the anomaly highlighted in studies on seismic energy distribution.
A magnitude 4.8 earthquake in Tewksbury startled millions across the U.S. East Coast, marking the strongest recorded tremor in New Jersey since 1900.
But researchers noted something else unusual about the earthquake: why did so many people 40 miles away in New York City report strong shaking, while damage near the earthquake’s epicenter appeared minimal?
A flow battery, also known as a reduction-oxidation (Redox) flow battery, is an electrochemical cell that uses two moving liquid electrolytes to generate electricity.
Ion transfer occurs across the cell membrane, accompanied by current flow through an external circuit, while the liquids circulate in their respective spaces. The liquids required are stored in separate tanks until required.
Flow batteries have existed for some time, but earlier versions had low energy density, making them impractical for cars. However, recent advancements in the technology have improved energy density, making it increasingly viable for long-duration energy storage and potentially for electric vehicles.
Various types of flow batteries, including inorganic and organic forms, have been demonstrated. Flow battery design can be classified into full flow, semi-flow, and membranesless variants.
O.o!!!!
As electricity was being restored in parts of Cuba following an island-wide blackout, a total collapse of the electrical grid occurred once again.
A team from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania introduced a novel wet chemical etching process that modifies the surface of conventional metal powders used in 3D printing.
In a significant advancement for metal additive manufacturing, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and their academic partners have developed a groundbreaking technique that enhances the optical absorptivity of metal powders used in 3D printing.
The innovative approach, which involves creating nanoscale surface features on metal powders, promises to improve the efficiency and quality of printed metal parts, particularly for challenging materials like copper and tungsten, according to researchers.
Additive manufacturing (AM) — more commonly known as 3D printing — has transformed the way products are designed and produced, allowing for the creation of complex geometries and customized components that traditional manufacturing methods struggle to achieve. However, one of the persistent challenges in laser powder-bed fusion (LPBF) metal 3D printing is the high reflectivity of certain metals, which can lead to inefficient energy absorption during the printing process and can even damage some printing machines. This inefficiency often results in inadequate print quality and increased energy consumption, according to researchers.
Physicists at RIKEN have demonstrated how ultrafast, low-power-consumption memory devices could be realized by replacing conventional magnetic materials with novel ones.
OLED performance depends on the behavior of electron–hole pairs, or excitons, that form within the emissive layer of the device. High efficiencies can be obtained when most of the excitons produce light as they decay, but some excitons can be lost without emitting light through a process known as exciton–polaron quenching (EPQ).
EPQ was believed to occur mainly within the bulk of the emissive layer, but recent studies have suggested that significant quenching can take place at the interface with the adjacent device layers. To isolate this energy-loss channel, the researchers designed a series of bilayer devices that allowed them to identify three physical factors that govern interfacial EPQ in any OLED device. They found that the dominant factor is the effect of the energy barriers experienced by electrons and holes at the interfaces: A barrier higher than about 0.2 eV leads to greater interfacial EPQ, which causes a significant drop in emission efficiency.
Armed with this knowledge the researchers engineered OLED devices to minimize losses from interfacial EPQ, which resulted in efficiency enhancements for red, green, and blue devices of 70%, 47%, and 66%, respectively. The loss mitigation also increased the lifetime of blue OLEDs by as much as 67%, an important result for creating long-lived full-color displays.
A recent demonstration by a YouTuber compared the performance of a hemp battery against a lithium-ion battery, and the results were astounding: the hemp battery was eight times more powerful. Tesla’s new million-mile battery, made from lithium-iron phosphate, is designed to last twice as long as conventional lithium-ion batteries. However, even this advanced battery cannot compete with the power and renewability of hemp-based batteries.
Implications for the Future
The development of hemp batteries offers a more sustainable and affordable alternative to lithium-ion and graphene-based batteries. By replacing lithium batteries with hemp, electric cars and other gadgets can become significantly more eco-friendly. The use of a renewable resource like hemp to create powerful and cost-effective batteries has the potential to revolutionize the battery industry, making our world more energy-efficient and sustainable.
A new laser oscillator generates ultrashort pulses, 50% more powerful than the previous record.
Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a laser oscillator that produces the most powerful ultra-short laser pulses ever.
The pulses from the laser last for less than 10−12 seconds. However, on average, they carry 550 watts of power, with peak power output reaching 100 megawatts — this is more than enough to power hundreds of thousands of vacuum cleaners together for a short duration.
“They surpass the previous maximum by more than 50 percent. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the highest average power and highest pulse energy ever achieved for any modelocked oscillator,” the researchers note.
Researchers have succeeded in developing a framework for organic thermoelectric power generation from ambient temperature and without a temperature gradient. Thermoelectric devices are devices that can convert heat into electrical energy. Researchers have now developed a thermoelectric device composed of organic materials that can generate electricity from ambient temperature alone. The device is made from copper phthalocyanine and copper hexadecafluoro phthalocyanine as charge $transfer materials and was combined with fullerenes and BCP as electron transport layers.
Researchers have developed a new organic thermoelectric device that can harvest energy from ambient temperature. While thermoelectric devices have several uses today, hurdles still exist to their full utilization. By combining the unique abilities of organic materials, the team succeeded in developing a framework for thermoelectric power generation at room temperature without any temperature gradient. Their findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.
Thermoelectric devices, or thermoelectric generators, are a series of energy-generating materials that can convert heat into electricity so long as there is a temperature gradient — where one side of the device is hot and the other side is cool. Such devices have been a significant focus of research and development for their potential utility in harvesting waste heat from other energy-generating methods.