Lifeboat Foundation

DP World has completed testing of the Boxbay fully automated container storage system at its Jebel Ali terminal in Dubai, accomplishing more than 63,000 container moves since the facility was commissioned earlier this year.

The facility, which can hold 792 containers at a time, exceeded expectations, delivering faster and more energy-efficient than anticipated, the Dubai-headquartered terminal operator said.

Continue reading “Fully automated container storage system makes first successful trial” »

Scientists at Australia’s RMIT investigating the massive untapped potential of wave energy have come up with a novel design for a convertor they say operates with far greater efficiency than comparable solutions, and which they hope could open the door to widespread commercial use of the technology. The team’s prototype employs a novel dual-turbine design that sidesteps some common technical issues, and proved capable of harvesting twice the energy from waves as current designs in early experiments.

The idea of capturing energy from ocean waves has been around for centuries, and recently we’re starting to see modern machines designed for these purposes take to the seas in some interesting forms. This includes rotating systems that extract power from vertical and horizontal movement, blowhole-like generators that capture energy as waves push water and air through concrete chambers, and squid-like generators with buoyant arms that rise and fall with the motion of the waves.

One of the more common approaches to harnessing wave energy is known as a point absorber buoy, which consists of a flotation device on the surface that is tethered to the seabed. As the buoy moves up and down with the passing waves, it drives an energy converter mechanism built onto the tether partway below the surface. This might be a geared drivetrain that uses the linear motion to spin a flywheel and generate power, as seen in some experimental designs.

FORT SILL, Okla., Aug. 17 2021 — The U.S. Army has completed a directed-energy maneuver short-range air defense (DE M-SHORAD) “combat shoot-off” — its first development and demonstration of a high-power laser weapon. As part of the DE M-SHORAD combat shoot-off, the Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO), alongside Air and Missile Defense Cross Functional Team, Fires Center of Excellence, and the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command, took a laser-equipped Stryker vehicle to Fort Sill, Okla. At the combat shoot-off, the Stryker faced a number of realistic scenarios designed to establish, for the first time in the Army, the desired characteristics for future DE M-SHORAD systems.

FUSION BREAKEVEN ACHEIVED FOR FIRST TIME:

A tiny pellet of deuterium and tritium released more energy than it absorbed from the National Ignition Facility’s bank of 192 lasers.

Researchers have developed prototype technology that can double the power harvested from ocean waves, in an advance that could finally make wave energy a viable renewable alternative.

The untapped potential of ocean wave energy is vast—it has been estimated that the power of coastal waves around the world each year is equivalent to annual global electricity production.

But the challenges of developing technologies that can efficiently extract that natural power and withstand the harsh ocean environment have kept wave energy stuck at experimental stage.

Despite strong support from the FAA, the airline industry, and aerospace companies, the U.S. Senate ceased funding the development of a supersonic airliner in 1971. Two years later, the FAA banned supersonic flight over land, a prohibition that remains to this day.

The Concorde went on to serve various destinations, including some in the United States, flying at supersonic speeds only over water. That continued until 2,003 when British Airways and Air France retired their fleets, together amounting to just 12 aircraft. (Fourteen production aircraft were manufactured, but one was scrapped in 1,994 and another crashed in 2000.)

While the Concorde successfully overcame the technical hurdles standing in the way of supersonic passenger service, it succumbed to economics: The cost of fuel and maintenance was especially high for these planes. A new generation of aeronautical engineers and entrepreneurs are, however, keen to once again take on the technical, environmental, and economic challenges.

Using hydrogen for transportation is criticized by many. It would not be as energy-efficient as batteries, and a recent study even pointed out that producing it can be more pollutant than just burning the natural gas from where it is extracted. One of the main hurdles involving it is storage: putting the gas in a tank demands a lot of energy. E for Electric discovered a “solid-state hydrogen fueling” thanks to Sandy Munro and told us more about Plasma Kinetics, the company that developed it.

Engineers at the University of Pennsylvania have found a new way to build and package microbatteries that drastically improve energy and power density even at the smallest sizes. They developed a new kind of current collector and cathode that increases the fraction of materials that store energy while simultaneously serving as a protective shell. This reduces the need for non-conductive packaging that normally protects a battery’s sensitive internal chemicals.

It weighs the same as two grains of rice but has the energy density of a much larger, heavier battery.

Three scientists on Tuesday won the Nobel Physics Prize, including the first woman to receive the prestigious award in 55 years, for inventing Chirped-pulse amplification, or CPA. The 9-million-Swedish-kronor award (about $1 million) will be doled out to Arthur Ashkin of Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, N.J., Gérard Mourou of École Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France, and Donna Strickland of the University of Waterloo in Canada. This is a technique for creating ultrashort, yet extremely high-energy laser pulses necessary in a variety of applications. It is remarkable what can be achieved with lasers in research and in applications, and there are many good reasons for it, including their coherence, frequency stability, and controllability, but for some applications, the thing that really matters is raw power. Article by Dr. Olivier Alirol, Physicist, Resonance Science Foundation Research Scientist.