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Sep 6, 2022

Scientists successfully turned thin air into green hydrogen for 12 days

Posted by in categories: energy, sustainability

Scalable technology can work in relative humidity of four percent too.

An international collaboration of researchers has successfully demonstrated the production of green hydrogen directly from the air, a press release said.

Solar and wind installations are picking up steam as the world looks toward greener energy sources. Although energy is generated in an emission-free way in these methods, energy storage requires large batteries, which do not fit into the idea of sustainable living.

Sep 6, 2022

Elon Musk bashes Amazon’s ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ saying ‘Tolkien is turning in his grave’

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, energy

“Almost every male character so far is a coward, a jerk or both,” he tweeted. “Only Galadriel is brave, smart and nice.”

Galadriel is one of the female stars of the show.

Amazon has invested $1 billion in “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” series inspired by the world of J.R.R. Tolkien, and former company executives told Insider the company will use the show to determine if Amazon Studios is a worthwhile venture for the company.

Sep 6, 2022

New Prototype Device Harvests Water From The Air to Make Hydrogen Fuel

Posted by in categories: energy, sustainability

Hydrogen has huge potential as a clean fuel: it’s abundant (mainly in compounds like water), it doesn’t produce any damaging emissions, and it can also be used to store energy from solar, wind, and tidal sources.

There are challenges in producing enough of the stuff in a practical and affordable way, however. Splitting hydrogen from water can require complicated technology and also relies on pure freshwater – not something that’s plentifully available everywhere.

Now, scientists have come up with a new prototype device that can harvest water from humid air, before splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen.

Sep 6, 2022

Super-dense packing of hydrogen molecules on a surface

Posted by in categories: chemistry, energy, transportation

Hydrogen (H 2) is currently discussed as an ideal energy carrier in a world requiring renewable energies. Hydrogen has the highest gravimetric energy density of all chemical fuels (141 MJ/kg), which is three times higher than gasoline (46 MJ/kg). However, its low volumetric density restricts its widespread use in transportation applications —as current storage options require a lot of space.

At ambient temperature, hydrogen is a gas, and one kilogram of hydrogen occupies a volume of 12,000 liters (12 cubic meters). In fuel-cell vehicles, hydrogen is stored under a very high pressure of 700 times the atmospheric pressure, which reduces the volume to 25 liters per kilogram of H 2.

Liquid hydrogen shows a higher density resulting in 14 liters per kilogram, but it requires extremely low temperatures since the boiling point of hydrogen is minus 253 °C.

Sep 6, 2022

New technique significantly increases lifetimes of fuel cells and other devices

Posted by in categories: energy, materials

The adoption rate of fuel cells has increased owing to the rising need for clean energy.

In a research that could jump-start the work on a range of technologies, including fuel cells, which are key to storing solar and wind energy, MIT researchers have found a simple way to significantly increase the lifetimes of fuel cells and other devices – changing the pH of the system.

Fuel/electrolysis cells made of materials known as solid metal oxides are in interest for several reasons. In electrolysis mode, they are very efficient at converting electricity from a renewable source into a storable fuel like hydrogen or methane. This storable fuel can be used in the fuel cell mode to generate electricity when the sun is not shining, or the wind isn’t blowing.

Sep 5, 2022

Physicists discover new rule for orbital formation in chemical reactions

Posted by in categories: chemistry, energy, quantum physics, space

Squeaky, cloudy or spherical—electron orbitals show where and how electrons move around atomic nuclei and molecules. In modern chemistry and physics, they have proven to be a useful model for quantum mechanical description and prediction of chemical reactions. Only if the orbitals match in space and energy can they be combined—this is what happens when two substances react with each other chemically. In addition, there is another condition that must be met, as researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich and the University of Graz have now discovered: The course of chemical reactions also appears to be dependent on the orbital distribution in momentum space. The results were published in the journal Nature Communications.

Chemical reactions are ultimately nothing more than the formation and breakdown of electron bonds, which can also be described as orbitals. The so-called molecular orbital theory thus makes it possible to predict the path of chemical reactions. Chemists Kenichi Fukui and Roald Hoffmann received the Nobel Prize in 1981 for greatly simplifying the method, which led to its widespread use and application.

“Usually, the energy and location of electrons are analyzed. However, using the photoemission tomography method, we looked at the momentum distribution of the orbitals,” explains Dr. Serguei Soubatch. Together with his colleagues at the Peter Grünberg Institute (PGI-3) in Jülich and the University of Graz in Austria, he adsorbed various types of molecules on in a series of experiments and mapped the measured momentum in the so-called momentum space.

Sep 5, 2022

New Horizons Toward Supercapacitor Energy Devices

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, energy, nanotechnology

Because of their unique physical, photonic, thermal, and electronic capabilities, two-dimensional (2D) nanostructures have exhibited tremendous promise in the domains of bioengineering, sensing, and energy storage.

Study: Two Dimensional Silicene Nanosheets: A New Choice of Electrode Material for High-Performance Supercapacitor. Image Credit: Quardia/Shutterstock.com.

Nonetheless, combining silicon-based nanomaterials into high-performance power storage systems remains a largely undeveloped subject because of the complex manufacturing process. New work published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces hope to address this problem by effectively integrating silicene nanosheets into a high-voltage supercapacitor.

Sep 4, 2022

Thousands of Xcel customers locked out of thermostats during ‘energy emergency’

Posted by in category: energy

DENVER — During the dog days of summer, it’s important to keep your home cool. But when thousands of Xcel customers in Colorado tried adjusting their thermostats Tuesday, they learned they had no control over the temperatures in their own homes.

Temperatures climbed into the 90s Tuesday, which is why Tony Talarico tried to crank up the air conditioning in his partner’s Arvada home.

“I mean, it was 90 out, and it was right during the peak period,” Talarico said. “It was hot.”

Sep 4, 2022

New Data Reveals New Clues About the Largest Star in the Universe

Posted by in categories: energy, space

The most massive star known by astronomers is truly of gargantuan proportions. Dubbed R136a1, this is the most massive and luminous star ever discovered in the cosmos. Additionally, it belongs to the Large Magellanic Cloud and is one of the hottest stars out there, and it is very, very different than our Sun.

Astronomers have obtained the sharpest image ever of star R136a1, the most massive known star in the Universe, with the 8.1-meter Gemini South telescope in Chile, part of the International Gemini Observatory operated by NSF’s NOIRLab. Researchers at NOIRLab, led by Venu Kalari, challenge our understanding of the most massive stars and suggest their mass may be lower than previously believed.

The formation of the biggest stars – those with 100 times the mass of the Sun – is still a mystery to astronomers. Observing these giants, which normally reside within dust-shrouded star clusters, is challenging. A giant star’s fuel reserves are depleted in less than a million years. Compared with our Sun, which has a lifespan of about 10 billion years, ours is less than halfway through. Individual massive stars in clusters are difficult to distinguish due to their densely packed nature, short lifetimes, and vast astronomical distances.

Sep 3, 2022

Fuel leak ruins NASA’s 2nd shot at launching moon rocket

Posted by in categories: energy, space

NASA’s new moon rocket sprang another dangerous fuel leak Saturday, forcing launch controllers to call off their second attempt to send a crew capsule into lunar orbit with test dummies.

The first attempt earlier in the week was also marred by escaping hydrogen, but those leaks were elsewhere on the 322-foot (98-meter) rocket, the most powerful ever built by NASA.

Continue reading “Fuel leak ruins NASA’s 2nd shot at launching moon rocket” »

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