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Category: engineering – Page 34

CleanCo to Pilot Australia’s Largest Grid-Connected NAS® Battery at Swanbank Clean Energy Hub

CleanCo is reinforcing its commitment to Queensland’s clean energy future by exploring the potential to trial Australia’s largest grid-connected NAS® Battery Energy Storage System at the Swanbank Clean Energy Hub in Ipswich.

The partnership between Allset and CleanCo is a result of CleanCo’s proactive market engagement to identify emerging energy generation and storage technologies suitable for its Swanbank site. The parties will progress a feasibility study to finalise the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) agreement to support a final investment decision for the battery’s installation.

The Queensland University of Technology’s (QUT) Energy Storage Research Group will play a key role as the knowledge sharing partner, bringing a wealth of knowledge to the project, having commissioned Australia’s first NAS Battery in 2023.

The study is expected to be completed in early 2025 to support an investment decision in the same year, with the project potentially operational by mid-2026.

Beyond ‘one pore at a time’: New method of generating multiple, tunable nanopores

But these exciting applications have been limited in part by the tedious process of tunneling individual sub-nanometer pores one by one.

“If we are to ever scale up 2D material membranes to be relevant for applications outside the laboratory, the ‘one at a time’ method just isn’t feasible,” said recent UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) Ph.D. graduate Eli Hoenig. “But, even within the confines of laboratory experiment, a nanoporous membrane provides significantly larger signals than a single pore, increasing the sensitivity.”

Hoenig is first author of a paper recently published in Nature Communications that found a novel path around this longstanding problem. Under PME Asst. Prof. Chong Liu, the team created a new method of pore generation that builds materials with intentional weak spots, then applies a remote electric field to generate multiple nanoscale pores all at once.

Quantum research paves the way toward efficient, ultra-high-density optical memory storage

Now, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) have proposed a new type of memory, in which optical data is transferred from a rare earth element embedded within a to a nearby quantum defect. Their analysis of how such a technology could work is published in Physical Review Research.

“We worked out the basic physics behind how the transfer of energy between defects could underlie an incredibly efficient optical storage method,” said Giulia Galli, an Argonne senior scientist and Liew Family Professor at PME. “This research illustrates the importance of exploring first-principles and quantum mechanical theories to illuminate new, emerging technologies.”

Most optical memory storage methods developed in the past, including CDs and DVDs, are limited by the diffraction limit of . A single data point cannot be smaller than the wavelength of the laser writing and reading the data. In the new work, the researchers proposed boosting the bit density of optical storage by embedding many rare-earth emitters within the material. By using slightly different wavelengths of light—an approach known as wavelength multiplexing—they hypothesized that these emitters could hold more data within the same area.

New filtration material could remove long-lasting chemicals from water

Water contamination by the chemicals used in today’s technology is a rapidly growing problem globally. A recent study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control found that 98 percent of people tested had detectable levels of PFAS, a family of particularly long-lasting compounds also known as “forever chemicals,” in their bloodstream.

A new filtration material developed by researchers at MIT might provide a nature-based solution to this stubborn contamination issue. The material, based on natural silk and cellulose, can remove a wide variety of these persistent chemicals as well as heavy metals. And, its antimicrobial properties can help keep the filters from fouling.

The findings are described in the journal ACS Nano, in a paper by MIT postdoc Yilin Zhang, professor of civil and environmental engineering Benedetto Marelli, and four others from MIT.

On-demand nanoengineering of in-plane ferroelectric topologies

Hierarchical assemblies of ferroelectric nanodomains, so-called super-domains, can exhibit exotic morphologies that lead to distinct behaviours. Controlling these super-domains reliably is critical for realizing states with desired functional properties.

A biased atomic force microscopy tip can write complex in-plane polar topologies in a model ferroelectric Pb0.6Sr0.4TiO3 by means of a smart scan path design. Hence, on-demand generation, reading and erasing of tunable topologies is possible.

Probing the Quantum Nature of Reality

Even those of us who aren’t physicists have an intuitive understanding of classical physics — we can predict what will happen when we throw a ball, use a salad spinner, or ease up on the gas pedal.

But atomic and subatomic particles don’t follow these ordinary rules of reality. “It turns out that at really small scales there are a different set of rules called quantum physics,” said Travis Nicholson. “These rules are bizarre and interesting.” (Think Schrodinger’s cat and Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance.”)

Nicholson is an assistant professor with joint appointments in Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering. The physicist in him likes doing experiments to advance our knowledge of quantum mechanics; the engineer in him likes figuring out how to harness that knowledge to build quantum computers that will be vastly more powerful than today’s computers.

Inspired by squids and octopi, a new screen stores and displays encrypted images without electronics

A flexible screen inspired in part by squid can store and display encrypted images like a computer—using magnetic fields rather than electronics. The research is reported in Advanced Materials by University of Michigan engineers.

“It’s one of the first times where mechanical materials use magnetic fields for system-level encryption, information processing and computing. And unlike some earlier mechanical computers, this device can wrap around your wrist,” said Joerg Lahann, the Wolfgang Pauli Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering and co-corresponding author of the study.

The researchers’ screen could be used wherever light and power sources are cumbersome or undesirable, including clothing, stickers, ID badges, barcodes and e-book readers. A single screen can reveal an image for everyone to see when placed near a standard magnet or a private encrypted image when placed over a complex array of magnets that acts like an encryption key.

Novel Strategy Proposed for Massive Water Production on the Moon

Water plays a crucial role in human survival on the lunar surface, thus attracting extensive research attention. Prof. Wang Junqiang’s team at the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has recently developed a new method of massive water production through a reaction between lunar regolith and endogenous hydrogen.

Research results of previous lunar explorations, like the Apollo and Chang’E-5 missions, have revealed the widespread presence of water on the moon. However, the water content in lunar minerals is extremely low, ranging from 0.0001% to 0.02%. It remains challenging to extract and utilize water in situ on the moon.

“We used lunar regolith samples brought back by the Chang’E-5 mission in our study, trying to find a way to produce water on the moon,” said Wang. The study was published in The Innovation.