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Archive for the ‘solar power’ category: Page 22

Sep 5, 2023

Scientists synthesize new organometallic ‘sandwich’ compound capable of holding more electrons

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, solar power

Organometallic compounds, molecules made up of metal atoms and organic molecules, are often used to accelerate chemical reactions and have played a significant role in advancing the field of chemistry.

Metallocenes, a type of organometallic compound, are known for their versatility and special “sandwich” structure. Their discovery was a significant contribution to the field of organometallic chemistry and led to the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1973 to the scientists who discovered and explained their sandwich structure.

The versatility of metallocenes is due to their ability to “sandwich” many different elements to form a variety of compounds. They can be used in various applications, including the production of polymers, glucometers—used to measure the amount of glucose in the blood, perovskite , and as a catalyst, a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without being consumed or changed by the reaction itself.

Sep 4, 2023

Scania tests hybrid truck with solar panel trailer

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability, transportation

This is according to a press release by Scania published on Thursday.

Aug 28, 2023

Scientists use quantum device to slow down simulated chemical reaction 100 billion times

Posted by in categories: chemistry, computing, environmental, quantum physics, solar power

Scientists at the University of Sydney have, for the first time, used a quantum computer to engineer and directly observe a process critical in chemical reactions by slowing it down by a factor of 100 billion times.

Joint lead researcher and Ph.D. student, Vanessa Olaya Agudelo, said, It is by understanding these basic processes inside and between molecules that we can open up a new world of possibilities in , drug design, or harvesting.

Continue reading “Scientists use quantum device to slow down simulated chemical reaction 100 billion times” »

Aug 26, 2023

Transparent solar panels will soon become a window of energy and light in your home

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability

Transparent solar windows are not only generating news as demonstration projects—many have already been set up. On the list of installations for UE Power are its own offices in Redwood City, California, at the R&D facility of its partner in Northwood, Ohio, a commercial office building in Boulder, Colorado, and in Tokyo, Japan. In addition, it has an installation at Michigan State University. UbiQD also claims to have installations in multiple U.S. states, which include a Holiday Inn hotel, its own headquarters in Los Alamos, and the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado.

What’s the premium for transparency?

UbiQD’s product isn’t commercially available yet, but McDaniel expects the premium for transparent solar power to be not more than 30 percent over ordinary windows. He said that “Traditional solar cells are not sold at a cost per watt, not based on area, like windows. The additional window cost, per watt, is similar to utility-scale solar. We have a similar payback time to traditional solar [before incentives].”

Aug 24, 2023

New robot searches for solar cell materials 14 times faster

Posted by in categories: chemistry, robotics/AI, solar power, sustainability

Earlier this year, two-layer solar cells broke records with 33 percent efficiency. The cells are made of a combination of silicon and a material called a perovskite. However, these tandem solar cells are still far from the theoretical limit of around 45 percent efficiency, and they degrade quickly under sun exposure, making their usefulness limited.

The process of improving tandem solar cells involves the search for the perfect materials to layer on top of each other, with each capturing some of the sunlight the other is missing. One potential material for this is perovskites, which are defined by their peculiar rhombus-in-a-cube crystal structure. This structure can be adopted by many chemicals in a variety of proportions. To make a good candidate for tandem solar cells, the combination of chemicals needs to have the right bandgap—the property responsible for absorbing the right part of the sun’s spectrum—be stable at normal temperatures, and, most challengingly, not degrade under illumination.

The number of possible perovskite materials is vast, and predicting the properties that a given chemical composition will have is very difficult. Trying all the possibilities out in the lab is prohibitively costly and time-consuming. To accelerate the search for the ideal perovskite, researchers at North Carolina State University decided to enlist the help of robots.

Aug 23, 2023

New system captures fog and turns it into clean water

Posted by in categories: chemistry, particle physics, solar power, sustainability

People living in dry but foggy areas can benefit from this technology.

Researchers from ETH Zurich have developed a system that captures fog in the atmosphere and simultaneously removes contaminants while running using solar power.

The harvesting and water treatment system consists of a metal wire mesh with a solar-light-activated reactive coating that captures the fog. The droplets of water then trickle down into a container below. The mesh is coated with a mixture of specially selected polymers and titanium dioxide, which acts as a chemical catalyst and breaks down the molecules of the pollutants into harmless particles.

Aug 22, 2023

Borrowing a page from plants, engineers create solar leaves that produce electricity and clean water

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability

Low-cost, widely available materials cool solar panels without using energy to boost electricity output and produce liters of water at the same time.

Aug 21, 2023

Making big leaps in understanding nanoscale gaps

Posted by in categories: chemistry, nanotechnology, physics, solar power, sustainability

Creating novel materials by combining layers with unique, beneficial properties seems like a fairly intuitive process—stack up the materials and stack up the benefits. This isn’t always the case, however. Not every material will allow energy to travel through it the same way, making the benefits of one material come at the cost of another.

Using cutting-edge tools, scientists at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) User Facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the Institute of Experimental Physics at the University of Warsaw have created a new layered structure with 2D materials that exhibits a unique transfer of energy and charge. Understanding its may lead to advancements in technologies such as solar cells and other optoelectronic devices. The results were published in the journal Nano Letters.

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are a class of materials structured like sandwiches with . The meat of a TMD is a , which can form with electrons on their outermost orbit or shell, like most elements, as well as the next shell. That metal is sandwiched between two layers of chalcogens, a category of elements that contains oxygen, sulfur, and selenium.

Aug 20, 2023

Solutions for Solar Panel Waste Are Just Beginning to Surface

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability

Recycling options and technology are slowly emerging as millions of tons of solar panels reach their end of life, threatening to fill landfills.

Aug 17, 2023

This bio-inspired leaf generates more power than solar panels

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability

This is according to a press release by the institution published on Tuesday.

The PV-leaf

Called PV-leaf, the innovation “uses low-cost materials and could inspire the next generation of renewable energy technologies.”

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