Tesla’s iconic electric vehicles are taking on a slightly different shape.
Category: sustainability – Page 175
A satellite demonstrator showed that energy collected from solar panels in space can be beamed to Earth using diffuse microwaves.
Zach Kirkhorn’s replacement, Delhi-trained accountant Vaibhav Taneja, has kept a low profile since joining Tesla in 2016—a very low profile.
Bioprocess engineer Jesús E. Rodríguez’s team dreams of replacing all synthetic plastics with biodegradable products.
Fuel cells are compact energy conversion units that utilize clean energy sources like hydrogen and convert them into electricity through a series of oxidation–reduction reactions. Specifically, proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), an integral part of electric vehicles, utilize proton-conductive membranes for operation. Unfortunately, these membranes suffer from a trade-off between high durability and high ion conductivity, affecting the lifetime and performance of PEMFCs.
To overcome this issue, scientists have synthesized chemically and physically modified perfluorosulfonic acid polymer membranes, such as Nafion HP, Nafion XL, and Gore-Select, which have proven to be much more durable than unmodified membranes conventionally employed in fuel-cell operations.
Unfortunately, none of the existing proton-conductive membranes have fulfilled the highly challenging technical target—passing an accelerated durability test or a combined chemical and mechanical test—set by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to facilitate their use in automobile fuel cells by 2025.
The two materials, the researchers found, can be combined with water to make a supercapacitor — an alternative to batteries — that could provide storage of electrical energy. As an example, the MIT researchers who developed the system say that their supercapacitor could eventually be incorporated into the concrete foundation of a house, where it could store a full day’s worth of energy while adding little (or no) to the cost of the foundation and still providing the needed structural strength. The researchers also envision a concrete roadway that could provide contactless recharging for electric cars as they travel over that road.
The simple but innovative technology is described this week in the journal PNAS, in a paper by MIT professors Franz-Josef Ulm, Admir Masic, and Yang-Shao Horn, and four others at MIT and at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
MIT engineers created a carbon-cement supercapacitor that can store large amounts of energy. Made of just cement, water, and carbon black, the device could form the basis for inexpensive systems that store intermittently renewable energy, such as solar or wind energy.
It reduces water wastage and carbon emissions.
“When it comes to photovoltaics, dust is the enemy. This is not a trivial concept, even if it may seem so at first glance; actually, the problem of soiling – the accumulation of dust, dirt or sand on PV panels – can decrease, sometimes significantly, the performance of solar power systems,” stated an Enel Green Power press release published on Friday.
Desert areas
“It’s an issue that’s particularly important in desert areas, areas with low rainfall, and those characterized by the presence of very dusty soil, where soiling can have a heavy impact on energy yield, but in any case, it’s something that concerns solar power everywhere, because regardless of location, cleaning the panels still involves costs, including environmental ones.”
The future of cities as seen by architects and urban planners. Future cities: Urban planners get creative | DW DocumentaryYOUTUBE.COMFuture cities: Urban planners get creative | DW Documentary.
Will the cities of the future be climate neutral? Might they also be able to actively filter carbon dioxide out of the air? Futurologist Vincente Guallarte thinks so. In fact, he says, our cities will soon be able to absorb CO2, just like trees do.
To accomplish this, Guallarte wants to bring sustainable industries and agriculture to our urban centers, with greenhouses atop every building. But in order for Guallarte’s proposal to work, he says, cities will have learn to submit to the laws and principles of nature.
Urban planners also have big plans for our energy supply. In the future, countries like Germany could become energy producers. In Esslingen am Neckar, residents are working on producing green hydrogen in homes, to be used as fuel for trucks. It’s a project that‘s breaking new ground, says investor Manfred Norbert.
Our future cities will be all about redefining a new normal. Architects and urban planners are expecting to see entirely new approaches to communal living, as well as new urban concepts for autonomous supply chains. The repurposing of old buildings, and the generation of food as well as energy, are other important topics.
Is the Ira Rubinoff Director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI https://www.si.edu/about/bios/joshua-tewksbury), part of the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex. He oversees more than 400 employees, with an annual budget of $35 million. Headquartered in Panama City, Panama, with field sites around the world, STRI furthers the understanding and public awareness of tropical biodiversity and its importance to human welfare. In addition to its resident scientists and support staff, STRI’s facilities are used annually by some 1,400 visiting scientists, pre-and postdoctoral fellows and interns from around the world.
Dr. Tewksbury is an ecologist with more than two decades of research in conservation and biodiversity, as well as nearly a decade of executive leadership experience at international research institutes.
Prior to his role at the STRI, Dr. Tewksbury was serving as Executive Director at Future Earth, a global research program dedicated to sustainability and global change, where he led a network of tens of thousands of scientists and managed a wide range of conservation research projects, staff, programs and partnerships.
In this role at Future Earth, Dr. Tewksbury oversaw dozens of interdisciplinary research projects, from assessing threats to biodiversity to understanding the relationship between human and environmental health. He has also founded initiatives like the Earth Leadership Program, which supported skills development for academic researchers working to address sustainability challenges. Previously, he was the founding director of the Luc Hoffman Institute, a global research center within World Wildlife Fund International focused on conservation science.
Dr. Tewksbury is also co-founder and executive editor of Anthropocene magazine, a publication that highlights sustainability solutions. He holds faculty positions at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado State and George Mason University’s Department of Environmental Science and Policy. He also has an appointment as senior scholar with Colorado State University’s School of Global Environmental Sustainability and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology.
Over the course of his research career, Dr. Tewksbury has published more than 85 scientific papers on topics in conservation, climate change and natural history, including the relationships and diversity of tropical plants, animals and fungi. He holds a bachelor’s degree in field biology from Prescott College and a doctorate from the University of Montana in organismal biology and ecology.
Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries power smartphones, electric vehicles and storage for solar and wind energy, among other technologies.
They descend from another technology, the lithium-metal battery, that hasn’t been developed or adopted as broadly. There’s a reason for that: While lithium-metal batteries have the potential to hold about double the energy that lithium-ion batteries can, they also present a far greater risk of catching fire or even exploding.
Now, a study by members of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA reveals a fundamental discovery that could lead to safer lithium-metal batteries that outperform today’s lithium-ion batteries. The research was published today in the journal Nature.