Lifeboat Foundation

Syngas is an important feedstock for modern chemical industries and can be directly used as fuel. Carbon monoxide (CO) is its main component. Direct conversion of widespread renewable biomass resources into CO can help to achieve sustainable development.

Conventionally, bio-syngas is mainly produced through thermal-chemical processes such as pyrolysis, steam reforming or aqueous reforming, which require high temperature and consume a lot of energy.

Recently, a research team led by Prof. Wang Feng from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with Prof. Wang Min from Dalian University of Technology, developed a new method to directly convert bio-polyols into CO.

After centuries of failure, there is finally a way to use solar power to desalinate salty water, produce pure water for home and farm use and have housing in the raw desert.

The key energy driver is the Suns River desalination modules linked with Aquastill’s Membrane distillation – the process in which pure water is separated from contaminated water (salt water, for example) by means of evaporation through a membrane. The combination of Suns River and Aquastill brings productivity up to 50 liters/m2 or the equivalent of 6 times the solar energy input.

Continue reading “Suns River Still uses sunlight to pull pure water from seawater” »

The idea of a tritium power cell is pretty straightforward: stick enough of the tiny glowing tubes to a photovoltaic panel and your DIY “nuclear battery” will generate energy for the next decade or so. Only problem is that the power produced, measured in a few microwatts, isn’t enough to do much with. But as [Ian Charnas] demonstrates in his latest video, you can eke some real-world use out of such a cell by storing up its power over a long enough period.

As with previous projects we’ve seen, [Ian] builds his cell by sandwiching an array of keychain-sized tritium tubes between two solar panels. Isolated from any outside light, power produced by the panels is the result of the weak green glow given off by the tube’s phosphorus coating as it gets bombarded with electrons. The panels are then used to charge a bank of thin-film solid state batteries, which are notable for their exceptionally low self-discharge rate.

Continue reading “Tetris Handheld Powered By Tritium Cell, Eventually” »

Clean energy sources generated a record 834 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity, or about 21% of all electricity generated in the US in 2020, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported yesterday. That includes wind, hydroelectric, solar, biomass, and geothermal.

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Only natural gas (1.617 billion kWh) produced more electricity than clean energy in the US in 2020.

Korea Zinc buys wind and solar developer Epuron, delivering a wind and solar portfolio of up to 9GW for its green metals and hydrogen ambitions.

Korean Zinc, the world’s biggest zinc, lead and silver producer, has bought Australian-based renewable energy developer Epuron as part of its move towards 100 per cent renewables, green metals and green hydrogen.

The purchase is a significant move, and underlines the determination of some of the world’s biggest metals companies to switch to green products, in moves that will surely turbo-charge the development of wind and solar projects in Australia and across the globe.

Continue reading “Zinc giant buys wind and solar developer in major green metals and hydrogen play” »

The Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL)and Northrop Grumman’s Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research (SSPIDR) Project announced that they are one step closer to collecting solar energy in space and transmitting it to Earth using radio frequency (RF). The team has successfully conducted the first end-to-end demonstration of key hardware for the Arachne flight experiment.

A ground demonstration of novel components for the “sandwich tile” was used to successfully convert solar energy to radiofrequency (RF) – a fundamental step required to pave the way for a large-scale solar power collection system in space. For this to work, it is necessary to use receiving antennas on Earth to convert RF energy into usable power.

Space solar power is a key focus of AFRL, which awarded Northrop Grumman a $100 million contract in 2018 for the development of a payload to demonstrate the key components of a prototype space solar power system. The sandwich tile is currently under development as an essential payload component for Arachne and as a building block for a large-scale operational system.

In a bit of good news, the spot price for solar grade polysilicon is dropping quite rapidly. If the trend holds, the cost of solar panels in Australia should follow suit soon-ish.

Polysilicon is used in the manufacture of conventional photovoltaic cells used in solar panels. The sought-after stuff was as cheap as chips in July last year, when it was below USD $7/kg. But a series of events including impacts from the pandemic and a couple of factory fires saw it skyrocket.

Polysilicon spot prices were as high as US$36.64/kg at the beginning of this month. But here’s what’s happened in the last few weeks as reported by Bernreuter Research.

PENA, the division of Panasonic which produces lithium-ion batteries at the Sparks Gigafactory, will move into an existing building at 645 E. Plumb Lane, about half a mile east of the Reno-Tahoe International Airport. PENA’s headquarters will move from the Gigafactory to the Plumb Lane campus.

“Our new facility in Reno underscores our commitment to evolving and growing to stay at the forefront of the mobility market,” Allan Swan, president of PENA, said in a news release. “Investing in innovation and workforce initiatives in the local community supports our mission of creating a future powered by sustainable energy.”

It’s the stuff of science fiction but it’s real.

Although it may sound like science fiction, space-based solar power has started making headway with several projects underway. In February, we brought you news of technology firm Redwire acquiring Deployable Space Systems (DSS), a leading supplier of deployable solar arrays capable of enabling space missions with the intention of using them to deploy space-based solar power.

Meanwhile, last August we brought you further news, of Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project (SSPP) that collected solar power in space to be transmitted wirelessly to Earth offering energy unaffected by weather or time of day. The project promised to make solar power that could be continuously available anywhere on earth.