Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: sustainability – Page 294

Turlock Irrigation District (TID) has announced Project Nexus, a pilot project to build solar panel canopies over a portion of TID’s existing canals to operate and research how water-plus-energy can meet California’s needs for climate resiliency.

The Project Nexus could contribute to a more water resilient future for California and position the State to meet its ambitious clean energy goals. The Project will assess the reduction of water evaporation resulting from mid-day shade and wind mitigation; improvements to water quality through reduced vegetative growth; reduction in canal maintenance through reduced vegetative growth; and generation of renewable electricity.

The inspiration for Project Nexus comes from the concept presented in a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of California, Merced, and UC Santa Cruz, which found many advantages to mounting solar panels over open water canals. The study showed that covering the approximately 4,000 miles of California canals could save 63 billion gallons of water annually. This amount of water could be used to irrigate 50,000 acres of farmland or meet the residential water needs of more than 2 million people.

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Most energy-producing technologies used today are unsustainable, as they cause significant damage to our planet’s natural environment. In recent years, scientists worldwide have thus been trying to devise alternative energy solutions that take advantage of abundant and natural resources.

In addition to , wind and seawater energy solutions, some physicists and engineers have been exploring the possibility of sourcing energy from nuclear reactions. This is the process through which two atomic nuclei combine to form a heavier nucleus and an energetic neutron.

Two research teams working at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) National Ignition Facility (NIF) demonstrated new approaches to increase nuclear energy production via a laser-driven . Their findings, published in recent Nature and Nature Physics papers, open new exciting possibilities for one day using self-heating plasmas as sustainable energy sources.

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Today’s rechargeable batteries are a wonder, but far from perfect. Eventually, they all wear out, begetting expensive replacements and recycling.

“But what if batteries were indestructible?” asks William Chueh, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford University and senior author of a new paper detailing a first-of-its-kind analytical approach to building better batteries that could help speed that day. The study appears in the journal Nature Materials.

Chueh, lead author Haitao “Dean” Deng, Ph.D. ‘21, and collaborators at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, MIT and other research institutions used artificial intelligence to analyze new kinds of atomic-scale microscopic images to understand exactly why batteries wear out. Eventually, they say, the revelations could lead to batteries that last much longer than today’s. Specifically, they looked at a particular type of lithium-ion batteries based on so-called LFP materials, which could lead to mass-market electric vehicles because it does not use chemicals with constrained supply chains.

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GreenCore EV Services has a goal of building and operating a network of over 10,000 solar EV charging plazas throughout the United States by the end of the decade. The company’s charging plazas will serve both consumer and commercial vehicles.

To help usher in this goal, GreenCore announced that it has selected B&D Industries to provide labor and prefabrication services to build out the company’s network of solar-powered EV charging plazas.

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Lithium-sulfur batteries have three times the potential charge capacity of lithium-ion batteries, which are found in everything from smartphones to electric cars. Their inherent instability, however, have so far made them unsuitable for commercial applications, with lithium-sulfur batteries undergoing a 78 per cent change in size every charging cycle.

Overcoming this issue would not only radically improve the performance of battery-powered devices, it would also address some of the environment concerns that come with lithium-ion batteries, such as the sourcing and disposal of rare raw materials.

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A quasiparticle that forms in semiconductors can now be moved around at room temperature, a University of Michigan-led study has shown. The finding could cool down computers, enabling faster speeds and higher efficiencies, and potentially make LEDs and solar panels more efficient.

Today’s electronic devices rely on electrons to move both energy and information around, but about half of that energy is wasted as heat due to . Excitons, which escape traditional electrical losses, are one potential alternative.

“If you think of the past almost two decades, the computers have always been at two to three gigahertz—they never increase the speed. And that’s the reason. It just gets too hot,” said Parag Deotare, assistant professor of electrical engineering and science and corresponding author of the study.

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