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Category: sustainability – Page 300

Tesla Model Y with new 4680 cells shows impressive potential for faster charging

Early experiences with the new Tesla Model Y with 4,680 cells and a structural battery pack are showing some impressive potential for faster charging and better energy density.

When Tesla delivered its first made-in-Texas Model Y vehicles, we noted that it was strange that Tesla didn’t reveal any details – like specs and pricing – about the new version of the electric SUV.

We learned a little more over the next few weeks. The new Texas-built Model Y Standard starts at $59,990, has a range of 279 miles, goes 0–60 mph acceleration in five seconds, and is equipped with a few new features, including a magnetic center console armrest and a parcel shelf. But we are more interested in the impact of the new battery cell and structural battery pack.

A new battery design could last for an entire 100 years

Tesla’s battery research arm based in Canada published a paper earlier this month that provides details of a battery design that could serve us for 100 years, Electrek reported.

As the world looks to reduce carbon emissions, electric transportation is one of the ways that is being touted to achieve emission targets that countries have set themselves. To ensure this can be sustainable, countries need to switch to renewable sources of power, while electric vehicle makers need to ensure that the cars themselves do not become a cause of concern.

Lightyear 0 production solar car could run for months without charging

Dutch company Lightyear has unveiled what it claims is the world’s first production-ready solar car. The Lightyear 0 is a family sedan with 5 sq m (53.8 sq ft) of solar panels built in, capable of generating up to 70 km (44 miles) of charge-free driving a day.

Having scaled its workforce up to 500 people and hooked up deals with more than 100 suppliers, Lightyear is deadly serious about this venture and ready to start manufacturing. Its first car is this four-door fastback electric sedan, with enough onboard battery to deliver a very solid 560 km (348 miles) of freeway driving at 110 km/h (68 mph), even without the sun shining.

That’s a pretty impressive number; in WLTP testing, the Lightyear 0 delivers 625 km (388 miles) of range, or nearly 4 percent more than Tesla’s Model 3 Long Range AWD. Lightyear says it’s developed the most efficient electric drivetrain ever, and that these range figures come from a battery pack holding just 60 kWh. For comparison, the Model 3 Long Range AWD is reported to run an 82-kWh pack.

LG AI Research’s First AI Artist, ‘Tilda’, Creates A New Sustainable Clothing Collection Made By Combining Digital Waste With Secondhand Denim and Materials

Numerous activities, including construction and demolition, mining and industrial activities, cooking and gardening, and others, generate a substantial amount of garbage. The amount of waste generated is directly proportional to consumption and production patterns.

In most cases, waste formation is the result of inefficient material utilization. Trends in the number, composition and impacts of these materials provide insight into the nation’s efficiency in using (and reusing) materials and resources. It also provides a better understanding of the effects of waste on human health and the environment.

According to surveys, 92 million tonnes of cloth are dumped as garbage each year worldwide. Estimates predict that this figure will likely exceed 130 million tonnes by 2030. When 200 tonnes of water used to make a single tonne of fabric is considered, it becomes clear that the end-to-end processes of the garment industry are severe threats to environmental initiatives.

Energy Dome launches world’s first CO2 battery for long-duration energy storage

Italian company Energy Dome has announced the successful launch of its first CO2 Battery facility in Sardinia, Italy. The milestone marks the final de-risking of the CO2 Battery technology as Energy Dome enters the commercial scaling phase, becoming the first commercial long-duration energy storage technology on the market offering a reliable alternative to fossil fuels for dispatchable baseload power globally.

The Energy Dome CO2 battery uses carbon dioxide to store renewable energy, such as solar and wind energy, over a long period and release it quickly. Energy Dome says the technology can be quickly deployed anywhere in the world at less than half the cost of similar-sized lithium battery storage facilities.

Energy Dome began its operations in February 2020 and has progressed from a concept to full testing at a multi-megawatt scale in just over two years. This successful launch is also in part due to the unique nature of Energy Dome’s process, which integrates known components in a novel industrial process based on a thermodynamic transformation of CO2.

Energy Dome launches world’s first CO2 battery energy storage facility

Italian company Energy Dome has opened the first of its remarkable grid-level energy storage plants. These “CO2 batteries” can store renewable energy over long periods and release it quickly, at less than half the cost of big lithium batteries.

Large-scale energy storage is going to be required on an epic scale all round the world, as green energy begins to take over the world’s power supply. Renewable energy is often generated at times and places where it’s not needed, and a variety of grid-level storage technologies are jockeying for various energy market niches, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

We took a close look at Energy Dome’s CO2 battery technology last July, but here’s the guts of it: carbon dioxide expands dramatically when it moves to a gaseous state from a liquid state, which it’ll only settle in under pressures at least five times higher than the Earth’s atmospheric pressure. How much does it expand? Well, at room temperature, 2.5675 litres of liquid CO2 kept at 56 atmospheres of pressure will expand into 1,000 litres of gaseous CO2. That’s a factor of nearly 400.

Aerogel integrated wood provides better insulation than existing plastic-based materials

One day soon, buildings could become more energy-efficient—and environmentally sustainable—with insulating material developed from wood by researchers in Sweden. The newly-developed material offers as good or even better thermal performance than ordinary plastic-based insulation materials, according to researchers reporting recently in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

Yuanyuan Li, an assistant professor at Wallenberg Wood Science Center, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, says that the new insulating material is an aerogel integrated wood which is made without adding additional substances.

Wood cellulose aerogels themselves are nothing new—researchers have been developing advanced types of aerogels and other composites for the last several years in the Wallenberg Wood Science Center at KTH—but Li says the new method represents a breakthrough in controlled creation of insulating nanostructures in the pores of wood.