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Category: sustainability – Page 346

Energy Efficient, Transparent Solar Windows: You Really Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet

Building integrated solar provides businesses with new bottom line opportunities to leverage their properties to attract a new generation of sustainability-focused consumers, and that leaves little space for fossil energy to maneuver.

More than 20 billion square feet of windows are installed every year, and the leading firm Andersen Corporation apparently plans to make some of those billions into energy efficient, transparent solar energy generators that could kick the pace of global energy decarbonization into high gear. The well-known maker of windows and doors just chipped in for a $30 million Series B funding round that will help push the not-so-well-known transparent solar innovator Ubiquitous Energy out of the startup shadows and into the bright sunshine of the global building industries marketplace.

Ubiquitous Energy Hearts Transparent Solar Windows

The idea of transforming windows into fully transparent, see-through PV powerhouses has allured researchers for years. Conventional solar panels block the sun, so that’s out. Thin film PV technology offers an alternative route, but the problem is squeezing out enough clean kilowatts to make the endeavor worthwhile. Thin film is transparent, but overall the technology is not as efficient as conventional photovoltaic panels.

Next Fiat Panda aims for ‘most affordable EV’ title, will slot below 500e

Next Fiat Panda aims for ‘most affordable EV’ title with customizable, clever crossover that will slot below 500e.

What’s the most affordable EV you can buy? If rumors out of Fiat are to be believed, the answer to that question will soon be “the new Fiat Panda” as Stellantis targets the bottom end of the booming electric car market.

Set to arrive as soon as this spring, the new Fiat Panda will be an EV-only offering from Stellantis’ “entry” Italian brand, and is expected to slot in below the ell-electric Fiat 500e, price-wise, in the company’s lineup. Its main objective, as the brand’s President, Oliver Francois, told AutoExpress UK, is to “awaken the sleeping giant” he believes Fiat to be. “That’s exactly my point of view,” he says, when discussing new models. “We have not even started awakening the giant.”

As a product, the upcoming Fiat Panda is believed to be heavily based on Fiat’s 2019 concept, the award-winning Fiat Centoventi. At the time, the company said it would reduce the car’s build costs by adopting a spartan design with a limited color palette that was at once “minimalist and fully customizable.”

Dimming the Sun Could Spell Doom for Humanity, Experts Warn

Policy experts and scientists are coming together to stop such experimentation.

Back in March of 2021, we brought you news of a study from the Bill Gates-backed Harvard University Solar Geoengineering Research Program which aimed to evaluate the efficacy of blocking sunlight from reaching our planet’s surface in order to delay the effects of climate change.

Now, more than 60 policy experts and scientists have come together to claim that these kinds of geoengineering initiatives are very dangerous for humanity, according to Phys.org.

“Solar geoengineering deployment cannot be governed globally in a fair, inclusive and effective manner,” said the researchers in a letter that was further supported by a commentary in the journal WIREs Climate Change.

“We, therefore, call for immediate political action from governments, the United Nations and other actors to prevent the normalization of solar geoengineering as a climate policy option.”

Turns out geoengineering is not all it’s cracked up to be, and experts say that it could be dangerous to play with it.

Rolls-Royce Says Its Electric Plane Just Smashed the World Record for Speed

The first electric plane took flight in 1973. There was just one person on board and the plane only stayed in the air for 14 minutes, but it was the beginning of an ongoing effort to power aircraft with batteries instead of fuel. Multiple companies are working on building faster, lighter, more efficient electric planes, as well as batteries to power those planes—and last week an aircraft made by Rolls-Royce hit some new milestones in the industry.

Cheerily dubbed the Spirit of Innovation, the plane is part of the company’s Accelerating the Electrification of Flight initiative. The seemingly precocious plane just completed its maiden flight a little over a month ago, and Rolls-Royce subsequently launched “an intense flight testing phase” to collect data on the performance of the aircraft’s power and propulsion system, a 400kW electric powertrain they call “the most power-dense propulsion battery pack ever assembled in aerospace.”

Last week, the company said in a press release, they set three new world records. First, the aircraft reached a top speed of 345.4 mph (555.9 km/h) over 1.8 miles (3 kilometers). That’s 132 mph (213 k/h) faster than the existing record. The Spirit of Innovation got up to an altitude of 9,842.5 feet (3,000 meters) in 202 seconds—60 seconds faster than the existing record. And finally, the plane reached a maximum speed of 387.4 mph (623 km/h) during its flight tests, which Rolls-Royce says makes it the world’s fastest all-electric vehicle. The company is waiting on the Federal Aviation Institute to confirm and certify these claims.

SCO2 Turbomachinery Developed for Concentrated Solar Power Plant

Southwest Research Institute worked with government and commercial collaborators to successfully develop and demonstrate full-scale turbomachinery for one of the world’s first supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) power systems for a concentrated solar power (CSP) plant. The technology combines sCO2 power cycles with integrated thermal energy storage.

The project was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s APOLLO program, which was created to improve performance and reduced the cost of electricity from CSP plants. The 10MW sCO2 turbomachinery has successfully completed performance and endurance tests in a closed-loop environment.

SCO2 is carbon dioxide held above a critical temperature and pressure, which causes it to act like a gas while having the density of a liquid. It’s also nontoxic and nonflammable, having been used in dry cleaning processes, low-GHG refrigeration systems, as well as to decaffeinate coffee.

MIT Scientists Overcome a Major Bottleneck in Carbon Dioxide Conversion

Study reveals why some attempts to convert the greenhouse gas into fuel have failed, and offers possible solutions.

If researchers could find a way to chemically convert carbon dioxide into fuels or other products, they might make a major dent in greenhouse gas emissions. But many such processes that have seemed promising in the lab haven’t performed as expected in scaled-up formats that would be suitable for use with a power plant or other emissions sources.

Now, researchers at MIT.

New sub-Jupiter-mass exoplanet detected by astronomers

An international team of astronomers using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has detected a rocky planet, about half the mass of Earth, in an extraordinarily short 7.7-hour orbit around its parent star.

It’s a reminder that the science of extrasolar planet hunting seems to enter bizarro land with each new discovery. Planetary scientists still haven’t figured out how our own tiny Mercury — which orbits our Sun once every 88 days — actually formed and evolved. So, this iron-rich ultrashort-period (USP) planet, dubbed GJ 367b should really boggle their minds.

It’s completely rocky, unlike most previously detected gaseous hot Jupiters on extremely short stellar orbits. As a result, the tiny planet is estimated to have a surface with temperatures of 1,500 degrees Celsius, hot enough to melt iron; hardly an Earth 2.0.

Full Story:

An international team of astronomers reports the detection of a new sub-Jupiter-mass alien world orbiting an M-dwarf star. The newly found exoplanet, designated OGLE-2014-BLG-0319Lb, turns out to be about half as massive as Jupiter. The discovery was detailed in a paper published December 30 on the arXiv pre-print repository.

Based on the gravitational lens effect, the microlensing method is mainly used to detect planetary and stellar-mass objects regardless of the light they emit. This technique is therefore sensitive to the mass of the objects, rather than their luminosity, which allows astronomers to study objects that emit little or no light at all.

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The World’s Fastest Electric Airplane

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THE SPIRIT OF INNOVATION
On November 16, 2021, an experimental aircraft called the ‘Spirit of Innovation’, designed by Rolls Royce, would record an average speed of just under 556 km/h or 345mph over a 3km span. The Spirit of Innovation is the world’s fastest, all electric aircraft. It superseded the previous record set by the Siemens eAircraft Extra 330 LE Aerobatic aircraft in 2017 by over 213 km/h or 132 mph, and it also climbed over 60 seconds faster to 3,000 meters or about 10,000 ft.

BUILDING THE AIRCRAFT
The Lycoming engine was replaced by three electric motors and the fuel tank by three battery packs. Combined, the battery packs, motors and control equipment were similar in weight to the existing power plant, however this fully electric system was now capable of outputting around 530hp continuously and almost 1000hp in bursts. By comparison, in a conventional aircraft, the overall weight is reduced as the fuel is used up. To compensate for this, the aircraft was converted to a single-seater to reduce weight further, though at the cost of moving the center of gravity slightly forward.

MOTOR
Designing the propulsion unit for the Spirit Of Innovation was also another major hurdle for the ACCEL team. Not only must the electric motor be compact and powerful, but also possess a high degree of reliability and the ability to tolerate failures, for aviation use. Because no single electric motor was commercially available that would meet these requirements, the team decided on a propulsion configuration composed of a stack of 3 YASA 750R axial flux electric motors coupled by a single shaft running through them. Using 3 of these motors in tandem not only met the power requirements of the ACCEL team but it also offered redundancy against motor failure.

While the entire triple motor system weighed just 111kg or about 244lbs, it was capable of generating around 750kw or 1000hp, though continuous total power was limited to around 210kw or about 280hp, due to thermal constraints.

COOLING

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