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Category: sustainability – Page 390

First power achieved on world’s largest offshore windfarm

Officials with the Danish energy company Ørsted have announced that they have achieved first power on the Hornsea 2 project—a new windfarm off the coast of England in the North Sea. As part of their announcement, posted on the company’s web page, officials noted that once the windfarm is fully operational, it will represent the largest windfarm in the world.

Hornsea 2, as its name implies, is the second segment of a four-segment project. Hornsea 1 became operational last year and is currently the largest offshore —with its 174 turbines, the farm has a capacity of 1.2-GW—enough to power over a million homes in the U.K.

Hornsea 2 was approved for construction back in 2016—it will feature 165 8-MW turbines made by Siemens, which will give it a capacity of 1.32 GW. The offshore substation and reactive stations have been installed and tested while construction continues on the turbines. The windfarm will be located approximately 90 kilometers off the coast of Grims, England, which is not far from Leeds and Sheffield. Once the windfarm is fully operational, it will deliver power to a substation at Killingholme. The project will involve stringing cable under 390 kilometers of ocean water and then 40 kilometers of land before reaching the substation. Hornsea 2 will also be breaking another record—it will be located farther away from shore than any other large-scale windfarm.

2021 showed us that trucks and SUVs don’t need gas engines

The modern electric vehicle renaissance has been hampered from day one by the physical limitations imposed by the current state of battery technology. Inefficiencies in the form of heavy battery packs and low power densities have long limited not just the range and performance of EVs but the very forms they can take — there’s a reason Tesla started with a Roadster and not a Cybertruck. But steady advancements in power systems over the past few years — alongside skyrocketing demand for larger, electrified vehicles which cater to the US market — has led to a watershed moment in 2021: the emergence of EV pickups and SUVs.

Yes, we all know the Model X exists and Tesla “did it first” — spare me your tweets — however, the sheer number and variety of new, pure EV pickup and SUV models either ready to hit the showroom floor or in active development is staggering compared to just a few years ago. Let’s take a look at some of this year’s standouts.

GM is betting big on its proprietary Ultium battery technology, investing $35 billion in self-driving and EV technologies through 2025. The company has also announced that it intends to sell 30 EV models by the end of 2025 and EVs exclusively after 2035 with the 1,000 horsepower GMC Hummer EV serving as its vanguard offering.

This New Hybrid VTOL Has 8 Fans Embedded in Its Wings

Reducing its carbon emissions by 80% compared to conventional designs.

Ascendance Flight Technologies, based in Toulouse, France, has unveiled the striking design of its new hybrid-electric VTOL aircraft, ATEA, according to a press release.

The ATEA is a five-seat hybrid-electric aircraft that can perform vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL). The concept stands out from the rest since it has a tandem wing configuration with rotors incorporated into them, giving it a strikingly unusual appearance.

The concept is the result of three years of research and development, and it’s called the “tomorrow’s aircraft” since it reflects the company’s goal of assisting in the decarbonization of aviation: The aircraft aims to reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent compared to traditional helicopter designs.

The French-designed Ascendance AETA uses hybrid propulsion, with electric for vertical take off and landing, and diesel for forward flight.

Fantastical Thundertruck EV rocks fold-out solar awnings and a snap-on 6WD caboose

This all-electric 4×4 off-road concept has a monster battery pack, a brutally angular and military look that borrows heavily from the Cybertruck, and pop-out solar panels for off-grid charging. Oh, and if you need extra range, you can snap two extra wheels and a battery onto the back of it with a self-balancing caboose that makes it a six-wheel-drive.

First things first: Thundertruck is the brainchild of a Los Angeles “creative consultancy,” conceived mainly as a way to keep the team busy during the first wave of COVID lockdowns. “Instead of baking bread or making puzzles,” says the Wolfgang L.A. team, “we decided to make a new state-of-the-art EV truck.”

So while Wolfgang says it “has the ability to support an entire product development program, from research and strategy to initial sketches and first prototypes, all the way to advertising launch campaigns and content creation,” it’s fair to say it’s unlikely we’ll be seeing the Thundertruck out bush-bashing or crushing hillclimbs any day soon.

GM delivers its first Hummer EV

The next chapter of GM’s electrification strategy is officially underway. The Verge reports GM has started deliveries of the Hummer EV as promised, with its first “supertruck” (an Edition 1) rolling off the line at Factory Zero in Hamtramck, Michigan. The automaker didn’t name the initial customer, but that person clearly paid for bragging rights given the Edition 1’s $110,295 sticker.

You’ll have to wait considerably longer for other trim levels. The $99,995 3X (which drops from 1,000HP to ‘just’ 830HP) doesn’t arrive until fall 2022, while the $89,995 2X variant (625HP) will wait until spring 2023. The $79,995 2 trim doesn’t surface until spring 2024. All but the base version deliver a claimed 300 or more miles of range, while that ‘entry’ model musters 250 miles per charge.

The steep prices won’t leave Tesla, Hyundai and other EV competitors too worried. This is a luxury machine that will sell in limited numbers. However, popularity isn’t entirely the point. This is the first consumer-oriented vehicle to ship using the Ultium battery technology that will underpin numerous GM EVs going forward, including the Cadillac Lyriq and Chevy Silverado. The Hummer is both a halo vehicle for the brand and an answer to challengers like Tesla and Rivian.

Carbon-air battery as a next-generation energy storage system

One of the barriers to generating electricity from wind and solar energy is their intermittent nature. A promising alternative to accommodate the fluctuations in power output during unfavorable environmental conditions are hydrogen storage systems, which use hydrogen produced from water splitting to generate clean electricity. However, these systems suffer from poor efficiency and often need to be large in size to compensate for it. This, in turn, makes for complex thermal management and a lowered energy and power density.

In a study published in Journal of Power Sources, researchers from Tokyo Tech have now proposed an alternative electric energy storage system that utilizes carbon © as an energy source instead of hydrogen. The new system, called a “carbon/air secondary battery (CASB),” consists of a solid-oxide fuel and electrolysis cell (SOFC/ECs) where carbon generated via electrolysis of carbon dioxide (CO2), is oxidized with air to produce energy. The SOFC/ECs can be supplied with compressed liquefied CO2 to make up the energy storage system.

“Similar to a battery, the CASB is charged using the energy generated by the to reduce CO2 to C. During the subsequent discharge phase, the C is oxidized to generate energy,” explains Prof. Manabu Ihara from Tokyo Tech.

Quantum Mechanics and Machine Learning Used To Accurately Predict Chemical Reactions at High Temperatures

Method combines quantum mechanics with machine learning to accurately predict oxide reactions at high temperatures when no experimental data is available; could be used to design clean carbon-neutral processes for steel production and metal recycling.

Extracting metals from oxides at high temperatures is essential not only for producing metals such as steel but also for recycling. Because current extraction processes are very carbon-intensive, emitting large quantities of greenhouse gases, researchers have been exploring new approaches to developing “greener” processes. This work has been especially challenging to do in the lab because it requires costly reactors. Building and running computer simulations would be an alternative, but currently there is no computational method that can accurately predict oxide reactions at high temperatures when no experimental data is available.

A Columbia Engineering team reports that they have developed a new computation technique that, through combining quantum mechanics and machine learning, can accurately predict the reduction temperature of metal oxides to their base metals. Their approach is computationally as efficient as conventional calculations at zero temperature and, in their tests, more accurate than computationally demanding simulations of temperature effects using quantum chemistry methods. The study, led by Alexander Urban, assistant professor of chemical engineering, was published on December 1, 2021 by Nature Communications.

Light-powered soft robots could suck up oil spills

A floating, robotic film designed at UC Riverside could be trained to hoover oil spills at sea or remove contaminants from drinking water.

Powered by light and fueled by water, the film could be deployed indefinitely to clean remote areas where recharging by other means would prove difficult.

“Our motivation was to make soft robots sustainable and able to adapt on their own to changes in the environment. If sunlight is used for power, this machine is sustainable, and won’t require additional energy sources,” said UCR chemist Zhiwei Li. “The film is also re-usable.”

New method converts bio-polyols into carbon monoxide

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.

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