Tesla has built several charging posts into a parking lot at its Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg, and the company says they’re free and open to the public.
A new study by researchers at University of Limerick in Ireland has revealed a sustainable method of efficiently converting waste heat into electricity using Irish wood products, while minimizing costs and environmental impact.
The study, led by researchers at UL in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Valencia, has demonstrated a method of generating electricity using low-grade heat recovered from lignin-derived membranes.
Lignin, typically overlooked, is a sustainable byproduct derived from wood in paper and pulp production. The study shows that these membranes can convert waste heat into electricity by utilizing the movement of charged atoms (ions) within the material.
Physicists at Paderborn University have enhanced solar cell efficiency significantly using tetracene, an organic material, based on complex computer simulations. They discovered that defects at the tetracene-silicon interface boost energy transfer, promising a new solar cell design with drastically improved performance.
Physicists at Paderborn University have used complex computer simulations to create a novel solar cell design that boasts substantially higher efficiency than existing options. The enhancement in performance is attributed to a slender coating of an organic compound named tetracene. The results have recently been published in the renowned journal Physical Review Letters.
“The annual energy of solar radiation on Earth amounts to over one trillion kilowatt-hours and thus exceeds the global energy demand by more than 5,000 times. Photovoltaics, i.e. the generation of electricity from sunlight, therefore offers a large and still largely untapped potential for the supply of clean and renewable energy. Silicon solar cells used for this purpose currently dominate the market, but have efficiency limits,” explains Prof Dr Wolf Gero Schmidt, physicist and Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Paderborn University. One reason for this is that some of the energy from short-wave radiation is not converted into electricity, but into unwanted heat.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is expanding its SpaceX Starbase office in Texas. Here’s what we know.
Musk already claims Austin as headquarters for Tesla, and now he’s expanding his SpaceX facility in Brownsville.
Brownsville is currently home to a landing pad, launch facility, launch control center and tracking station. A 40-minute drive along Highway 4 will take you to the unincorporated community of Boca Chica.
Microsoft’s in-house chip will be Intel-approved.
Intel, one of the biggest manufacturers of semiconductor computer circuits, has secured Microsoft as a client for its custom chip manufacturing division.
Intel scores a big client in Microsoft Corp for Intel Foundry, its sustainable systems foundry business tailored for making AI chips.
The first Stellantis brand EV destined for the US rolled off the assembly line this week. The all-electric Fiat 500e will arrive in the US by the end of March after selling out of its first dealer allocation in less than a week.
“We’re thrilled that the Fiat 500e has officially begun its journey to reach customers in North America,” Fiat CEO and CMO at Stellantis said Wednesday.
The Fiat 500e is already the best-selling electric city car in Europe, ranking first in Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and France. Since launching, the 500e has sold over 185,000 units globally. Now, the small electric car is about to take on North America.
The engineering of structural deformations in light-sensitive semiconductors can boost the efficiency of solar cells.
The quest for an efficient method to convert solar energy into electricity is crucial in the pursuit of carbon neutrality and environmental sustainability. Traditional solar cells are based on junctions between semiconductors, where a current is produced by photogenerated carriers separated by an electric field at the junction. Efforts to enhance solar-cell performance have focused on refining semiconductor properties and on perfecting devices. Concurrently, researchers are exploring alternative photovoltaic mechanisms that could work in synergy with the junction-based photovoltaic effect to boost solar-cell efficiency. Within this context, the engineering of a strain gradient in the material has emerged as a promising research direction. In this phenomenon, known as the flexophotovoltaic effect, an inhomogeneous strain in the material produces a photovoltaic effect in the absence of a junction [1].
The Seva Sustainable Sanitation innovation is a smart, electro-chemical toilet unit, which is suitable for use in off-grid rural areas of developing countries. It can turn toilet wastewater into disinfected water, using the power from its mounted solar panels to sterilise and clarify it. Macronutrients such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus can be nearly fully recovered from the waste, leaving nothing but water that is recycled for flushing or irrigation. The toilet unit is also equipped with sensors, a mobile phone-based maintenance guide, and smart grid technology that empowers anyone in the community to repair the system when necessary. When a toilet is out of order, the technology automatically directs users to other nearby sanitation systems. So far, the solution has been deployed in four countries.
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Recycling nutrients is essential for closing nutrient loops within a circular economy. Using locally available resources such as human excreta to produce bio-based recycling fertilizers can substitute mineral fertilizers and thereby promote environmentally friendly food production. To better understand the fertilizer potential and nitrogen value of human excreta, three novel and safe recycling products were evaluated in a field experiment. Two nitrified urine fertilizers (NUFs) and one fecal compost were applied alone or in combination, and compared against the commercial organic fertilizer vinasse. In addition, the uptake of pharmaceuticals was assessed for treatments with compost application. White cabbage (Brassica oleracea var. capitata f. alba) was cultivated in plots in three different soil types (sand, loam or silt) treated with the fertilizers according to plant needs and mineral soil nitrogen content. The two NUFs resulted in marketable yields similar to those of vinasse in all soil types. Combining fecal compost with a NUF led to increased marketable yield compared to compost alone. The highest yield was recorded from the sandy soil, where vinasse and NUF treatments led to comparable yields, as expected in organic productions systems (up to 72 t ha−1). The cabbage yield and total aboveground fresh biomass followed the following trend in all soils: NUFs ∼ vinasse ≥ compost + NUF ≥ compost. Nitrogen uptake in the cabbage heads and total biomass was significantly higher in sand (69.5–144 kg ha−1) than loam (71.4–95.8 kg ha−1). All compost treatments alleviated the effect of soil type and resulted in comparable nitrogen uptake and yield in all soil types. Plant uptake of pharmaceuticals (Carbamazepin) was higher in sand than in loam, and concentration in the edible part was lower than in the outer leaves. In conclusion, NUF alone appears to be a promising successful fertilizer substitute in horticultural food production. The combined application of NUF and compost led to slightly lower crop yields, but may increase soil carbon content in the long term, promoting climate-friendly food production.
In view of a growing world population and the human alteration of nutrient cycles, including nitrogen (N) and phosphorus ℗ (Rockström et al., 2009), transforming food production is a major challenge of this century (Springmann et al., 2018). Both N and P are essential nutrients for healthy plant growth in crop production; however, their addition to synthetic fertilizers is currently organized in a linear economy. The Haber-Bosch process, used to generate plant-available N from its airborne unreactive form, is energy intensive, depending on fossil fuels such as natural gas, and associated with high greenhouse gas emissions (Wang et al., 2021). P is obtained from finite, depleting phosphate rock resources and its mining is increasingly more expensive and polluting (Desmidt et al., 2015). This background emphasize the need for significant improvements of nutrient management in agriculture and for alternative, circular N and P sources to achieve global food security (Gerten et al.
A team of MIT researchers has figured out a way to create a supercapacitor simply by mixing cement, the binding ingredient of concrete, and a fine charcoal product called carbon black together with water.
Better yet, this mixture could allow a home to store a full day’s worth of energy in its foundation, potentially paving the way to an efficient renewable energy storage solution that doesn’t rely on mining rare Earth metals.
Roads made up of the material could even power electric cars wirelessly, the researchers say, or windmills could store their generated energy in their base.
