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Category: sustainability – Page 8

Are gas turbines ready for the hydrogen economy?

Can we fuel gas turbines with hydrogen instead of fossil fuels and cut 15% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions? Gas turbines generate around 22% of the world’s electricity. Replacing fossil fuels is a key step toward more sustainable power generation. Hydrogen is widely considered a promising alternative fuel for gas turbines in both power generation and aviation. However, before hydrogen can be used safely on a large scale, researchers need to better understand how it affects the materials exposed to the extreme operating conditions inside turbines.

While the interaction between hydrogen and metallic materials has been extensively studied at ambient temperatures, far less is known about its effects at the elevated temperatures found in gas turbines. An international team of researchers has now investigated how hydrogen affects nickel-based superalloys—the materials of choice for gas turbines—at elevated temperatures.

Their results indicate that hydrogen-induced embrittlement can be at least twice as severe, posing a significant challenge for components that must meet the highest standards of safety and reliability. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials (MPI-SusMat) and their collaborators published the new findings in the journal Nature Materials.

AI-powered system offers unprecedented insight into the forces shaping Earth’s climate

The world’s oceans may appear calm from space, but beneath the surface, an intricate web of fast-moving currents drives Earth’s climate. Now, a new study led by Tel Aviv University has unveiled a breakthrough that allows scientists to observe these hidden motions with unprecedented clarity.

The researchers developed GOFLOW, an artificial intelligence-powered system that can reconstruct high-resolution ocean current patterns directly from satellite images. The technology provides scientists with an entirely new way to study the small-scale ocean dynamics that influence weather, climate change and the exchange of heat and gases between the ocean and atmosphere.

The study was led by Roy Barkan, a professor, physical oceanographer and fluid dynamics expert in Tel Aviv University’s Department of Geophysics at the Faculty of Exact Sciences. The research was conducted in collaboration with scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCLA and the University of Rhode Island, and published in Nature Geoscience.

Solar windows could harvest indoor light and sunlight while staying semi-transparent

Semi-transparent solar cells that could be added to windows to efficiently harvest energy from indoor light as well as the sun have been developed by an international team led by UCL researchers.

The technology, described in a paper in Advanced Energy Materials, could help turn buildings into power generators at night and on cloudy days, as well as in sunshine.

The researchers engineered solar windows that let in 30% of sunlight—ordinary glass might let in 80% or 90%—while generating a record amount of energy from indoor light and efficiently harvesting energy from sunshine.

Top environmental fund sees Japan key to AI energy challenge

Asia’s best-performing environmental fund has increased exposure to Japan as it expects the nation’s technology sector to prove increasingly pivotal in solving the artificial intelligence industry’s surging power demands.

The BNP Paribas Green Tigers Fund has returned 34% year-to-date, fueled by bets on Japanese equities that sit at the core of its stock-selection strategy, said Oscar Yang, senior portfolio manager at Impax Asset Management. The $208 million portfolio was the top-performing “dark green” strategy, the EU’s highest sustainability classification, in Asia through June 30, Bloomberg-compiled data show.

“A lot of the Japanese companies are so unique and they’re to some extent almost at a monopoly position,” Yang said. “If you cut Japanese companies’ products out of your supply chain, you just basically can’t operate, especially for leading-edge capacity.”

Chemists develop a molecular platform for the selective control of oxygen reaction pathways

Controlling how oxygen reacts is important for improving technologies such as batteries, fuel cells and environmentally sustainable chemical processes. A research team led by professor Seung Jun Hwang from KAIST’s Department of Chemistry has developed a molecular system capable of directing oxygen activation along a selected electron-transfer pathway.

By combining germanium with a molecular framework that can store and transfer electrons, the team established a design principle for selectively switching oxygen activation between two-and four-electron pathways. The results were published in Chem.

Updates on nature, land and biodiversity

Nature is humanity’s lifeline. Human health, food, economies and well-being depend on nature. Yet nature is in crisis. One million of the world’s estimated 8 million species of plants and animals are threatened with extinction. Meanwhile, ecosystem degradation is affecting the well-being of 40 per cent of the global population.

The spotlight on nature and biodiversity highlights updates from around the UN System, from partners and others, helping to call attention to the need for a just, prosperous and sustainable future for all.