Made of cement, carbon black, and water, the device could provide cheap and scalable energy storage for renewable energy sources. Two of humanity’s most ubiquitous historical materials, cement and carbon black (which resembles very fine charcoal), may form the basis for a novel, low-cost energy storage system, according to a new study. The technology could facilitate the use of renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and tidal power by allowing energy networks to remain stable despite fluctuations in renewable…
Predicting molecular rotational temperature for enhanced plasma recombination. Humans may never be able to tame the Sun, but hydrogen plasma — making up most of the Sun’s interior — can be confined in a magnetic field as part of fusion power generation: with a caveat. The extremely high temperature plasmas, typically as high as 100 million degrees Celsius, confined in the tokamaks — donut-shaped fusion reactors — cause damage to the containment walls of these mega devices. Researchers inject hydrogen and…
Accounting for radiation loss is the key to efficient wireless power transfer over long distances. A better way to wirelessly charge over long distances has been developed at Aalto University. Engineers have optimized the way antennas transmitting and receiving power interact with each other, making use of the phenomenon of “radiation suppression”. The result is a better theoretical understanding of wireless power transfer compared to the conventional inductive approach, a significant advancement in the field. Charging over short distances, such…
Idaho National Laboratory (INL) celebrated the ribbon-cutting of its new Microgrid in a Box, which was deployed in partnership with the Fall River Electric Cooperative at its hydropower plant in rural Idaho. Using newly developed technologies, INL researchers demonstrated that hydropower, coupled with a mobile microgrid, can enable small communities to maintain critical services during emergencies. During today’s ribbon-cutting, power from the Microgrid in a Box was combined with power generated from the hydropower plant to restore electrical supply after…
… achieves efficiency of over 99.7 percent. In the Fraunhofer lighthouse project ElKaWe, researchers are working on the development of electrocaloric heat pumps as an alternative to the currently prevailing compressor technology. These new types of heat pumps promise higher efficiency and do not require refrigerants. Researchers at Fraunhofer IAF have now reached a milestone in power electronics: They have realized an ultra-efficient circuit topology for voltage converters with over 99.74 percent electrical efficiency. This result is a worldwide benchmark…
When raindrops fall from the sky, they can produce a small amount of energy that can be harvested and turned into electricity. It is a small-scale version of hydropower, which uses the kinetic energy of moving water to produce electricity. Researchers have proposed that the energy collected from raindrops could be a potential source of clean, renewable power. However, this technology has been difficult to develop on a large scale, which has limited its practical application. To collect raindrop energy,…
… in South Africa and Namibia. Partnership on equal terms: In South Africa’s capital, Cape Town, and near the Namibian port city of Walvis Bay, so-called microgrids will contribute to a sustainable and emission-free power supply. These systems combine electrolyzers for green hydrogen production with fuel cells for its reconversion to electricity: the microgrids store electricity generated from solar and wind power as hydrogen and convert it back to electricity when needed. In Walvis Bay, a local school will use…
New hub will provide state-of-the-art metrology systems to accelerate semiconductor research and enhance development projects with chipmakers and ecosystem partners across Europe, particularly in ICAPS* market segments Collaboration to accelerate learning, develop novel methods and prove new metrology equipment, methods, algorithms and software Applied Materials, Inc., the leader in materials engineering solutions, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS, Germany´s leading advanced 300mm semiconductor research center, today announced a landmark collaboration to create Europe´s largest technology hub for semiconductor…
…may provide cooling in next-gen electronics. Next-generation electronics will feature smaller and more powerful components that require new solutions for cooling. A new thermoelectric cooler developed by Penn State scientists greatly improves the cooling power and efficiency compared to current commercial thermoelectric units and may help control heat in future high-power electronics, the researchers said. “Our new material can provide thermoelectric devices with very high cooling power density,” said Bed Poudel, research professor in the Department of Materials Science and…
…for dense photonic integration. Defying conventional wisdom, researchers have uncovered a novel coupling mechanism involving leaky mode, previously has been considered unsuitable for high-density integration in photonic circuits. This unexpected finding opens new possibilities for dense photonic integration, revolutionizing the scalability and application of photonic chips in optical computing, quantum communication, light detection and ranging (LiDAR), optical metrology, and biochemical sensing. In a recent Light Science & Application publication, Sangsik Kim, associate professor of electrical engineering at Korea Advanced Institute…
The makers of electronic equipment built into cars or industrial machines know the problem only too well: Electronics fail earlier than they should, be-cause humidity seeps into their sealed housings. Reliability tests are conduct-ed to prevent that from happening. Now, researchers at Fraunhofer IZM teamed up with the European Center for Power Electronics (ECPE) to learn more about the climatic conditions inside electronic systems. They used a battery of simulations and analytical tests to include environmental factors already from the…
For many, hydrogen is not only number 1 in the periodic table, but also as the green energy source of the future. To attain this top position, however, energy-efficient and powerful technology is needed to produce and use green hydrogen. Lasers are playing an important role in this, as current activities of the Fraunhofer ILT prove. They want to get serious about green hydrogen: Indeed, the term hydrogen appears 28 times in the German coalition agreement between the SPD, Bündnis…
Sugar additive plays a surprise role, boosting flow battery capacity and longevity for this grid energy resilience design. A common food and medicine additive has shown it can boost the capacity and longevity of a next-generation flow battery design in a record-setting experiment. A research team from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory reports that the flow battery, a design optimized for electrical grid energy storage, maintained its capacity to store and release energy for more than a…
A research group led by Professor Minoru Osada at the Institute for Materials and Systems for Sustainability (IMaSS), Nagoya University in Japan, in collaboration with NIMS, has developed a nanosheet device with the highest energy storage performance yet seen. Their results were published in Nano Letters. Innovations in energy storage technology are vital for the effective use of renewable energy and the mass production of electric vehicles. Current energy storage technology, such as lithium-ion batteries, has long charging times and…
Fluidized beds is a technology used in a variety of industries and plays an important role in the transition to green energy and the production of food and drugs. However, the process that occurs inside a fluidized bed is extremely complex and – due to a lack of effective measurement techniques – has remained largely unknown. Now, researchers from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have developed a high-frequency radar technique that can measure exactly what is happening inside a…
Ambitious £7 million investment will help deliver renewable energy from ocean tides at scale and help tidal stream energy contribute to delivering UK net zero goals. Researchers working to cut carbon emissions and boost energy security using tidal stream power are set to benefit from a £7 million Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council investment. ‘Co-design to deliver Scalable Tidal Stream Energy’ (CoTide) will bring together three multi-disciplinary teams from the universities of Oxford, Edinburgh and Strathclyde. The group will…
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