Power and Electrical Engineering
This topic covers issues related to energy generation, conversion, transportation and consumption and how the industry is addressing the challenge of energy efficiency in general.
innovations-report provides in-depth and informative reports and articles on subjects ranging from wind energy, fuel cell technology, solar energy, geothermal energy, petroleum, gas, nuclear engineering, alternative energy and energy efficiency to fusion, hydrogen and superconductor technologies.
Rating the performance of residential fuel cells
Residential fuel cells sound almost too good to be true. Take a hydrocarbon fuel such as natural gas, use a catalyst to extract hydrogen from it, react the hydrogen with air and, presto, you have a home power plant!
As the hydrogen and the oxygen in the air combine, they produce electricity. The primary “waste products” of the whole process are water and heat. But that’s not all! The “waste” heat can be captured to provide space or water heating for the home.
Residential fuel
Smart electric grid of the future is in development
Plans are underway to test new system
The nations current electric grid system will not work in the future with solar and wind farms providing substantial but intermittent power over long distances.
By 2050, it will take between 15 and 20 Terawatts (TW) of electric power to supply the North American economy. A little under 7 TW is currently used, with most of that consumed in the United States. The “Smart Electric Grid of the Future” must be able to efficiently and securely
Long-term natural gas supplies should meet growing demand in coming decades, study finds
Sudden price spikes have led to speculation that the United States is facing a critical shortage of natural gas. But a new study by Stanford University’s Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) concludes that gas supplies are likely to meet growing demand in coming decades, if policy-makers are able to strike a balance between environmental protection and the need for new energy sources.
“Recent volatile natural gas prices do not foreshadow a pending, long-term crisis in future natural gas supplie
New technique could lead to widespread use of solar power
Researchers envision mass-produced rolls of material that converts sunlight to electricity
Princeton electrical engineers have invented a technique for making solar cells that, when combined with other recent advances, could yield a highly economical source of energy.
The results, reported in the Sept. 11 issue of Nature, move scientists closer to making a new class of solar cells that are not as efficient as conventional ones, but could be vastly less expensive and more ver
Using ions to probe ionic liquids
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory are using a very small and light ion, the electron, to study the structure and dynamics of ionic liquids and how those properties influence chemical reactivity.
Ionic liquids are made of positive and negative ions that pack so poorly together that they are liquids near room temperature. They offer extremely low volatility, non-flammability, new reactivity patterns, and the formation of separate phases that all
Nanoscale model catalyst paves way toward atomic-level understanding
In an attempt to understand why ruthenium sulfide (RuS2) is so good at removing sulfur impurities from fuels, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have succeeded in making a model of this catalyst — nanoparticles supported on an inert surface — which can be studied under laboratory conditions. “If we can understand why this catalyst is so active, we might be able to make it even better, or use what we learn to design other highly efficient catalysts,” sa