The year in clean energy: Wind, solar and batteries grow despite economic challenges
- Thread starter edwest4
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Solar energy this week
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New non-fullerene acceptor helps achieve 20.2% efficiency in organic solar cells
In recent years, engineers have introduced a wide range of photovoltaic (PV) solutions that could facilitate the sustainable generation of electricity worldwide. These include organic solar cells (OSCs), PV devices that use organic molecules or polymers to convert sunlight into electrical power.
Moving beyond the 80-year-old solar cell equation
Physicists from Swansea University and Åbo Akademi University have made a significant breakthrough in solar cell technology by developing a new analytical model that improves the understanding and efficiency of thin-film photovoltaic (PV) devices.
Escaping the lab into the sunlight: Research examines durability of outdoor perovskite solar cells
Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are promising next-generation solar photovoltaic (PV) cells with high performance and low production costs compared to silicon. However, one of the primary challenges to widespread adoption of PSCs is stability and durability.
Giant clams may hold the answers to making solar energy more efficient
Solar panel and biorefinery designers could learn a thing or two from iridescent giant clams living near tropical coral reefs, according to a new Yale-led study.
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The demonstration of vacuum levitation and motion control on an optical-electrostatic chip
The levitation of microscopic objects in vacuum and the control of their movements while they are suspended was first demonstrated several decades ago. Since then, various research groups have been working on new approaches to control levitated objects in vacuum with greater degrees of freedom.
Can a computer chip have zero energy loss in 1.58 dimensions?
What if we could find a way to make electric currents flow, without energy loss? A promising approach for this involves using materials known as topological insulators. They are known to exist in one (wire), two (sheet) and three (cube) dimensions; all with different possible applications in...
A new method to control quantum bound states in superconducting device
Researchers have successfully controlled the quantum mechanical properties of Andreev bound states in bilayer graphene-based Josephson junctions using gate voltage. Their research is published in Physical Review Letters. The research team includes Professors Gil-Ho Lee and Gil Young Cho from the...
Novel method enhances size-controlled production of luminescent quantum dots
Luminescence refers to the result of a process in which an object absorbs light at one wavelength and then re-emits it at another wavelength. Through light absorption, electrons in the ground state of the material are excited to a higher energy state. After a certain amount of time...
Novel 2D device for quantum cooling converts heat to voltage at ultra-low temperatures
EPFL engineers have created a device that can efficiently convert heat into electrical voltage at temperatures lower than that of outer space. The innovation could help overcome a significant obstacle to the advancement of quantum computing technologies, which require extremely low temperatures...
Controlling magnetism with polarized light: Non-thermal pathway uses inverse Faraday effect
Intense laser pulses can be used to manipulate or even switch the magnetization orientation of a material on extremely short time scales. Typically, such effects are thermally induced, as the absorbed laser energy heats up the material very rapidly, causing an ultrafast perturbation of the...
Physicists develop method to detect single-atom defects in semiconductors
One of the challenges of cramming smarter and more powerful electronics into ever-shrinking devices is developing the tools and techniques to analyze the materials that make them up with increasingly intimate precision.
Scientists discover way to 'grow' sub-nanometer sized transistors
A research team led by Director Jo Moon-Ho of the Center for Van der Waals Quantum Solids within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) has implemented a novel method to achieve epitaxial growth of 1D metallic materials with a width of less than 1 nm. The group applied this process to develop a...
Mapping the surfaces of MXenes, atom by atom, reveals new potential for the 2D materials
In the decade since their discovery at Drexel University, the family of two-dimensional materials called MXenes has shown a great deal of promise for applications ranging from water desalination and energy storage to electromagnetic shielding and telecommunications, among others.
Genetic algorithm enables precise design of phononic crystals
The advent of quantum computers promises to revolutionize computing by solving complex problems exponentially more rapidly than classical computers. However, today's quantum computers face challenges such as maintaining stability and transporting quantum information.
Synthesis method for 1D segmented heteronanostructures uses stress-induced axial ordering
One-dimensional segmented heteronanostructures (1D-SHs) are promising candidates in fields such as photoelectrocatalysis (PEC) and thermoelectrics. Currently, the synthesis of 1D-SHs mainly focuses on sulfides and selenides, with relatively less research on telluride materials, yet tellurides...
Optoelectronics gain spin control from chiral perovskites and III–V semiconductors
A research effort led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has made advances that could enable a broader range of currently unimagined optoelectronic devices.
Visual explanations of machine learning models to estimate charge states in quantum dots
A group of researchers has successfully demonstrated automatic charge state recognition in quantum dot devices using machine learning techniques, representing a significant step toward automating the preparation and tuning of quantum bits (qubits) for quantum information processing.
Cleaning up
New contaminant-tolerant catalyst could help capture carbon directly from smokestacks
A newly designed catalyst created by University of Toronto Engineering researchers efficiently converts captured carbon into valuable products—even in the presence of a contaminant that degrades the performance of current versions.
A prototype superconducting coil opens the way for more energy-efficient electromagnets
How can we advance cutting-edge research but consume less energy? CERN's scientists are working on innovative solutions, and superconductivity is one of the key ingredients.
'Nearly sustainable' hydrogen could cut ammonia production emissions by 95%
Whether sustainably produced hydrogen needs to be 100% green is currently under debate. Using the production of ammonia and artificial fertilizer as examples, researchers have calculated that "nearly sustainable" hydrogen would be better in the end.
High-selectivity graphene membranes enhance CO₂ capture efficiency
Reducing carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions is a crucial step towards mitigating climate change and protecting the environment on Earth. One proposed technology for reducing CO₂ emissions, particularly from power plants and industrial establishments, is carbon capture.
Using copper to convert CO₂ to methane could be game changer in mitigating climate change
Carbon in the atmosphere is a major driver of climate change. Now researchers from McGill University have designed a new catalyst for converting carbon dioxide (CO2) into methane—a cleaner source of energy—using tiny bits of copper called nanoclusters. While the traditional method of producing...
True scale of carbon impact from long-distance travel revealed
The reality of the climate impact of long-distance passenger travel has been revealed in new research from the University of Leeds.
Thermal energy storage and phase change materials could enhance home occupant safety during extreme weather
Bitter cold temperatures. Unrelenting heat. Power outages that last for weeks. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) researchers are planning for extreme weather by calculating what it will take to make the situation survivable.
Scientists probe chilling behavior of promising solid-state cooling material
A research team led by the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has bridged a knowledge gap in atomic-scale heat motion. This new understanding holds promise for enhancing materials to advance an emerging technology called solid-state cooling. The findings are published in the...
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Physics remains undefeated:
Dilandu
I'm dissatisfied, which means, I exist.
Well, you could at least double the performance of solar farm by using them in tandem with orbiting mirrors - so they would be illuminated 24/7:
Nuclear waste? Where does it go? What do you do with it? The U.S. spent $2 billion on studies with no final decision.
It is constant at least
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Nuclear power has an advantage not reflected in its average price. It's price stability, and for some users that matters
Much of the debate about nuclear power in the month since the Coalition announced its plan to install reactors in seven states has been about cost.
Into breeder reactors. You eat it and turn it into energy.
Alternatively, you just package it up and bury it in the middle of one of those vast wind turbine farms. All the nuclear waste fission power is likely to produce *ever* will easily fit safely within one such farm.
View: https://x.com/achyutha/status/1804456314640175498
After spending billions, the U.S. could not come up with anything they thought was safe. I read the reports. We're talking about storage over thousands of years. The primary concerns were radioactive material seeping into ground water and earthquakes. In Iraq, low-level radiation from depleted uranium rounds has caused significant contamination.
https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/depleted_uranium/
Yes, we have. We have not come up with anything that satisfies the activists who don't like nukes *at* *all.* Breeder reactors will simply eat up a lot of the waste, and a lot more of it could be simply vitrified and dropped down a hole. And if we wanted to, we could grind it all up into powder, mix that powder at a 100:1 ratio with inert rock dust, melt that into 10-gram marbles, place each marble into a block of concrete half a meter on a side, and make them by the tens of millions and build *vast* engineering projects with them. I'm sure that Israel, for one, wouldn't mind a few extra hundred square kilometers of land area built out into the Med, or a giant southern border wall, or a vast aqueduct system to bring desalinated Pacific ocean water into the interior of the country to top up the Ogalala aquifer.
The opposition to nuclear comes from emotion and willful ignorance and a refusal to innovate, rather than any real technical problems. The vast *cost* of nuclear comes not from the technology but the regulations.
Oh brother. I watched a Green Peace boat maneuvering very close to a large ship carrying nuclear waste. They had put the waste in 55 gallon drums and were dropping them in the ocean. Not a "safe" disposal method. The Green Peace boat was determined to get in their way.
Simple solution: spray the waste onto the Greenpeace vessel, then encase it in concrete and sink it to the bottom of the ocean. That's as serious a proposal as your likely apocryphal tale is a serious argument against nuclear power.
Look, Mister Defensive. Nuclear power is the be all and end all. So contact whoever is in charge and offer your brilliant plan. The nuclear industry will thank you.
If you have an actual argument to make, feel free. Otherwise, I'm out, having demonstrated that anti-nuclear activism comes from emotion, not reason.
A whole mountain forest regions paved over with PV arrays. Not only is this darker than the prior terrain, thus adding heat from absorbed sunlight, it's a reduction in the carbon sequestration potential of the trees and shrubs and such that are now blocked off/cut down by the solar panels.
View: https://x.com/amazing_physics/status/1487515990384590850
View: https://x.com/amazing_physics/status/1487515990384590850
Vast PV arrays in the desert would be almost as bad ecologically: deserts are *really* bright. Paving them with nearly-black PV would make deserts even hotter.
Put PV fields over places that are dark: oceans. Or, better, in space.
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