Energy
press releases.

Energy27 Nov 2023

Review article shows key role of Brazil in research on sugarcane for bioenergy

Publications on sugarcane have increased exponentially since 2006 worldwide, and Brazil has had more articles published on the topic than any other country in the period, according to a review in BioEnergy Research. The number of articles on the subject averaged about five per year between 1999 and 2006 but had reached 327 by 2021. Brazil has twice as many articles on sugarcane as the United States, which ranks first in the world for scientific publications in general. Brazil is also ahead of Australia, China and India, which are also major sugarcane growers. According to the authors of the review, who are affiliated with the Laboratory of Plant Physiological Ecology (LAFIECO) ...

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Energy27 Nov 2023

UCF receives $1.5million NSF grant to improve energy efficiency of wireless communications

Wireless devices consume more than just the hours users spend scrolling through social media, streaming podcasts and TV shows, and playing games. The networks used to connect these devices also consume a large amount of energy – up to a few thousand terawatt-hours annually worldwide, which is enough to power 70,000,000 homes for one year. UCF researcher Kenle Chen aims to enhance the energy efficiency of these systems with the support of a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Addressing Systems Challenges through Engineering ...

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Energy21 Nov 2023

Nuclear physics traineeship program offers launchpad for research careers

Associate Professor of physics Benjamin Jones has received a $341,571 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to continue his successful traineeship program at The University of Texas at Arlington. The program exposes undergraduate students to opportunities in particle and nuclear physics, which offer key components in many diverse careers, such as nuclear medicine, radiation therapy, archaeology, precision management and astrophysics. UTA’s Nuclear Research Experiences for Minority Students (NREMST) started in 2021 with the goal of immersing students from historically underrepresented populations in nuclear physics. “We know that many students ...

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Energy21 Nov 2023

Density matters for better battery material performance, researchers find

Zinc — cheap, abundant, environmentally friendly — may be the answer to better batteries, but there’s a major problem: Aqueous zinc ion batteries (AZIBs) cannot match lithium-ion batteries in terms of power output. To test what electrode material composition might be able to bring AZIBs up to par, a research team based in China developed two organic frameworks with the same constituents but arranged in different ways. When put to the test, the framework with appropriate density of active sites — where the zinc ions gain electrons to recharge the ...

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Energy17 Nov 2023

HKU Engineering ‘Super Steel’ team develops new ultra stainless steel for hydrogen production

A research project led by Professor Mingxin Huang at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has made a brand-new breakthrough over conventional stainless steel and the development of stainless steel for hydrogen (SS-H2). This marks another major achievement by Professor Huang’s team in its ‘Super Steel’ Project, following the development of the anti-COVID-19 stainless steel in 2021, and ultra-strong and ultra-tough Super Steel in 2017 and 2020 respectively. The new steel developed by the team exhibits high corrosion ...

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Energy16 Nov 2023

Lithium-ion batteries are no longer the gold standard in battery tech

The use of lithium metal as the anode for batteries is one of the smarter options with better energy density than other materials. However, the interface between the electrode and electrolyte has quite a few issues that can be addressed for a safer and more functional outcome in the future. The researchers are keen on replacing the graphite anode with lithium metal anode to construct a battery system with higher energy density. However, the Li metal anode is unstable and readily reacting with electrolyte to form a solid-electrolyte interphase (SEI). Unfortunately, the natural SEI is brittle and fragile, resulting in poor ...

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Energy16 Nov 2023

Break free from dependence on Japan by developing core electric vehicle components

A research team led by Dr. Jae-woong Ko from the Department of Engineering Ceramics at the Korea Institute of Materials Science(KIMS) has succeeded in localizing silicon nitride bearing ball manufacturing technology for electric vehicle drive modules. KIMS is a government-funded research institute under the Ministry of Science and ICT. This achievement is significant because it overcomes the limitations of foreign dependence and opens up the possibility of domestic supply and demand. Silicon nitride bearing ...

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Energy16 Nov 2023

No one-size-fits-all solution for the net-zero grid, Surrey research demonstrates

As power generation from sources like solar and wind increases, along with the introduction of devices such as heat pumps and batteries, a new optimisation tool created at the University of Surrey will help the UK plan for a greener electricity network. The researchers developed an algorithm to model how these smaller networks distributed electricity – factoring in how local grids could become unbalanced by adding too many heat pumps in a single area or generating more electricity than the grid could accept. The Surrey team found that it was generally more efficient ...

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Energy16 Nov 2023

Nuclear expansion failure shows simulations require change

The widespread adoption of nuclear power was predicted by computer simulations more than four decades ago but the continued reliance on fossil fuels for energy shows these simulations need improvement, a new study has shown. In order to assess the efficacy of energy policies implemented today, a team of researchers looked back at the influential 1980s model that predicted nuclear power would expand dramatically. Energy policies shapes how we produce and use energy, impacting jobs, costs, climate, and security. These policies are generated using simulations (also ...

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Energy15 Nov 2023

Using cosmetic ingredient for battery protection

Xanthan gum, derived from plants like cabbage and known for its carbohydrate content, serves as a natural protective barrier in cosmetics to retain their benefits on the skin. In a recent development, this remarkable substance has been harnessed to create a protective shield for battery electrodes, rather than for the skin. Professor Changshin Jo from the Graduate Institute of Ferrous & Eco Materials Technology and the Department of Chemical Engineering and Jooyoung Jang, a PhD candidate, from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), have crafted a protective film by blending ...

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Energy10 Nov 2023

New cooling ceramic can enhance energy efficiency for the construction sector and help combat global warming—City University of Hong Kong research

A significant breakthrough in developing a passive radiative cooling (PRC) material has been announced by researchers at City University of Hong Kong (CityU). The findings have just been published in the prestigious scientific journal Science titled “Hierarchically structured passive radiative cooling ceramic with high solar reflectivity.” The material, known as cooling ceramic, has achieved high-performance optical properties for energy-free and refrigerant-free cooling generation. Its cost-effectiveness, durability and versatility make it highly suitable for commercialisation in numerous applications, particularly in ...

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Energy9 Nov 2023

UChicago's Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering advances lithium-metal batteries, paving the way for safer, more powerful devices

The boom in phones, laptops and other personal devices over the last few decades has been made possible by the lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery, but as climate change demands more powerful batteries for electric vehicles and grid-scale renewable storage, lithium-ion technology might not be enough. Lithium-metal batteries (LMBs) have theoretical capacities an order of magnitude greater than lithium-ion, but a more literal boom has stymied research for decades. “A compounding challenge that further doomed the first wave of LMB commercialization in the late 1980s was their propensity to ...

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Energy9 Nov 2023

HKUST researchers develop low-cost and multifunctional microprinter for ultrafast piezoelectric material printing

A research team led by The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has developed a microprinter that can print piezoelectric films 100 times faster for the production of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) for sensors, wearable or implantable medical devices, offering the possibility to lower the mass production costs. The microprinter, built at a comparatively lower cost as compared with other printers on the market, utilizes an electrostatic field to propel streams of ink onto a platform, allowing for efficient manipulation of thin film patterns and enhanced printing speed to address the challenge of mass production ...

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Energy3 Nov 2023

Physicists ask: Can we make a particle collider more energy efficient?

Ever since the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, physicists have wanted to build new particle colliders to better understand the properties of that elusive particle and probe elementary particle physics at ever-higher energy scales. The trick is, doing so takes energy – a lot of it. A typical collider takes hundreds of megawatts – the equivalent of tens of millions of modern lightbulbs – to operate. That's to say nothing of the energy it takes to build the devices, and it all adds ...

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Energy3 Nov 2023

Texas A&M physicists play key role in milestone moment toward development of nuclear clock

An international research team involving Dr. Olga Kocharovskaya , a distinguished professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, has taken a major step toward development of a new generation of atomic clocks with mind-blowing potential affecting fundamental science and various industries, from nuclear physics to satellite navigation and telecommunications. The team’s work, led by Argonne National Laboratory senior physicist Dr. Yuri Shvyd'ko, for the first time resonantly excited the scandium-45 nuclear isomer with the world's brightest X-ray pulses at the European XFEl (EuXFEL) X-ray ...

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Energy3 Nov 2023

Ferroelectrically modulate the Fermi level of graphene oxide to enhance SERS response

A new publication from Opto-Electronic Advances, 10.29026/oea.2023.230094 discusses Ferroelectric modulation of the Fermi level of graphene oxide to enhance SERS response. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is a powerful fingerprint analysis and detection technique that plays an important role in the fields of food safety, environmental protection, bio-imaging and hazardous substance identification. Electromagnetic enhancement (EM) and chemical enhancement (CM) are the two recognized mechanisms of action for amplifying Raman signals. EM originates from the localized surface plasmonic resonance effect of noble metal nanostructures ...

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Energy3 Nov 2023

Bridging the best of both electrolyte worlds for a better lithium-ion battery

Lithium-ion batteries powered the device on which these words appear. From phones and laptops to electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries are critical to the technology of the modern world — but they can also explode. Comprising negatively and positively charged electrodes and an electrolyte to transport ions across the divide, lithium-ion batteries are only as good as the limitations of their components. Liquid electrolytes are potentially volatile at high temperatures, and their efficiency can be limited by nonuniformity and instabilities in the other components. Researchers are working toward developing safer, ...

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Energy2 Nov 2023

New designs for solid-state electrolytes may soon revolutionize the battery industry

Researchers led by Professor KANG Kisuk of the Center for Nanoparticle Research within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), have announced a major breakthrough in the field of next-generation solid-state batteries. It is believed that their new findings will enable the creation of batteries based on a novel chloride-based solid electrolyte that exhibits exceptional ionic conductivity. A pressing concern with current commercial batteries their reliance on liquid electrolytes, which leads to flammability ...

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Energy2 Nov 2023

Two million European households could abandon the electrical grid by 2050

Researchers report that 53% of European freestanding homes could have supplied all their own energy needs in 2020 using only local rooftop solar radiation, and this technical feasibility could increase to 75% in 2050. Publishing November 2 in the journal Joule, the study shows that there is no economic advantage for individual households to be fully self-sufficient under current or future conditions, though in some cases the costs are on par with remaining on-grid. The researchers estimate that self-sufficiency will be economically feasible for 5% (two million) of Europe’s 41 million freestanding single-family homes in 2050, ...

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Energy30 Oct 2023

Microdroplets, macro results: Beckman researchers pursue Energy Earthshots

Good things come in microscopic packages, according to the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology’s new DROPLETS project. By packaging electrochemical reactions in smaller-than-standard serving sizes, interdisciplinary researchers aim to produce clean hydrogen, sequester carbon dioxide, and store renewable energies like wind and solar inexpensively and sustainably. Their project, called DROPLETS, received $4.5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science through its Energy Earthshots Initiative. “If we do this right, we will ...

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Energy27 Oct 2023

Unlocking sugar to generate biofuels and bioproducts

UPTON, NY—Plant biologists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have engineered enzymes to modify grass plants so their biomass can be more efficiently converted into biofuels and other bioproducts. As described in a paper just published in Plant Biotechnology Journal, these enzymes modify molecules that make up plant cell walls to provide access to fuel-generating sugars normally locked within complex structures. “The concept of biomass to biofuel seems simple, but it is technically very difficult to release the sugars,” noted Chang-Jun Liu, a senior plant biologist at Brookhaven ...

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Energy27 Oct 2023

SwRI, GTI Energy, GE celebrate mechanical completion of $155 million supercritical CO2 pilot plant

SAN ANTONIO — October 27,2023 —Southwest Research Institute (SwRI®), GTI Energy, GE Vernova (GE) and the U.S. Department of Energy celebrated the ribbon-cutting of the Supercritical Transformational Electric Power (STEP) Demo pilot plant today. The $155 million, 10-megawatt supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) test facility at SwRI’s headquarters in San Antonio will demonstrate an innovative new method of higher-efficiency, lower-cost electric power generation. “STEP will undoubtedly change the way we think about ...

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Energy26 Oct 2023

Renewed support for high power laser facilities will benefit discovery science and inertial fusion energy research at SLAC

Research and technology development for plasma physics and fusion energy at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory just got a boost from a LaserNetUS award. In total, the DOE’s Office of Science awarded $28.5 million to advance discovery science and inertial fusion energy, including a three-year grant for the development and operations of the Matter in Extreme Conditions (MEC) instrument at SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). MEC has been home to high intensity laser experiments since 2012, and joined ...

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Energy26 Oct 2023

A potentially cheaper and 'cooler' way of hydrogen transport

Fukuoka, Japan—In the continued effort to move humanity away from fossil fuels and towards more environmentally friendly energy sources, researchers in Japan have developed a new material capable storing hydrogen energy in a more efficient and cheaper manner. The new hydrogen energy carrier can even store said energy for up to three months at room temperature. Moreover, since the material is nickel based, its cost is relatively cheap. The results were reported in Chemistry—A European Journal. As humanity combats the ongoing climate crisis, ...

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Energy24 Oct 2023

Cathode active materials for lithium-ion batteries could be produced at low temperatures

Layered lithium cobalt oxide, a key component of lithium-ion batteries, has been synthesized at temperatures as low as 300°C and durations as short as 30 minutes. Lithium ion batteries (LIB) are the most commonly used type of battery in consumer electronics and electric vehicles. Lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2) is the compound used for the cathode in LIB for handheld electronics. Traditionally, the synthesis of this compound requires temperatures over 800°C and takes 10 to 20 hours to complete. A team of researchers at Hokkaido University and Kobe University, led by Professor Masaki Matsui at Hokkaido University’s Faculty of Science, have developed a new method to ...

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