By leveraging a bizarre property of quantum mechanics called entanglement, quantum batteries could theoretically recharge in a flash. Now, progress is being made towards making them a reality.
The natural world possesses its own intrinsic electrical grid composed of a global web of tiny bacteria-generated nanowires in the soil and oceans that “breathe” by exhaling excess electrons.
In a new study, Yale University researchers discovered that light is a surprising ally in fostering this electronic activity within biofilm bacteria. Exposing bacteria-produced nanowires to light, they found, yielded an up to a 100-fold increase in electrical conductivity.
The findings were published Sept. 7 in the journal Nature Communications.
On the other hand, ever since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February, Germany has been doing all it can to become independent of gas imports from Russia. The country’s storage facilities are filling up and natural gas consumption, particularly in industry, has dropped significantly. So does that mean that the suspension of deliveries via Nord Stream 1 isn’t such a big deal after all? We have compiled answers to the most important questions.
How badly will German natural gas supplies be affected by the suspension of Nord Stream 1 operations?
The discontinuation of gas deliveries from Russia is certainly a setback for German efforts to fill storage facilities to maximum capacity before the arrival of winter. And drives prices even higher. For the moment, though, no industrial operation or household must be concerned about a sudden suspension of gas supplies. Natural gas demand is rather low for the time being, and plenty of the fuel is being delivered from other countries, though at a much higher price.
Scalable technology can work in relative humidity of four percent too.
An international collaboration of researchers has successfully demonstrated the production of green hydrogen directly from the air, a press release said.
Solar and wind installations are picking up steam as the world looks toward greener energy sources. Although energy is generated in an emission-free way in these methods, energy storage requires large batteries, which do not fit into the idea of sustainable living.
“Almost every male character so far is a coward, a jerk or both,” he tweeted. “Only Galadriel is brave, smart and nice.”
Galadriel is one of the female stars of the show.
Amazon has invested $1 billion in “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” series inspired by the world of J.R.R. Tolkien, and former company executives told Insider the company will use the show to determine if Amazon Studios is a worthwhile venture for the company.
Hydrogen has huge potential as a clean fuel: it’s abundant (mainly in compounds like water), it doesn’t produce any damaging emissions, and it can also be used to store energy from solar, wind, and tidal sources.
There are challenges in producing enough of the stuff in a practical and affordable way, however. Splitting hydrogen from water can require complicated technology and also relies on pure freshwater – not something that’s plentifully available everywhere.
Now, scientists have come up with a new prototype device that can harvest water from humid air, before splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen.
Hydrogen (H 2) is currently discussed as an ideal energy carrier in a world requiring renewable energies. Hydrogen has the highest gravimetric energy density of all chemical fuels (141 MJ/kg), which is three times higher than gasoline (46 MJ/kg). However, its low volumetric density restricts its widespread use in transportation applications —as current storage options require a lot of space.
At ambient temperature, hydrogen is a gas, and one kilogram of hydrogen occupies a volume of 12,000 liters (12 cubic meters). In fuel-cell vehicles, hydrogen is stored under a very high pressure of 700 times the atmospheric pressure, which reduces the volume to 25 liters per kilogram of H 2.
Liquid hydrogen shows a higher density resulting in 14 liters per kilogram, but it requires extremely low temperatures since the boiling point of hydrogen is minus 253 °C.
The adoption rate of fuel cells has increased owing to the rising need for clean energy.
In a research that could jump-start the work on a range of technologies, including fuel cells, which are key to storing solar and wind energy, MIT researchers have found a simple way to significantly increase the lifetimes of fuel cells and other devices – changing the pH of the system.
Fuel/electrolysis cells made of materials known as solid metal oxides are in interest for several reasons. In electrolysis mode, they are very efficient at converting electricity from a renewable source into a storable fuel like hydrogen or methane. This storable fuel can be used in the fuel cell mode to generate electricity when the sun is not shining, or the wind isn’t blowing.
Squeaky, cloudy or spherical—electron orbitals show where and how electrons move around atomic nuclei and molecules. In modern chemistry and physics, they have proven to be a useful model for quantum mechanical description and prediction of chemical reactions. Only if the orbitals match in space and energy can they be combined—this is what happens when two substances react with each other chemically. In addition, there is another condition that must be met, as researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich and the University of Graz have now discovered: The course of chemical reactions also appears to be dependent on the orbital distribution in momentum space. The results were published in the journal Nature Communications.
Chemical reactions are ultimately nothing more than the formation and breakdown of electron bonds, which can also be described as orbitals. The so-called molecular orbital theory thus makes it possible to predict the path of chemical reactions. Chemists Kenichi Fukui and Roald Hoffmann received the Nobel Prize in 1981 for greatly simplifying the method, which led to its widespread use and application.
“Usually, the energy and location of electrons are analyzed. However, using the photoemission tomography method, we looked at the momentum distribution of the orbitals,” explains Dr. Serguei Soubatch. Together with his colleagues at the Peter Grünberg Institute (PGI-3) in Jülich and the University of Graz in Austria, he adsorbed various types of molecules on metal surfaces in a series of experiments and mapped the measured momentum in the so-called momentum space.
Because of their unique physical, photonic, thermal, and electronic capabilities, two-dimensional (2D) nanostructures have exhibited tremendous promise in the domains of bioengineering, sensing, and energy storage.
Study: Two Dimensional Silicene Nanosheets: A New Choice of Electrode Material for High-Performance Supercapacitor. Image Credit: Quardia/Shutterstock.com.
Nonetheless, combining silicon-based nanomaterials into high-performance power storage systems remains a largely undeveloped subject because of the complex manufacturing process. New work published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces hope to address this problem by effectively integrating silicene nanosheets into a high-voltage supercapacitor.
