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Category: energy – Page 265

Researchers Develop Special Paint That Helps Reduce The Need For Air Conditioning

The colors that we choose to paint rooms, houses, or buildings do more than just change the way it looks. Colors can affect one’s mood as well, but it can also have an impact on the overall temperature. This is because different colors absorb light differently, with some colors absorbing light more than others, which is why colors like black are known to retain heat.

In a bid to help reduce the need for air conditioning which can consume a lot of electricity and also release by-product gases into the atmosphere, researchers at Purdue University have developed a special form of white paint that they claim can reduce surface temperatures by up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit compared to their ambient surroundings, thus replicating the effects of a refrigerator but without consuming any energy at all.

This means that by using this paint to help paint buildings or rooms, it could drastically reduce the temperature in a room, which in turn reduces the need for appliances like air conditioning, or at least to the point where we can reduce how long we run them for. By helping cool down buildings, it can work in tandem with heating/cooling systems where if the building remains cool enough, then there won’t be a need for the air conditioning to kick in.

Researchers discover a new way to produce hydrogen using microwaves

A team of researchers from the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) has discovered a new method that makes it possible to transform electricity into hydrogen or chemical products solely using microwaves—without cables and without any type of contact with electrodes. This represents a revolution in the field of energy research and a key development for the process of industrial decarbonisation, as well as for the future of the automotive sector and the chemical industry, among many others. The study has been published in the latest edition of Nature Energy, where the discovery is explained.

The technology developed and patented by the UPV and CSIC is based on the phenomenon of the reduction of solid materials. This method makes it possible to carry out electrochemical processes directly without requiring electrodes, which simplifies and significantly cheapens its practical use, as it provides more freedom in the design of the structure of the device and choosing the operation conditions, mainly the temperature. It is a technology with great practical potential, especially for its use in storing energy and producing synthetic fuels and green chemical products. This aspect has significant importance today, as both transportation and industry are immersed in a transition to decarbonise, meaning they have to meet very demanding goals between 2030 and 2040 to decrease the consumption of energy and substances from fossil sources, mainly natural gas and oil, highlights José Manuel Serra, research lecturer of the CSIC at the Chemical Technology Institute.

Nylon finally takes its place as a piezoelectric textile

Nylon might seem the obvious go-to material for electronic textiles—not only is there an established textiles industry based on nylon, but it conveniently has a crystalline phase that is piezoelectric—tap it and you get a build-up of charge perfect for pressure sensing and harvesting energy from ambient motion.

Unfortunately, forming into fibers while getting it to take on the crystal structure that has a is not straightforward. “This has been a challenge for almost half a century,” explains Kamal Asadi, a researcher at the Max-Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Germany, and professor at the University of Bath, U.K. In a recent Advanced Functional Materials report, he and his collaborators describe how they have now finally overcome this.

The piezoelectric phase of nylon holds appeal not just for electronic textiles but all kinds of electronic devices, particularly where there is demand for something less brittle than the conventional piezoelectric ceramics. However, for decades, the only way to produce nylon with the crystalline phase that has a strong piezoelectric response has been to melt it, rapidly cool it and then stretch it so that it sets into a smectic δ’ phase. This produces slabs typically tens of micrometers thick—far too thick for applications in electronic devices or electronic textiles.

U.S. Sells Seized Iranian Oil

The United States has sold crude oil seized from four Iranian tankers earlier this year for some $40 million the AFP reports, citing a U.S. government official.

“We estimate that in excess of $40 million will be recouped by the United States related to the sale of petroleum from those four vessels,” Michael Sherwin, acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia said. Sherwin added that “a great portion” of the money will be donated to a fund for the victims of “state-sponsored terrorism”.

In the middle of August, the U.S. Administration said it had seized the fuel cargo of several vessels, alleging that the fuel came from Iran and was going to Venezuela. The confiscation followed a lawsuit filed by U.S. prosecutors to seize the cargo carried by the four vessels for violating U.S. sanctions against Venezuela.

The moon is sprinkled with patches of frozen water, NASA scientists discovered. Mining it may be crucial for travel to Mars and beyond

So they’re planning to turn the moon water into rocket fuel. And the moon is now a stepping stone to Mars.

NASA is also planning to send a rover to moon’s south pole on 2022. 😃

Interesting.

NASA may need to mine water from the moon to send astronauts into deep space. Two new studies indicate the best spots to find that ice.

General Atomics and Boeing team up on high-energy laser weapon

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) and Boeing have entered into a partnership to develop a scalable 100 kW to 250 kW-class High Energy Laser (HEL) weapon system for air and missile defenses.

Laser weapons have been high on the wish lists of major military powers ever since the first laser was invented by Theodore Maiman at the Hughes Research Lab, Malibu, California in 1960. With enough concentrated power to burn through steel, enough range to cover literally astronomical distances, an operating cost of a dollar a shot, and an unlimited number of shots so long as there’s power available, the laser looked like the so-called ultimate weapon – if it could be made practical.

Of the problems that have hampered laser weapon development over the past six decades, one of the biggest is how to properly cool a laser generator. This is important because weapon-grade lasers have an efficiency between 50 and 70 percent, with the leftover percentages being lost as heat that could shut down or damage the device.