Lifeboat Foundation

NASA and the U.S. Dept. of Energy have come together to solicit design proposals for a nuclear reactor that will power Lunar and Martian exploration!

Over the next fifteen years, multiple space agencies and their commercial partners intend to mount crewed missions to the Moon and Mars. In addition to placing “footprints and flags” on these celestial bodies, there are plans to establish the infrastructure to allow for a long-term human presence. To meet these mission requirements and ensure astronaut safety, several technologies are currently being researched and developed.

At their core, these technologies are all about achieving self-sufficiency in terms of resources, materials, and energy. To ensure that these missions have all the energy they need to conduct operations, NASA is developing a Fission Surface Power (FSP) system that will provide a safe, efficient, and reliable electricity supply. In conjunction with solar cells, batteries, and fuel cells, this technology will allow for long-term missions to the Moon and Mars in the near future.

Continue reading “NASA is Building a Nuclear Reactor to Power Lunar and Martian Exploration!” »

So can solar energy cut it?

Can we really move to a society not harnessed to the unsustainable practices of the old way.

Continue reading “Can The Sun Power The Earth? Will Solar Energy Cope Or Will The Lights Go Out?” »

The idea of transparent solar windows almost sounds too good to be true, and it is, but not entirely. Researchers have been hammering away at the challenge of harnessing sunlight to generate electricity from see-through windows for years. The prize is acres upon acres of new sites for solar panels on buildings, without losing the energy-saving advantages of daylighting. Just look at any glass building and you can practically feel the blooming of the possibilities. The obstacles are many but it looks like a real breakthrough is finally at hand, so to speak.

Transparent Solar Windows, For Real

See-through solar cells have been bouncing around the CleanTechnica radar since at least 2010, when the possibility of creating a transparent solar window was beginning to emerge alongside thin film solar technology.

Solid-solution organic crystals have been brought into the quest for superior photon upconversion materials, which transform presently wasted long-wavelength light into more useful shorter wavelength light. Scientists from Tokyo Institute of Technology have revisited a materials approach previously deemed lackluster—using a molecule originally developed for organic LEDs—and have achieved outstanding performance and efficiency. Their findings pave the way for many novel photonic technologies, such as better solar cells and photocatalysts for hydrogen and hydrocarbon productions.

Light is a powerful source of energy that can, if leveraged correctly, be used to drive stubborn chemical reactions, generate electricity, and run optoelectronic devices. However, in most applications, not all the wavelengths of light can be used. This is because the energy that each photon carries is inversely proportional to its wavelength, and chemical and physical processes are triggered by light only when the energy provided by individual photons exceeds a certain threshold.

This means that devices like solar cells cannot benefit from all the color contained in sunlight, as it comprises a mixture of photons with both high and low energies. Scientists worldwide are actively exploring materials to realize photon upconversion (PUC), by which photons with lower energies (longer wavelengths) are captured and re-emitted as photons with higher energies (shorter wavelengths). One promising way to realize this is through triplet-triplet annihilation (TTA). This process requires the combination of a sensitizer material and an annihilator material. The sensitizer absorbs low energy photons (long-wavelength light) and transfers its excited energy to the annihilator, which emits higher energy photons (light of shorter wavelength) as a result of TTA.

Sushil Reddy is no stranger to long-distance electric bicycles rides, having broken the Guinness World Record back in 2016 with a 7,424 km (4,613 mile) ride across India. Since then he’s set his sights on solar power, performing several more long-distance solar-powered electric bike rides. Now he’s halfway through a 10,460 km (6,500 mile) ride around the US on a custom-built solar-powered electric bike as part of the SunPedal Ride project.

As the SunPedal Ride project explained:

“The SunPedal Ride is an outreach project started by Sushil Reddy in 2016. The idea is to have conversations about clean energy and sustainable mobility via endurance journeys undertaken on zero tail-pipe emission vehicles. Each edition of The SunPedal Ride is a new challenge which is executed by a team and supported by a group of sponsors/partners to spread the message via public interactions. A medium of a zero tail-pipe emissions vehicle is used in each edition of The SunPedal Ride.”

The auto industry is starting to get serious about solar.

Chinese automaker EdisonFuture, a subsidiary of renewable energy firm SPI Energy, revealed the EF1-T, its first electric pickup with a retractable solar panel roof last month.

Continue reading “China’s New Solar EVs Boast Up to 450 Miles of Range” »

Soot is one of the world’s worst contributors to climate change. Its impact is similar to global methane emissions and is second only to carbon dioxide in its destructive potential. This is because soot particles absorb solar radiation, which heats the surrounding atmosphere, resulting in warmer global temperatures. Soot also causes several other environmental and health problems including making us more susceptible to respiratory viruses.

Soot only persists in the atmosphere for a few weeks, suggesting that if these emissions could be stopped then the air could rapidly clear. This has recently been demonstrated during recent lockdowns, with some major cities reporting clear skies after industrial emissions stopped.

But soot is also part of our future. Soot can be converted into the useful carbon black product through thermal treatment to remove any harmful components. Carbon blacks are critical ingredients in batteries, tires and paint. If these carbons are made small enough they can even be made to fluoresce and have been used for tagging biological molecules, in catalysts and even in solar cells.

The newly passed infrastructure bill could lead to a boom in solar production requiring a lot more land, including farmland. But research is showing solar panels might actually help grow some crops.

This solar farm in Colorado thinks so.

The farming industry is using way too much energy both for its own and the Earth’s sake. To put it in numbers, agriculture uses approximately 21 percent of food production energy, which equals 2.2 quadrillions of kilojoules of energy each year. What’s more, about 60 percent of the energy used in agriculture goes toward gasoline, diesel, electricity, and natural gas.

That’s where agrivoltaics come in. A system where solar panels are in… See more.