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We had several great stories to use this month on
energy harvesting and one that I think is worth mentioning here
is the “Harvesting energy from air” (June 16, 2023, The
WEEK). The U of Massachusetts at Amherst has produced “Air-Gen”
which uses ambient humidity to produce energy with a nanopore
film. The humid air passing through the holes in the film produce
a tiny charge that Prof. Jun Yao can amplify. Now he is working
on stacking the small film Air-Gens to multiply the voltage and power
output.
Also
worth mentioning, since many of you know our interest in gigaton
carbon capture for CO2 removal from the air, is the recent June
6th Climeworks Summit in Zurich that
focused on ‘Advancing high-quality carbon removal solutions’.
Their speaker list with links to each affiliated
organization/company is very impressive: https://climeworks.com/news/direct-air-capture-summit-2023-speakers and
may be better than their short talks crammed into one day.
The www.Climeworks.com company
is also a world leader in direct air carbon capture (DACC) which
someday soon should start cancelling the 40 gigatons of CO2 that
we globally exhale into the atmosphere each year and stays there
doing heat-trapping for approximately “hundreds to thousands of years.”
(This statistic is a quote from Prof. Richard Wolfson at
Middlebury College who has a remarkable www.TheGreatCourses.com on
“Earth’s Changing Climate” that I’m listening to while
working in the IRI Lab.)
Story #1
offers a new insight into aviation electrification. MIT offers
a megawatt
level of
Airbus motoring that may still end up being a hybrid with an
ecofriendly fuel but it seems to be a welcome step in the right
direction by a professor of Aeronautics.
Story #2
gives us a further step in the direction of hybrid electric
vehicles or simply renewable fuels for internal combustion
engines by converting CO2 into ethanol, ethylene, and other
useful fuels. LBNL uses copper nanoparticles as
electrocatalysts, which “excel in CO2 reduction.”
Story #3
is an exciting, similar invention to Story #2 but uses sunlight
and an “artificial
leaf” to
convert CO2 to useful fuel. The U of Cambridge finds that it can
manufacture “multicarbon fuels” in this manner.
Story #4
could have been the lead article since to me, it is the most
earth-shattering article. When a new battery like this
Lithium-Sulfur battery offers FIVE (5)
times the capacity of Lithium-ion batteries, engineers will
stand up and take note. Here in the US, at the U of Michigan, a
network of recycled aramid nanofibers (ANFs) can enable
lithium-sulfur batteries to prolong their cycle life. While the
19-second linked video is nice, most readers will want to see
more about this amazing discovery: https://news.umich.edu/1000-cycle-lithium-sulfur-battery-could-quintuple-electric-vehicle-ranges/. In
their Nature article, the authors state, “The
simplicity of synthesis and recyclability of ANFs open the door
for engineering high-performance materials for numerous energy
technologies.” More information on this energy breakthrough
technology is in the Nature Communications publication: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27861-w.
Story #5
was my pick for Star Trek fans who want to hear all
about the space ventures which are currently ongoing.
Well here is the ten
(10) best Space Startups raising billions of
dollars for all kinds of space related commercial ventures. This
information is from NASA’s Tech Briefs which
for years has been a wonderful resource in a color magazine
mailed to you for FREE. Sign up at https://www.techbriefs.com/account/registration which
also gives you access to an emailed version of the Tech Briefs as
well if you choose that option. Did I mention it is a FREE
service and also includes product development section from NASA
and contact information for each invention?
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1) Megawatt Electrical Motor Designed by MIT Could
Help Electrify Aviation
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Due to
its massive carbon footprint, electrification has long been
viewed as the most viable path toward helping to make the
aviation industry more environmentally friendly. Zoltan
Spakovszky, leader of the MIT project and university’s T. Wilson
Professor in Aeronautics and the Director of its Gas Turbine
Laboratory (GTL), calls the megawatt-class motors his team
envisions “a key enabler for greening aviation,” regardless of
whether the resulting system relies partially on batteries,
hydrogen, ammonia, or a variety of eco-friendly aviation fuel.
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2) Copper Catalyst Converts CO2 into Fuels
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A
research team led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
(Berkeley Lab) has gained new insight by capturing real-time
movies of copper nanoparticles (copper particles engineered at the
scale of a billionth of a meter) as they convert CO2 and water into
renewable fuels and chemicals: ethylene, ethanol, and propanol,
among others. “This is very exciting. After decades of work, we’re
finally able to show — with undeniable proof — how copper
electrocatalysts excel in CO2 reduction,” said Peidong Yang, a Senior
Faculty Scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences and
Chemical Sciences Divisions who led the study. Yang is also a
Professor of chemistry and materials science and engineering at UC
Berkeley. “Knowing how copper is such an excellent electrocatalyst
brings us steps closer to turning CO2 into new, renewable solar
fuels through artificial photosynthesis.”
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3) "Artificial Leaf" Produces Clean Fuel
from Sunlight
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The
University of Cambridge scientists have developed an ‘artificial
leaf’ that, powered by sunlight, converts CO2 and water into
ethanol and propanol. This innovation eliminates the intermediary
step of producing syngas, making the technology more practical and
paving the way for a sustainable, zero-carbon emission future. The
researchers from the University of Cambridge, harnessed the power
of photosynthesis to convert CO2, water, and sunlight into
multicarbon fuels – ethanol and propanol – in a single step. These
fuels have a high energy density and can be easily stored or
transported.
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4) Lithium-Sulfur Battery Could Enhance EV Ranges
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TechBriefs.
com June 2023
A new
biologically inspired battery membrane from the University of
Michigan has enabled a battery with five times the capacity of the
industry-standard Li-ion design to run for the 1,000-plus cycles
needed to power an EV. Watch this video to see how a network of
recycled aramid nanofibers can enable lithium-sulfur batteries to
prolong their cycle life. “Inspired by biological ion channels, we
engineered highways for lithium ions where lithium polysulfides
cannot pass the tolls,” said Ahmet Emre , a postdoctoral researcher
in chemical engineering and co-first author of the paper in Nature
Communications.
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