Tag: cleantech
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Quality Check Technique Devised for Lithium-Ion Batteries
Engineers at Purdue University in Indiana developed a method that can detect flaws in lithium-ion battery electrodes during their manufacture. The team led by mechanical engineering professor Douglas Adams and chemical engineering faculty James Caruthers will discuss its technique next month at the annual meeting of the Society for Experimental Mechanics near Chicago. Arrays of…
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Power Company, Research Center Partner on Wind Forecasts
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado and the electric utility Xcel Energy are collaborating on a new forecasting system to improve the company’s wind energy operations. Financial aspects of the two-year partnership, which continues an existing agreement between the organizations, were not disclosed. NCAR is a federally funded research and development center…
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New Type Battery Designed for Solar, Wind Grid Storage
Engineers at Stanford University and Stanford’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory developed a lower-cost design for long term storage of wind and solar energy on the power grid. The team led by Yi Cui, a materials science and engineering professor at Stanford and part of a joint materials and energy science institute at SLAC, published its…
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System Being Tested to Move Old E-Car Battery Power to Grid
Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, General Motors, and ABB Group in Cary, North Carolina are testing an operational platform to harness the electricity in spent electric vehicle batteries for the power grid. The project is funded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, although the amount of the funding…
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Gallium Arsenide Nanowires Boost Solar Cell Efficiency
University and industrial researchers in Switzerland and Denmark developed a new type of solar cell that in lab tests captures more light and generates more power than traditional silicon cells. The team from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland, Neils Bohr Institute at University of Copenhagen, and the Danish spin-off company SunFlake A/S…
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Challenge Seeks Answers for Recycling Cathode Ray Tubes
A new challenge on InnoCentive seeks proposals for recycling the lead in glass found in old cathode ray tubes (CRTs) into new products. The competition, sponsored by Consumer Electronics Association and Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, has a prize of $10,000 and a deadline of 1 July 2013. InnoCentive in Waltham, Massachusetts conducts open-innovation, crowd-sourcing…
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Enzyme Cocktail Generates High Volume Hydrogen from Biomass
Bioengineers at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, with colleagues from elsewhere in the U.S. and Mexico, developed a process to inexpensively extract large volumes of hydrogen fuel from any type of plant matter. The team led by biological systems engineering professor Y.H. Percival Zhang, published its findings online in a recent issue of the journal Angewandte…
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Study: Solar Panel Industry Now a Net Energy Producer
The global photovoltaic industry has reached a point where solar panels are now likely generating more energy than needed to produce the panels, concludes a new study by Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy Project. The findings of postdoctoral fellow Michael Dale and project director Sally Benson appear in the 2 April issue of the…
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NSF Funding Organic Crystals Research for Electronics
A physics professor at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina received a $400,000 National Science Foundation grant for research on the physical structure and electronic properties of organic semiconductor crystals. The five-year award to Wake Forest’s Oana Jurchescu was made under NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program. Organic semiconductors are hydrocarbon substances like…
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ARPA-E to Fund Vehicle Metals, Bio Gas Conversion Research
The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) in the U.S. Department of Energy is making $40 million available for two new research programs involving transportation. Half of the $40 million will go for research to make lighter metals in cars and trucks more feasible, while the remaining $20 million will support biological conversion of…