{"id":5151,"date":"2011-07-13T17:28:30","date_gmt":"2011-07-13T21:28:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencebusiness.technewslit.com\/?p=5151"},"modified":"2011-07-13T17:29:22","modified_gmt":"2011-07-13T21:29:22","slug":"engineers-develop-nanotech-solar-thermal-fuel-cell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/?p=5151","title":{"rendered":"Engineers Develop Nanotech Solar Thermal Fuel Cell"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Carbon<\/a>
Carbon nanotube illustration (National Science Foundation)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology<\/a> have developed a process for storing solar energy in the form of heat with a material based on carbon nanotubes. A description of the process by engineering professor Jeffrey Grossman and postdoc Alexie Kolpak appears online in the journal Nano Letters<\/em><\/a> (paid subscription required).<\/p>\n

Grossman and Kolpak’s methods involve storing the sun’s heat in chemical form. In principle, capturing solar heat in a chemical has advantages, since the chemical material can be stored for long periods of time without losing any of its stored energy.<\/p>\n

Until now, however, the chemicals needed to perform this conversion and storage either degraded within a few cycles. Other methods involved the element ruthenium, which is rare and still expensive<\/a>, almost $200.00 an ounce.<\/p>\n

The new material found by Grossman and Kolpak is made with carbon nanotubes, tiny tubular structures of pure carbon, in combination with a compound called azobenzene<\/a>. The molecules that result use nanoscale templates — one nanometer equals one billionth of a meter — to shape and constrain their physical structure, and gain new properties not in the raw materials making up this new compound.<\/p>\n

The authors say this new chemical system is less expensive than earlier ruthenium-containing compounds, but also more efficient at storing energy in a given amount of space. Its energy density, says Kolpak, is about 10,000 times higher than ruthenium-based materials, comparable to lithium-ion batteries.<\/p>\n

In this process, solar energy is stored in molecules whose structure changes when exposed to sunlight, and can remain stable in that form. When nudged by a a catalyst, small temperature change, or a flash of light, the altered molecules revert back to their earlier form, releasing stored energy as heat (not electricity).<\/p>\n

The process developed by Grossman and Kolpak combines energy harvesting and storage into a single step. Grossman describes it as a rechargeable heat battery with a long shelf life, like a conventional battery.<\/p>\n

Read more: Engineers Develop Efficient Nanotech Solar Energy Film<\/a><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a process for storing solar energy in the form of heat with a material based on carbon nanotubes. A description of the process by engineering professor Jeffrey Grossman and postdoc Alexie Kolpak appears online in the journal Nano Letters (paid subscription required). Grossman and Kolpak’s methods involve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[72,68,86,43,18,105,17,26],"class_list":["post-5151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-products","tag-cleantech","tag-energy","tag-engineering","tag-materials-science","tag-nanotechnology","tag-physical-sciences","tag-solar","tag-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5151"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5157,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5151\/revisions\/5157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}