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Researchers unveil a revolutionary material, tungsten oxide hydrate, enabling dynamic windows that adapt to light and temperature, boosting energy efficiency.

Dynamic windows have long been the dream of architects and engineers, promising buildings that adapt to varying light and temperature conditions.

Now, researchers from NC State University have taken a giant leap forward in this field by unveiling a revolutionary material known as tungsten oxide hydrate. This innovation could pave the way for the next generation of dynamic windows, offering building occupants the ability to switch their windows between three distinct modes: transparency, infrared light blocking, and glare control, according to a university release.

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Coulomb drag.

There is a largely untapped energy source along the world’s coastlines: the difference in salinity between seawater and freshwater. A new nanodevice can harness this difference to generate power.

A team of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has reported a design for a nanofluidic device capable of converting ionic flow into usable electric power in the journal Nano Energy. The team believes that their device could be used to extract power from the natural ionic flows at seawater-freshwater boundaries.

“While our design is still a concept at this stage, it is quite versatile and already shows strong potential for energy applications,” said Jean-Pierre Leburton, a U. of I. professor of electrical & computer engineering and the project lead. “It began with an academic question—’Can a nanoscale solid-state device extract energy from ionic flow?’—but our design exceeded our expectations and surprised us in many ways.”

Lithium-ion batteries could get a significant boost in energy density from disordered rock salt (DRX), a versatile battery material that can be made with almost any transition metal instead of nickel and cobalt.

DRX cathodes could provide batteries with higher energy density than conventional lithium-ion battery cathodes made of nickel and cobalt, two metals that are in critically short supply.

Continue reading “New Consortium to Make Batteries for Electric Vehicles More Sustainable” »

Here is another story from web bike world: “Is water the future of motorbikes”

https://www.webbikeworld.com/water-power-future-motorbikes/

Continue reading “Motorcycle Goes 300 Miles on 1 Liter of Water” »

The result: aspern Seestadt, reclaims a brownfield area to create a development that embraces new urban ideals while retaining the classical urban structure of old Vienna.

As aspern Seestadt has evolved, it has emerged as one of Europe’s most dynamic planned communities and an incubator for smart city initiatives. Geographic information system (GIS) technology helps planners implement clean energy and low-emission strategies and aids the long-range planning and implementation to ensure that aspern Seestadt achieves a unique balance of sustainability and livability.

-Vienna’s sustainable city within a city can be a model used by developing and developed countries dealing with housing crisis.

Continue reading “Inside One of Europe’s Largest Urban Development Projects—aspern Seestadt” »

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), which store energy leveraging the reversible reduction of lithium ions, power most devices and electronics on the market today. Due to their wide range of operating temperatures, long lifespan, small size, fast charging times and compatibility with existing manufacturing processes, these rechargeable batteries can greatly contribute to the electronics industry, while also supporting ongoing efforts towards carbon neutrality.

The affordable and eco-friendly recycling of used LIBs is a long sought-after goal in the energy sector, as it would improve the sustainability of these batteries. Existing methods, however, are often ineffective, expensive or harmful to the environment.

Moreover, LIBs heavily rely on materials that are becoming less abundant on Earth, such as cobalt and lithium. Approaches that enable the reliable and cost-effective extraction of these materials from spent batteries would drastically reduce the need to source these materials elsewhere, thus helping to meet the growing LIB demand.

The Energy Department will invest $325 million in batteries that can better store clean energy, it announced Friday.

The funding will go toward 15 projects in 17 states and one tribal nation that aim to “advance energy storage technologies” and accelerate the development of long-duration energy storage (LDES) technologies.

Scientists from IOCB Prague are the first to describe the causes of the behavior of one of the fundamental aromatic molecules, azulene. This molecule has captivated the scientific community not just with its distinct blue hue, but also with its unique properties.

Their current undertaking will influence the foundations of organic chemistry in the years to come and in practice will help harness the maximum potential of captured light energy. Their findings were recently published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS).

Azulene has piqued the curiosity of chemists for many years. The question of why it is blue, despite there being no obvious reason for this, was answered almost fifty years ago by a scientist of global importance, who, coincidentally, had close ties with IOCB Prague, Prof. Josef Michl.