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What I call the “energy storage conundrum” is the obvious but largely unrecognized problem that electricity generated by intermittent renewables like wind and sun can’t keep an electrical grid operating without some method of storing energy to meet customer demand in times of low production. These times of low production from wind and sun occur regularly — for example, calm nights — and can persist for as long as a week or more in the case of heavily overcast and calm periods in the winter. If the plan is to power the entire United States by wind and solar facilities,...

Fuel Cell Being Tested The new fuel cell being tested in the lab. Credit: Imperial College London Imperial researchers have developed a new hydrogen fuel cell that uses iron instead of rare and costly platinum, enabling greater use of the technology. Hydrogen fuel cells convert hydrogen to electricity with just water vapor as a byproduct, making them an appealing green alternative for portable power, particularly for vehicles. However, the expense of one of the primary components has impeded its broad adoption. The fuel cells rely on a catalyst made of platinum, which is expensive and scarce, to assist the reaction...

A revolutionary cryogenic tank design promises to radically boost the range of hydrogen-powered aircraft – to the point where clean, fuel-cell airliners could fly up to four times farther than comparable planes running on today's dirty jet fuel. Weight is the enemy of all things aerospace – indeed, hydrogen's superior energy storage per weight is what makes it such an attractive alternative to lithium batteries in the aviation world. We've written before about HyPoint's turbo air-cooled fuel cell technology, but its key differentiator in the aviation market is its enormous power density compared with traditional fuel cells. For its high...

UCLA researchers have designed a device that can use solar energy to inexpensively and efficiently create and store energy, which could be used to power electronic devices, and to create hydrogen fuel for eco-friendly cars. The device could make hydrogen cars affordable for many more consumers because it produces hydrogen using nickel, iron and cobalt — elements that are much more abundant and less expensive than the platinum and other precious metals that are currently used to produce hydrogen fuel. “Hydrogen is a great fuel for vehicles: It is the cleanest fuel known, it’s cheap and it puts no pollutants...

University of Delaware researchers have broken new ground that could bring more environmentally friendly fuel cells closer to commercialization. Credit: Graphic illustration by Jeffrey C. Chase ========================================================================= University of Delaware (UD) engineers have demonstrated a way to effectively capture 99% of carbon dioxide from air using a novel electrochemical system powered by hydrogen. It is a significant advance for carbon dioxide capture and could bring more environmentally friendly fuel cells closer to market. The research team, led by UD Professor Yushan Yan, reported their method in Nature Energy on Thursday, February 3. Game-changing tech for fuel cell efficiency Fuel cells...

Inside JET's torus, with superimposed plasma. (UKAEA) Late last century, the Joint European Torus (JET) near Oxford, UK, churned out 22 megajoules of energy in what was, at the time, a record in fusion power. Now, experimental upgrades have brought the facility into line with the technology anticipated for a major international project, resulting in the production of nearly three times that amount of power. The advances are a major step forward for tokamak-based fusion, bringing us ever closer to a balance point where we can harvest a near endless stream of energy without the cost of polluting emissions or...

A graphical summary of the xenon-lamp flash photo-pyrolysis method. Credit: EPFL As the world's energy demands increase, so does our consumption of fossil fuels. The result is a massive rise in greenhouse gases emissions with severely adverse environmental effects. To address this, scientists have been searching for alternative, renewable sources of energy. A main candidate is hydrogen produced from organic waste, or biomass, of plants and animals. Biomass also absorbs, removes and stores CO2 from the atmosphere, while biomass decomposition can lead to negative emissions or greenhouse gas removal. But even though biomass heralds a way forward, there is still...

Source:   University Of Missouri-Rolla (http://www.umr.edu) Date:   Posted 7/17/2002 The Sun: A Great Ball Of Iron? For years, scientists have assumed that the sun is an enormous mass of hydrogen. But in a paper presented before the American Astronomical Society, Dr. Oliver Manuel, a professor of nuclear chemistry at UMR, says iron, not hydrogen, is the sun's most abundant element. Manuel claims that hydrogen fusion creates some of the sun's heat, as hydrogen -- the lightest of all elements -- moves to the sun's surface. But most of the heat comes from the core of an exploded supernova...

Five billion years ago, the universe was Earth-less. It remained that way till a vast number of asteroids smashed together and compacted into a giant rocky orb. But that raises a question: The Earth's surface is 70% water, so where'd the liquid come from? A long-standing theory is that a water-rich class of asteroids, called carbonaceous or C-type asteroids, could've pelted the Earth during its creation and brought along water. There's a caveat though, and the C-type asteroids may be only half the story....

Cummins Inc., a century-old maker of truck engines powered by diesel and other fossil fuels, may not seem like the most likely attendee at the UN Climate Conference COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, but CEO Tom Linebarger was there this week telling industrial partners and customers the company is working to help them shift to low- and no-carbon vehicles powered by batteries and hydrogen. As battery-electric passenger models gain market share in the U.S., Europe and China, attention is shifting to electrifying larger, dirtier commercial vehicles including semi-trucks, construction and mining vehicles, as well as trains, ships and aircraft. Currently, no...

Electrodeposition of Hydrogen Adatoms on Graphene Quan-feng He, Lianhuan Han, Dongping Zhan* , Zhong-Qun Tian State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces; Fujian Science & Technology Innovation Laboratory for Energy Materials of China; Engineering Research Centre of Electrochemical Technologies of Ministry of Education; Department of Chemistry, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering; and Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, School of Aerospace Engineering, Xiamen University; Xiamen 361005, China. E-mail: dpzhan@xmu.edu.cn Conductive carbon materials, such as graphite, glassy carbon, carbon black, carbon nanotube, graphene, etc., are used extensively as electrode materials or catalyst carriers in various electrochemical researches because...

For the first time, physicists have been able to directly measure one of the ways exploding stars forge the heaviest elements in the Universe. By probing an accelerated beam of radioactive ions, a team led by physicist Gavin Lotay of the University of Surrey in the UK observed the proton-capture process thought to occur in core-collapse supernovae. Not only have scientists now seen how this happens in detail, the measurements are allowing us to better understand the production and abundances of mysterious isotopes called p-nuclei. On the most basic level, stars can be thought of as the element factories of...

Greenyer: Nickel-hydrogen heat generator continuously working for 7 months A.G. Parkhomov 1 , V.A. Zhigalov 1 , S.N. Zabavin 1 , A.G. Sobolev 2 , T.R. Timerbulatov 1 1 OKL KIT, Moscow, alexparh@mail.ru 2 Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow A nickel-hydrogen heat generator was created that continuously worked for 225 days with a heat dissipation power exceeding the consumed electricity from 200 to 1000 W (thermal coefficient 1.6 - 3.6). Completion of the work is connected with the exhaustion of fuel energy resource. Total excess energy generation of about 4100 MJ. The fuel used in...

An asthma organization warned against participating in a social media trend that suggests people can treat or prevent COVID-19 by inhaling hydrogen peroxide through a nebulizer. The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) said the trend was "concerning and dangerous," according to a blog post on its website. "DO NOT put hydrogen peroxide into your nebulizer and breathe it in," the AAFA's blog said. "This is dangerous!"

The typical rocket launch dumps the same amount of CO2 into the atmosphere as one airliner does in the course of a trans-Atlantic crossing If you’re worried about your ‘carbon footprint’ - a concept foisted on the world in 2004 by British Petroleum to persuade people that their own behaviour, and not giant oil companies like BP, is causing the climate problem -- then you definitely should not sign up for a sub-orbital space flight. Besides, you probably can’t afford it ($250,000 pp). Millions of people can afford it, however, and since the Branson/Bezos ‘space race’ last month tickets for...

Report titled ‘How Green is Blue Hydrogen?’ generates buzz, and pushback, as Biden, Congress and Wall Street promote the energy source in path toward zero emissions Clean hydrogen is a fuel the Biden administration believes will be part of the toolkit necessary to propel the U.S. to zero emissions by 2050, not to mention a 50% cut in those emissions as soon as the end of this decade. But a peer-reviewed study out Thursday argues that the fuel’s credentials need reconsideration. Some energy-industry and clean-air analysts raised their own concerns that the study, published in the Energy Science & Engineering...

Green hydrogen is the latest “energy” fad from the global warming warriors. Today’s hydrogen hype proposes using wind and solar energy to produce “green” hydrogen by electrolysis of water. It is mainly hot air. Hydrogen will NEVER be a source of energy. Unlike coal, oil or natural gas, hydrogen rarely occurs naturally – it must be manufactured, and that process consumes far more energy than the hydrogen “fuel” can recover. It's actually an idea that is quite old and discredited. “Hydro-gen” means “born of water,” but there has been a commercial fuel containing hydrogen that was born of coal. (Maybe...

The Energy Department announced on Monday that it was starting an “Earthshots” initiative to reduce the costs of clean energy within a decade — starting with its first goal of reducing the cost of clean hydrogen to $1 per kilogram. The Energy Earthshots Initiative will seek to, within a decade, speed up breakthroughs in affordable and reliable clean energy, according to a department statement. “The Energy Earthshots are an all-hands-on-deck call for innovation, collaboration and acceleration of our clean energy economy by tackling the toughest remaining barriers to quickly deploy emerging clean energy technologies at scale,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm...

Washington solidifies goal to end sale of new gas-powered cars by 2030 A bill to promote hydrogen-powered vehicles is now a state law. “Giving residents more access to purchase greener vehicles is one more way we can work together to lower greenhouse gas impacts across the state,” Gov. Inslee said, as he signed the bill. Senator Brad Hawkins sponsored the bill, SB 5000, which creates an eight-year statewide pilot project for the reduction of sales tax on purchases of fuel-cell electric vehicles. “It’s had a long journey through five different committees, but it’s definitely generated a great deal of conversation...

Seawater makes up about 96% of all water on earth, making it a tempting resource to meet the world’s growing need for clean drinking water and carbon-free energy. And scientists already have the technical ability to both desalinate seawater and split it to produce hydrogen, which is in demand as a source of clean energy. But existing methods require multiple steps performed at high temperatures over a lengthy period of time in order to produce a catalyst with the needed efficiency. That requires substantial amounts of energy and drives up the cost. Researchers from the University of Houston have reported...