Energy & Green Tech news

Energy & Green Tech

Carbon nanotube fiber 'textile' heaters could help industry electrify high-temperature gas heating

A cross-disciplinary team at Rice University has developed a new type of electric heating element—one that looks less like a traditional metal coil and more like a high-performance thread. In a study published in Small, ...

Energy & Green Tech

Breaking down the battery problem: Cheaper, more efficient cathodes could cut costs

Consider the humble rechargeable battery: Many people start their day by unplugging their phone from a charger to check the weather or commute to work, or throw on their favorite podcast. They'll end the day by plugging in ...

Engineering

Zeolite 'thermal batteries' could cut data center cooling power up to 86%

Data centers—the warehouse-sized buildings that store photos, stream movies and train artificial intelligence—are voracious consumers of electricity. A surprisingly large share of that power never reaches a microchip. ...

Energy & Green Tech

Cheaper EV batteries? How a fabrication tweak makes sulfur work in solid-state cells

Spurred by EVs and electrified aviation, global demand for lithium-ion batteries is expected to more than double its 2023 levels by 2030, far outstripping demand, according to S&P Global Insights. New batteries must be powerful, ...

Business

Power outages cost US electricity customers billions

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have provided the first comprehensive analysis of the specific costs of power outages to local customers across the nation. It found that the average ...

Electronics & Semiconductors

Canadians toss electronics at a concerning rate

The first survey of Canadian consumers regarding their purchase and disposal of electronics reveals that 64% of people replace their items for reasons other than the device breaking down or being obsolete. This behavior points ...

Energy & Green Tech

AI tool predicts building emissions from simple text descriptions

Researchers at the University of Bath have developed the first artificial intelligence (AI) tool that predicts the carbon footprint of buildings from simple text descriptions, giving architects real-time feedback on sustainability ...

Energy & Green Tech

Molecular fine-tuning boosts tandem solar cell efficiency to 31.4%

Perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells are considered a key technology for photovoltaics. Because of their design, they use sunlight more efficiently than conventional silicon cells. While the upper perovskite layer absorbs ...

Energy & Green Tech

Supercomputer ushers in new era of nuclear AI

Nuclear power is rising to meet the demand for American energy. But building new reactors or even renewing licenses of existing ones requires a tremendous amount of paperwork. Fortunately, AI is also on the rise, and paperwork ...

Engineering

New window insulation blocks heat, but not your view

Physicists at the University of Colorado Boulder have designed a new material for insulating windows that could improve the energy efficiency of buildings worldwide—and it works a bit like a high-tech version of Bubble ...

Energy & Green Tech

Simple teflon coating boosts hydrogen production efficiency by 40%

A common non-stick coating used in cookware has been shown to enhance hydrogen production efficiency in water electrolyzers by approximately 40%. The key innovation involves applying a specialized coating to critical components ...

Engineering

Why new kinds of steel are needed to build lead-cooled reactors

Safer operation, better fuel efficiency and lower waste mark lead-cooled nuclear power as a potentially dramatic shift from the water-cooled nuclear stations the world has relied on since the mid 20th century. A recent Swedish ...