Energy & Green Tech news

Engineering

Volcanic rock formula cuts cement emissions by two-thirds

Researchers have developed a volcanic rock formula that cuts carbon emissions by 67%, potentially offering an affordable alternative to increasingly scarce cement additives.

Energy & Green Tech

Polymer electrolyte lets the ions flow for solid-state batteries

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have uncovered a path to design superionic polymer electrolytes for solid-state batteries and other energy applications that could help ensure a future ...

Engineering

Safer sodium battery eliminates thermal runaway with a heat-triggered polymer barrier

Some batteries have been known to catch fire or explode at high temperatures or when under stress. This safety concern has pushed researchers to experiment with different ways to design safer batteries that can ideally still ...

Hardware

Prototype chip could boost efficiency of power management in data centers

In an effort to meet the rising energy demands of data centers, engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new chip design that could improve how graphics processing units (GPUs) convert and manage ...

Engineering

Solar-powered device disinfects drinking water in under an hour

For many people living in developed nations, towns and cities take care of ensuring that residents' water is clean and safe. Municipalities have advanced filters and UV light disinfection technologies at their disposal. Some ...

Energy & Green Tech

How electric cars could help tropical cities run on solar

In tropical cities, afternoon thunderstorms can plunge entire neighborhoods into brief moments of darkness. When civil engineer Markus Schläpfer moved to Singapore a decade ago, he recognized these thunderstorms as an emerging ...

Business

Researchers expose fossil fuel companies' communications facade

Fossil fuel companies say that they want to be on the front lines of renewable energy, with advertisements, social media, and even their own shareholder corporate reports espousing their commitment to green energy and combating ...

Energy & Green Tech

How electric vehicles could back up the power system

Electric vehicles (EVs) could do more for our environment than simply replace gasoline. Published in Joule, a new assessment of EV charging strategies suggests that EVs could serve as a vast network of mobile batteries, storing ...

Energy & Green Tech

Scandium doping technique extends sodium-ion battery life

Because lithium is relatively scarce and sodium is abundant in Earth's crust, sodium-ion batteries are being investigated as viable, cost-effective alternatives to the widely used lithium-ion batteries. In these batteries, ...

Robotics

Autonomous underwater waste collection could soon be a reality

Marine litter is a major environmental problem around the world. As part of the EU project SEACLEAR, a research team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now developed an autonomous diving robot that can detect ...

Business

Why do big oil companies invest in green energy?

Some major oil companies such as Shell and BP that once were touted as leading the way in clean energy investments are now pulling back from those projects to refocus on oil and gas production. Others, such as Exxon Mobil ...

Energy & Green Tech

Bending salty ice could be a power source of the future

For most of us, ice is a hazard. Whether it's making roads dangerously slippery or covering our sidewalks, this frozen form of water is something we often try to avoid. Yet, a discovery suggests that bending ice and adding ...

Engineering

Decoding the sounds of battery formation and degradation

Before batteries lose power, fail suddenly, or burst into flames, they tend to produce faint sounds over time that provide a signature of the degradation processes going on within their structure. But until now, nobody had ...

Energy & Green Tech

Double harvest: Vertical solar panels and crops thrive side by side

Imagine a field where solar panels and crops coexist—with no trade-off. It sounds like science fiction, but that's precisely what researchers from Aarhus University have now documented in a full-scale agrivoltaic pilot project ...