Energy

Mars cleaning tech offers method to sweep dust off Earth’s solar panels

By / August 25, 2010

PV panels on the Mars rover Spirit were covered with dust over a two-year period. Credit: NASA/JPL. Self-cleaning surfaces aren’t a particularly novel idea, and self-cleaning glass commercial products made…

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Rare earths: Growing demand and tight supplies

By / August 24, 2010

It’s far from a disinterested source, but Avalon Rare Metals tells me today that prices for individual rare earth elements have soared 22-705% since January: “[T]he most significant rises have…

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Active oxidation catalyst for Li–air batteries

By Esther Levy / August 24, 2010

Lithium batteries that utilize oxygen as the cathode material are very promising owing to their extremely high theoretical capacity of almost 12,000 Wh kg-1. In these lithium-air batteries, oxygen is…

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Nanowires boost the efficiency of ultra low-cost, stable solar cells

By Kitty Cha / August 24, 2010

One of the ways of ensuring a sustainable solar cell industry is to make cheap and stable cells, using abundant and environmentally friendly materials. However, until now, many such solar…

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With leap in catalytic oxygen production, Nocera predicts new era of ‘personalized energy systems’

By / August 23, 2010

Schematic of Daniel Nocera’s personalized energy system. Credit: MIT News Office Daniel Nocera likes it when he is called a revolutionary. “Yes, sure I am!,” he responded when a writer…

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Materials stories that missed the cut this week

By / August 20, 2010

At the end of each week, I end up with a list of a bunch of stories I started to write about, or started to investigate or didn’t even get…

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Less platinum, better efficiency for fuel cells

By / August 20, 2010

The multimetallic nanoparticle created by Brown University chemists for fuel-cell reactions uses a palladium core and an iron-platinum shell. Credit: Sun Lab/Brown University According to a Brown University press release,…

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A123’s launching new lithium flow battery project: ’24M’

By / August 19, 2010

Chiang at 2009 Materials Challenge for Alternative andRenewable Energy meeting. Credit: ACerS. When I interviewed Yet Ming Chiang, one of the brains behind A123 System’s lithium-ion battery technology, in 2009,…

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FuelCell Energy, G3 Power Systems and egg ranch owner team up to power fuel cell with fowl gas

By / August 17, 2010

A FuelCell Energy 1.4 megawatt biogas fuel cell system in use at a watertreatment facility in Turlock, Calif. (Editor’s note: This post has been modified from its original version to…

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Band excitation scanning probe microscopy innovation earns award for ORNL, Asylum

By / August 17, 2010

A 15 X 15 micron BE acoustic force microscopy scan of a polymer blend from which the Q-factor has been extracted.Contrast can be seen between the different constituent materials. The…

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