Science 2.0.com reports on an exciting potential breakthrough in solar energy and its direct transformation into hydrogen fuel. Usually, solar cells generate current from photons, making electricity which can run things or be stored in batteries. This new and different approach, using an innovative and inexpensive solar cell and a metal oxide photo anode, can store nearly five percent of solar energy chemically as hydrogen. The metal oxide bismuth vanadate (BiVO4) photo anode includes a small dose of tungsten atoms, was then sprayed onto conducting glass and “coated with an inexpensive cobalt phosphate catalyst,” which helped speed up oxygen formation during water splitting. Science 2.0 reports Professor Dr. Roel van de Krol’s remarks. He’s head of the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin Institute for Solar Fuels, and worked with researchers there and at Deflt University. “Basically, we combined the best of both worlds. We start with a chemically stable, low cost metal oxide, add a really good but sim ple silicon-based thin …
Iodized Salt – Iodine Battery
The Blog has reported on aqueous batteries, such as those developed by PolyPlus, a firm that has worked with the U. S. Navy to develop long-duration batteries compatible with sea water. Sea water carries about 60 parts per billion of iodine by mass, from which we get iodized salt. Battery performance going swimmingly, the Riken lithium-iodine battery is said to excel in most areas Which may have been the starting point for Riken, “Japan’s largest comprehensive research institution renowned for high-quality research in a diverse range of scientific disciplines.” Hye Ryung Byon and her team from the Byon Initiative Research Unit(IRU), have developed a lithium-iodine (Li-I2) battery system with a significantly higher energy density than conventional lithium-ion batteries. The Japanese New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization has set goals for batteries similar to those anticipated by IBM with its Battery 500 program. They want 500-kilometer (311 mile) range for electric cars that could compete with internal-combustion powered vehicles. This would …
Stanford scientists develop high-efficiency zinc-air battery
Battery researchers, including those at Stanford University, have been focusing for years on improving lithium batteries of multiple chemistries. While IBM tries to create the 500-mile battery based on lithium-air reactions, and ReVolt in Portland works on perfecting a long-lasting zinc-air cell, Stanford researcher Hongjie Dai and his team claim to have “developed an advanced zinc-air battery with higher catalytic activity and durability than similar batteries made with costly platinum and iridium catalysts.” The resulting battery, detailed in the May 7 online edition of the journal Nature Communications, could be the forerunner of something with greater endurance and lower cost than current efforts. Mark Schwartz, writing for Stanford, quotes Dai, a professor of chemistry at the University and lead author of the study: “There have been increasing demands for high-performance, inexpensive and safe batteries for portable electronics, electric vehicles and other energy storage applications. Metal-air batteries offer a possible low-cost solution.” Lithium-ion batteries, despite their limited energy density (energy stored per …
Hey, My Car Needs a Jump Start. May I Borrow Your Cell Phone?
Seriously, think of a battery in your cell phone that could jump start a car, and then be recharged “in the blink of an eye.” That’s exactly what mechanical science and engineering professor William P. King and his team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign claim to have created. The most powerful microbatteries ever documented “outpower even the best supercapacitors” and could be in cell phones and small portable devices in the next few years. “This is a whole new way to think about batteries,” King said. “A battery can deliver far more power than anybody ever thought. In recent decades, electronics have gotten small. The thinking parts of computers have gotten small. And the battery has lagged far behind. This is a microtechnology that could change all of that. Now the power source is as high-performance as the rest of it.” Until now, the need for portable power left one with a sharply-delineated choice – to …
What Do You Have on Your DVD Burner?
Richard Kaner and Maher El-Kady have “micro-scale graphene-based supercapacitors” on their front DVD burner, showing an energetic alternative to saving all those ‘80’s rockers to disc. Dr. Kaner is a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and professor of chemistry and biochemistry. He and graduate student El-Kady are using a “consumer grade” LightScribe DVD burner to make dozens of micro supercapacitors on what looks like a typical DVD. Dr. Kaner’s research lab hosts 17 undergraduate and graduate student researchers who’ve helped amass at least 390 papers in four main areas of research; conducting polymers, graphene, superhard materials and thermoelectric materials. Their recent investigation of supercapacitor fabrication seems to encompass almost all of these fields. An abstract for their recent article in Nature Communications hints at the possibilities this research may realize in the commercial world. “The rapid development of miniaturized electronic devices has increased the demand for compact on-chip energy storage. …
Thomas Alva Would Be Proud
The best batteries as now produced use expensive materials and processes to achieve high energy density. Could a century-old idea be resurrected to provide an inexpensive alternative to today’s costly electric storage devices? Science Daily reports on a recent attempt to improve on a proven technology. Stanford University’s Hongjie Dai, professor of chemistry and head of a research group, is working with the Edison battery, named for Thomas Alva Edison, and using the nickel-iron electrodes Edison favored, but with a modern twist to overcome one of its disadvantages. Stanford’s news bulletin quotes Dai. “The Edison battery is very durable, but it has a number of drawbacks. A typical battery can take hours to charge, and the rate of discharge is also very slow.” Powering electric vehicles in the early 1900s, Edison’s battery is used today in limited instances to store surplus electricity from solar panels and wind turbines where charging and discharge speeds are not a major consideration. Dai’s …
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