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Colorful Solar Panels | Earth Wise

September 22, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

More and more buildings and public spaces are incorporating solar panels and not only just on rooftops. Some buildings are incorporating power-generating structures all over their facades.

Using solar panels in this way puts some design constraints on buildings because solar panels are typically a deep black color. This is because solar panels need to absorb light and making them any other color decreases their ability to do so and generate power. But the problem is that people don’t necessarily want a black building.

One alternative to traditional solar panel design is to use structural sources of color that include microscopic shapes that only reflect specific light frequencies, like the scales on butterfly wings. But this approach generally leads to iridescence – which might not be what is wanted – and is often quite expensive to implement.

A team of researchers at a university in Shanghai has now demonstrated a way to give solar panels color that is easy and inexpensive to apply and that does not reduce their ability to produce energy efficiently.

The technique involves spraying a thin layer of a material called a photonic glass onto the surface of solar cells. The photonic glass is made of a thin, disorderly layer of dielectric microscopic zinc sulfide spheres. Even though most light can pass through the photonic glass, certain colors are reflected back, depending on the sizes of the spheres. By varying that size, the researchers created solar panels that were blue, green, or purple with only a very small drop in solar panel efficiency.

The solar panels made this way maintained their color and performance under durability testing. With this new technology, there may soon be colorful solar panels on our buildings.

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Colorful solar panels could make the technology more attractive

Photo, posted December 15, 2021, courtesy of Pete via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Better Batteries For The Grid | Earth Wise

September 14, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

As more and more solar and wind power is added to the electric grid, the need for ways to store the energy produced increases. Using batteries for this purpose is increasingly popular, mostly driven by the improving economics of the lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles as well as consumer electronics.

There are other battery technologies besides lithium ion that are not suitable for use in automobiles and cell phones but have potential advantages for the grid. One such technology is molten sodium batteries. These batteries have high energy density, a high efficiency of charge and discharge, and a long cycle life. They are fabricated with inexpensive materials and they are especially suitable for large-scale grid energy storage because their economics improves with increasing size.

A drawback of molten sodium batteries is that they operate at 520-660 degrees Fahrenheit, which adds cost and complexity. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have designed a new class of molten sodium batteries that operates at a much cooler 230 degrees Fahrenheit instead.

The battery chemistry that works at 550 degrees doesn’t work at 230 degrees. The Sandia group developed something they call a catholyte, which is a liquid mixture of two salts, in this case sodium iodide and gallium chloride. (Gallium chloride is rather costly, so the researchers hope to replace it in a future version of the battery).

By lowering the operating temperature, there are multiple cost savings including the use of less expensive materials, the requirement for less insulation, and the use of thinner wire.

This work is the first demonstration of long-term, stable cycling of a low-temperature molten-sodium battery. The hope is to have a battery technology that requires fewer cells, fewer connections between cells, and an overall lower cost to store electricity for the grid.

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Sandia designs better batteries for grid-scale energy storage

Photo, posted March 14, 2021, courtesy of Michael Mueller via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

New York And Green Hydrogen | Earth Wise

August 23, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In July, outgoing New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced plans for the state to explore the potential role of green hydrogen as part of New York’s decarbonization strategy.

Green hydrogen is hydrogen produced using renewable energy, such as wind, solar, and hydro power. While hydrogen itself is a carbon-free fuel, most of the hydrogen produced today is made with a process called natural gas reforming which has byproducts of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. As a result, the environmental benefits of using hydrogen are largely lost. Hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe but extracting it for use as a fuel is not easy.

Green hydrogen is obtained by splitting water molecules into their constituent hydrogen and oxygen parts. In principle, oxygen is the only byproduct of the process. The main drawback of electrolysis, as this process is called, is that it is energy intensive as well as being expensive. But if that energy comes from renewable sources, then it is a clean process.

New York’s announcement is that the state will collaborate with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and join two hydrogen-focused organizations to inform state decision-making, as well as make $12.5 million in funding available for long duration energy storage techniques and demonstration projects that may include green hydrogen.

Green hydrogen has the potential to decarbonize many of the more challenging sectors of the economy. Hydrogen is a storable, transportable fuel that can replace fossil fuels in many applications. Many experts believe that the so-called hydrogen economy could be the future of the world’s energy systems. For that to happen, green hydrogen will need to be plentiful, sustainable, and inexpensive.

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New York announces initiatives to explore green hydrogen for decarbonization

Photo, posted October 26, 2019, courtesy of Pierre Blache via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Seeds And Climate Change | Earth Wise

August 19, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Farmers and agricultural communities around the world are on the frontlines of climate change. They are among the first to feel the impacts of hotter temperatures as well as more frequent and intense droughts and precipitation. These challenges pose a massive threat to both farmer livelihoods and global food security.

As the planet continues to heat up, many arid regions that already have marginal conditions for agriculture will be increasingly under stress. As a result, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the King Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Morocco are working on a promising new way to protect seeds from this stress during their crucial germination phase. Their simple and inexpensive process, which was recently described in a paper published in the journal Nature Food, also provides plants with extra nutrition at the same.

The research team has developed a two layer coating for seeds designed for tackling issues related to drought. Drawing inspiration from natural coatings that occur on some seeds like chia seeds, the first layer is designed to protect the seeds from drying out. It provides a gel-like coating that grips any moisture that comes along and surrounds the seed with it. The second (inner) layer of the coating contains preserved microorganisms called rhizobacteria, as well as some nutrients to help the seeds grow.

The materials for the coatings are biodegradable, readily-available, and often used in the food industry already. According to researchers, early tests using common beans have demonstrated encouraging results in Morocco, and more field tests of the seeds are currently underway.

As the climate continues to change, more innovations like this will be necessary for global food security.

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Engineering seeds to resist drought

Photo, posted September 17, 2010, courtesy of Stacy via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Infinitely Recyclable Plastic | Earth Wise

May 25, 2021 By EarthWise 1 Comment

The glut of plastics is one of the world’s most challenging environmental problems. The average American generates over 200 pounds of plastic waste each year and most of that ends up in landfills. Researchers around the globe continue to work on potential solutions to the plastic waste problem.

Two years ago, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced the invention of a new plastic that could be an answer to the plastic waste problem. The material is called polydiketoenamine or PDK and it differs from traditional plastics in a very important way: it can be recycled indefinitely with no loss in quality because it can easily be broken down into its constituent component monomers and be used to make brand new plastic.

Only a small percentage of plastics are currently recycled. When many plastics are melted down together, the polymers are mixed with a slew of incompatible additives, resulting in a new material with much lower quality than newly produced plastic. As a result, less than 10% of plastic is recycled more than once.

Recently, the Berkeley Lab researchers released a study that shows what could be accomplished if manufacturers began using PDKs on a large scale. They determined that PDK-based plastic could quickly become commercially competitive with conventional plastics and, furthermore, would get less expensive and more sustainable as time goes on.

PDK is starting to draw interest from companies needing to source plastic. The best initial application for PDKs are markets where manufacturers have the most access to products at the end of their lifespans such as in the automobile industry and consumer electronics. Making plastics part of a circular economy is a challenging task.

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The Future Looks Bright for Infinitely Recyclable Plastic

Photo, posted April 19, 2021, courtesy of Ivan Radic via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Predicting Lightning Strikes

November 19, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Lightning is one of the most unpredictable phenomena in nature. Approximately 100 lightning bolts strike earth’s surface every second, and each lightning bolt can contain up to one billion volts of electricity. Lightning regularly kills both people and animals and sets homes and forests on fire. It’s also been known to ground airplanes.

Researchers at EPFL – a research institute and university in Switzerland – have developed a novel way to predict where and when lightning will strike. The system relies on a combination of standard data from weather stations and artificial intelligence to predict lightning strikes to the nearest 10 to 30 minutes and within a radius of less than 20 miles. The simple and inexpensive system was outlined in a research paper recently published in Climate and Atmospheric Science, a Nature partner journal.

According to researchers, the current systems for predicting lightning strikes are slow, expensive, and complex, relying on external data acquired by satellite and radar. The new inexpensive system from EPFL uses real time data that can be obtained from any weather station, meaning it can cover remote regions that are out of radar and satellite range and where communication networks are lacking. The quick predictions from the system allow alerts to be issued before a storm has even formed.

The system uses a machine-learning algorithm that’s been trained to recognize conditions that lead to lightning. The researchers took into account atmospheric pressure, air temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed, among other things. After training the algorithm, the system was able to predict lightning strikes accurately nearly 80% of the time.

This system is a simple way to predict a complex phenomenon.

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Using AI to predict where and when lightning will strike

Photo, posted December 14, 2018, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Green Way To Turn Blue

August 5, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Indigo dye is what is used to color denim cloth and blue jeans. Historically, the dye came from a tropical plant most often found on the Indian subcontinent. Eventually, it became economically favorable to synthesize the dye instead and almost all of the 50,000 tons of the dye used annually is synthetic.

The processes used to make synthetic indigo are efficient and inexpensive, but they often require toxic chemicals and create a lot of dangerous waste. Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute have now developed an eco-friendly production platform for a blue pigment called indigoidine. It has a similarly vividly saturated blue hue as synthetic indigo.

The researchers were investigating the ability of various fungal strains to express large enzymes known as NRPSs. They chose an NRPS that converts two amino acid molecules into indigoidine – a blue pigment – in order to make it easy to tell if the strain engineering had worked. Having the culture turn blue was an effective indicator.

Their primary interest was not the pigment but when they saw just how blue the culture was for one particular fungus, they realized that the fungal strain did not just produce indigoidine; it produced large amounts of it.

Thus they have found a way to efficiently produce a blue pigment that uses inexpensive, sustainable carbon sources instead of harsh chemicals. There is already a great deal of interest from the textile industry, where many companies are eager for more sustainably sourced pigments because customers are increasingly aware of the impacts of conventional dyes.

Thanks to a talented fungus called Rhodosporidium toruloides, there may now be a green way to turn blue.

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Blue Pigment from Engineered Fungi Could Help Turn the Textile Industry Green

Photo, posted March 7, 2006, courtesy of Willi Heidelbach via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Squid Skin Blanket

June 25, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Ultra-lightweight space blankets have been around for a long time. Marathon runners wrap themselves in them to avoid losing body heat after a race. They are very effective, but the amount of heat that they trap is fixed. There is no way to regulate how much heat is trapped or released using a space blanket.

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine have developed a next-generation, adaptive space blanket that allows users to control their temperature. The inspiration for the design was the skins of various species of squids, octopi and cuttlefish. The ability of these aquatic creatures to camouflage themselves by rapidly changing color is due, in part, to skin cells called chromatophores that can instantly change from tiny points to flattened disks.

The Irvine researchers have developed a material that contains a layer of tiny metal islands that border each other. In the relaxed state, the islands are bunched together, and the material reflects and traps heat, much like a conventional Mylar space blanket. But when the material is stretched, the islands spread apart, which allows infrared radiation to go through and heat to escape.

The researchers envision many other applications for the novel material, including adaptable insulation for buildings and tents that can be adapted to different weather conditions. There is even the possibility of clothing that can be adjusted to suit the comfort of each person.

The new material is lightweight, easy and inexpensive to manufacture, and is durable. It can be stretched and returned to its original state thousands of times. Some day we might all be wrapping ourselves in imitation squid skins.

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Squid skin inspires creation of next-generation space blanket

Photo, posted May 29, 2005, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Using The Sun To Remove Ice

October 3, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Ice buildup can cause all sorts of problems ranging from performance issues to catastrophic failures. For example, ice buildup can negatively impact things like airplanes, power lines, wind turbines, and the like. Preventing this ice buildup typically requires energy-intensive heating systems or environmentally-harmful chemical sprays.

DNA Analysis of River Water

April 17, 2017 By EarthWise

DNA analysis has become commonplace and inexpensive. Millions of people have their DNA tested to learn about their origins and family connections. And the technology has spread to biological research in the form of Environmental DNA or eDNA, which is such a powerful tool that it is transforming the field of wildlife biology.