But the biggest benefit is driving down the cost of sustainable hydrogen. This is enabled by shrinking the semiconductor, typically the most expensive part of the device. The team’s self-healing semiconductor withstands concentrated light equivalent to 160 suns. Currently, humans produce hydrogen from the fossil fuel methane, using a great deal of fossil energy in …
What’s new? It’s their novel gas diffusion electrodes, which are transparent, porous and conductive, enabling this solar-powered technology for turning water — in its gas state from the air — into hydrogen fuel. “To realize a sustainable society, we need ways to store renewable energy as chemicals that can be used as fuels and feedstocks …
Ionocaloric cooling takes advantage of how energy, or heat, is stored or released when a material changes phase — such as changing from solid ice to liquid water. Melting a material absorbs heat from the surroundings, while solidifying it releases heat. The ionocaloric cycle causes this phase and temperature change through the flow of ions …
Scientists develop a cool new method of refrigeration Read More »
Fucoidan: Brown algae slime is not a favourite dish Algae take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use the carbon to grow. They release up to a third of the carbon they absorb back into the seawater, for example in the form of sugary excretions. Depending on the structure of these excretions, they are …
Despite the seafloor being considered the final sink for microplastics floating on the sea surface, the historical evolution of this pollution source in the sediment compartment, and particularly the sequestration and burial rate of smaller microplastics on the ocean floor, is unknown. This new study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T), shows …
Microplastics deposited on the seafloor triple in 20 years Read More »
“Large uncertainties exist for the current forest assessments internationally. By mapping the carbon stock of all individual trees, accuracy is greatly improved. Further, the way different countries make their inventories is not consistent due to different contexts, goals, and available datasets. We hope that this method will establish itself as a standard, thereby enabling better …
Using a novel catalytic approach, scientists at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory and Cornell University converted post-consumer HDPE plastic into a fully recyclable and potentially biodegradable material with the same mechanical and thermal properties of the starting single-use plastic. HDPE is ubiquitous in single-use applications because it is strong, flexible, long-lasting and inexpensive. But the ways …
Scientists enhance recyclability of post-consumer plastic Read More »
“To effectively prevent all tipping risks, the global mean temperature increase would need to be limited to no more than one degree — we are currently already at about 1.2 degrees,” Jonathan Donges, Co-Lead of the FutureLab on Earth Resilience in the Anthropocene at PIK adds. “The latest IPCC report is showing that we’re most …
Overshooting climate targets could significantly increase risk for tipping cascades Read More »
“How the waves would survive passing through the shock has remained a mystery since the waves were first discovered in the 1970s. No evidence of those waves has ever been found on the other side of the shock,” says Turc. The team has used a cutting-edge computer model, Vlasiator, developed at the University of Helsinki …
New study models the transmission of foreshock waves towards Earth Read More »
The best-performing OPVs developed by the CityU team have achieved PCE of over 19%, and the team expects to exceed 20% very soon. The discovery is promising for the commercialisation of OPVs. OPVs, a solar cell technology based on organic semiconductors, are regarded as a promising candidate for clean energy because of their low material …
