storage – OfdmFORUM

Scorching rocks could be the following massive power storage know-how

June 28, 2023 Audrey

Granite and soapstone most likely conjure up an picture of kitchen area countertops for most people today. These rocks, among the most abundant in the globe, have develop into popular constructing products. But the similar qualities that make them great kitchen area workhorses—strength, toughness and resistance to warmth and chemicals—could also make them perfect for storing electrical power.

Researchers have uncovered that granite and soapstone could be very well-suited to retail store the sun’s heat, which could then be used to deliver electrical energy or to dry foodstuff. Soapstone from Tanzania is significantly great, packing a whole lot of warmth electricity by body weight and keeping stable at substantial temperature, the group experiences in the journal ACS Omega. “Using rocks as a storage medium features the opportunity of affordability thanks to the abundance and minimal charge,” they write.

Storing electrical power for very long durations of time will be critical as intermittent wind and solar ability generation increases globally. Batteries are today’s go-to storage technology, but they are high-priced. Other experimental storage methods currently being analyzed or set into use right now can be difficult to function.

Thermal electrical power storage, in which electricity is stored as heat in supplies this sort of as drinking water, oils, or molten salts, delivers a promising alternate. The warmth can be collected specifically from the solar by concentrating daylight, or by changing added wind or photo voltaic power employing heat pumps. When desired, the warmth is unveiled to drive a generator that produces electricity or employed instantly for industrial uses.

Working with organic rocks to keep heat could be more cost-effective than working with molten salts and oils. Some demonstration initiatives this kind of as GridScale in Denmark, and a larger gigascale program in Israel, are already underway. They store power in tanks total of crushed stone.

But the homes of rocks can change based on the place in the planet they ended up formed. Some rocks can be substantially much better at storing heat than many others. The staff led by Thomas Kivevele from Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology set out to investigate the attributes of soapstone and granite discovered in Tanzania, where by the Craton and Usagaran geological belts satisfy.

Granites are the most ample rocks in the continental crust. Soapstone, in the meantime, has been applied because ancient times to make cooking pots and the inside linings of stoves, but no 1 has analyzed its likely for thermal power storage.

The researchers gathered numerous rock samples from the Craton and Usagaran belts for examination. They identified a significant volume of silicon oxides in the granite, which extra power. Craton granite, on the other hand, contained compounds that manufactured the rock unstable at superior temperatures. Soapstone had the mineral magnesite, which imparted large energy density and heat-holding capacity.

Tests showed that the two soapstone samples and the Usagaran granite experienced no obvious cracks at temperatures around 980°C, but the Craton granite crumbled. The soapstone was far better

Vertically aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes for electrical power storage and the electronics marketplace

December 25, 2022 Audrey

Charging up with carbon nanotubes — Photograph and schematic representation (inset) of a scaled-up sample of vertically-aligned solitary-walled carbon nanotubes (VA-SWCNTs) developed on Inconel steel foil. Side shots show 50 percent-cells centered on VA-SWCNT anodes illuminating red, yellow and green LEDs. Credit: Lawrence Livermore Countrywide Laboratory

Lawrence Livermore Countrywide Laboratory (LLNL) scientists have designed vertically aligned one-walled carbon nanotubes on steel foils that could be a boon for electricity storage and the electronics industry.

Vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (VACNTs) have outstanding mechanical, electrical and transport houses in addition to an aligned architecture, which is important for programs these types of as membrane separation, thermal management, fiber spinning, electronic interconnects and strength storage.

To day, popular integration of VACNTs into following-technology technologies is thwarted by a absence of suitable, economic, mass-manufacturing capabilities. Superior-high-quality VACNTs are ordinarily manufactured on substrates this kind of as silicon (Si) or quartz wafers that are rigid, high-priced and electrically insulating.

Soon after checking out steel foil selections in scientific literature, the LLNL staff turned to Inconel metallic substrates allowing them to combine VACNTs into flexible equipment, get rid of a transfer stage from Si to other substrates and minimize electrical or thermal transport resistances at the interface in between CNTs and the substrate, which is important for electronic and strength storage apps. Inconel is a spouse and children of nickel-chromium-primarily based superalloys that are oxidation-corrosion-resistant supplies effectively-suited for support in extreme environments subjected to tension and heat.

“Transitioning expansion of superior-top quality CNTs from common Si substrates to steel foils opens the door to additional economical, significant-scale, semicontinuous and roll-to-roll manufacturing of multifunctional CNT composites, nanoporous membranes and electrochemical gadgets,” reported LLNL scientist Francesco Fornasiero, co-writer of a paper showing in the journal ACS Utilized Materials & Interfaces.

Synthesis of significant-quality one-walled CNTs (SWCNTs) on metallic foils would be specially important for electrical power-storage equipment, this kind of as lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). When graphitic supplies are common LIB anodes, their ability falls small of swiftly evolving electricity-storage demands.

“The large area area and outstanding digital conductivity of CNTs make them key candidates for high-potential, significant-charge electrochemical programs,” explained LLNL scientist Kathleen Moyer-Vanderburgh, direct author of the paper. “In unique, VA-SWCNTs grown on steel foils could supply a binder-free platform with powerful adhesion between the SWCNT and present-day collector, increased conductivity and aligned channels for rapid Li-ion diffusion.”

The LLNL team grew forests of vertically aligned SWCNT on Inconel steel for use as a LIB anode. Team associates found nearly invariant structural houses of the CNT forests above a extensive variety of synthesis disorders and for multiple metal substrates. Fabricated VA-SWCNT LIB anode shown steady biking for hundreds of cycles and large capability even at high biking premiums.

“Our results suggest that these SWCNTs on Inconel steel are promising components for superior-overall performance electrochemical devices,” stated LLNL scientist Jianchao Ye.

Extra facts:
Kathleen Moyer-Vanderburgh et al, Expansion and Performance of Significant-Excellent SWCNT Forests on Inconel Foils as Lithium-Ion Battery Anodes, ACS Applied Products & Interfaces (2022). DOI: 10.1021/acsami.2c18396

Delivered by
Lawrence Livermore

Enel CEO skeptical of carbon seize and storage technological innovation

November 29, 2021 Audrey

The CEO of multinational Italian strength company Enel has expressed question on the usefulness of carbon capture and storage, suggesting the technology is not a climate solution.

“We have tried and experimented with — and when I say ‘we’, I imply the electric power industry,” Francesco Starace explained to CNBC’s Karen Tso on Wednesday.

“You can think about, we tried out challenging in the previous 10 several years — it’s possible far more, 15 many years — simply because if we had a trustworthy and economically attention-grabbing resolution, why would we go and shut down all these coal vegetation [when] we could decarbonize the method?”

The European Fee, the EU’s govt arm, has described carbon capture and storage as a suite of technologies concentrated on “capturing, transporting, and storing CO2 emitted from ability plants and industrial facilities.”

The idea is to stop CO2 “achieving the atmosphere, by storing it in appropriate underground geological formations.”

The Fee has reported the utilization of carbon seize and storage is “important” when it arrives to encouraging lessen greenhouse gasoline emissions. This see is primarily based on the competition that a considerable proportion of equally business and electric power era will nevertheless be reliant on fossil fuels in the decades ahead.

Examine far more about clean up electrical power from CNBC Pro

Enel’s Starace, however, seemed skeptical about carbon capture’s probable.

“The fact is, it won’t do the job, it has not labored for us so much,” he reported. “And there is a rule of thumb here: If a know-how will not definitely pick up in five decades — and here we’re talking about more than 5, we are talking about 15, at minimum — you better drop it.”

There are other local weather solutions, Starace claimed. “Fundamentally, halt emitting carbon,” he said.

“I’m not expressing it is not value seeking yet again but we are not likely to do it. It’s possible other industries can consider more challenging and realize success. For us, it is not a solution.”

Carbon capture technological innovation is normally held up as a supply of hope in minimizing worldwide greenhouse fuel emissions, showcasing prominently in countries’ climate strategies as well as the web-zero approaches of some of the world’s biggest oil and fuel businesses.

Proponents of these technologies believe they can engage in an critical and varied part in conference international energy and weather ambitions.

Local climate researchers, campaigners and environmental advocacy teams, however, have extensive argued that carbon seize and storage technologies extend the world’s fossil gas dependency and distract from a a lot-essential pivot to renewable alternatives.

Options to raise shareholder dividends

Starace was talking following Enel published a strategic approach for 2022-24 and laid out its aims for the decades ahead. Among other issues, Enel will make direct investments of 170 billion euros ($190.7 billion) by 2030.

Immediate investments in renewable energy assets that Enel will own are set to strike 70 billion euros. Consolidated mounted renewable capacity, or potential that is immediately owned by Enel,

5D data storage technology offers 10,000 times the density of Blu-ray

November 3, 2021 Audrey

By deploying cutting-edge lasers and a little problem-solving, scientists at the University of Southampton have achieved a data storage breakthrough that offers both incredible density and long-term archiving capabilities. The technology is said to be capable of storing 500 terabytes on a single CD-sized disc, with the creators imagining it finding use in preserving everything from information for museums and libraries to data on a person’s DNA.

The technology is what is known as five-dimensional (5)D optical storage and it is one the University of Southampton team has been pursuing for a while. It was first demonstrated back in 2013, with the scientists successfully using the format to record and retrieve a 300-kb text file, though they harbored much loftier ambitions than that.

The data is written using a femtosecond laser, which emits incredibly short but powerful pulses of light, forging tiny structures in glass that are measured on the nanoscale. These structures contain information on the intensity and polarization of the laser beam, in addition to their three spatial dimensions, which is why the scientists refer to it as 5D data storage.

In 2015, the team demonstrated their progress by using the technology to save digital copies of major documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the King James Bible and the Magna Carta. As opposed to typical hard-drive memory that is vulnerable to high temperatures, moisture, magnetic fields and mechanical failure, this “eternal” 5D data storage promised incredible thermal stability and a virtually unlimited lifetime at room temperature.

One thing the scientists have been working to address, however, is the ability to write data at fast enough speeds and at high enough densities for real-world applications. They now claim to have achieved this by using an optical phenomenon called near-field enhancement, which enables them to create the nanostructures with a few weak light pulses rather than writing with the femtosecond laser directly. This allows data to be written at 1,000,000 voxels per second, which equates to 230 kb of data, or more than 100 pages of text, per second.

“This new approach improves the data writing speed to a practical level, so we can write tens of gigabytes of data in a reasonable time,” says Yuhao Lei from the University of Southampton in the UK. “The highly localized, precision nanostructures enable a higher data capacity because more voxels can be written in a unit volume. In addition, using pulsed light reduces the energy needed for writing.”

University of Southampton scientists have used their cutting-edge 5D data storage tech to save around 5 GB of information onto a one-inch silica glass sample

The team demonstrated this technique by writing 5 GB of text data onto a silica glass disc around the size of a CD with almost 100 percent readout accuracy, though the researchers say such a disc would be capable of holding 500 TB of data, making it 10,000 times denser than a Blu-ray disc. The researchers