Nanotechnology
Scientists from Australia's Deakin University, together with French colleagues, say that they have manufactured a lightweight and reusable material that can absorb up to 33 times its weight in a wide range of spilt oils, chemical solvents and dyes, while repelling water. Deakin University's Dr Wei Wei Lei said that "The effective removal of oils, organic solvents and dyes from water is of significant, global importance for environmental and water source protection.” The absorbant material consists of sheets of boron nitride, also called "white graphene". The sheets are highly porous, have a high surface area and float on water. When the … Continue Reading
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras have developed a simple point-of-use water filtration technology,using nanomaterials to filter and clean the water, which they say is effective for producing drinking water at a cost of just $US2.50 per year per family. The device uses a two-stage process to purify the water. In the first stage, it removes biological contaminants, such as bacteria and viruses. In the next stage, silver nanoparticles are used to remove chemical and heavy metal pollutants. The biggest challenge for the research team was to develop a system that could release silver ions continuously as … Continue Reading
Georgia Institute of Technology and Purdue University researchers have developed efficient solar cells on cellulose nanocrystal substrates. The cellulose substrates and made from plants and can be easily recycled at the end of their life. To date, organic solar cells have usually been fabricated on glass or plastic. Neither of these is easy to recycle if, for example, they are broken during manufacture or installation. Cells on plastic have the further disadvantage of being petroleum-based. Paper substrates have been tried but have limited performance because of paper's rough surface and porosity. However, cellulose nanomaterials, being made from plants, are renewable … Continue Reading
At the American Chemical Society Conference, Dr Malcolm J Brown Jr, a leading researcher on nanocellulose since the 1970s, has reported major advances in producing nanocellulose from blue-green algae. The great strength and light weight of nanocellulose have fostered interest in using it in everything from lightweight armour and ballistic glass to wound dressings and scaffolds for growing replacement organs for transplantation. Cellulose is the most abundant organic polymer on earth but most of it is in the form of wood fibre and plant cell walls. Very few organisms produce cellulose in its nanostructure form. Nanocellulose research has a long … Continue Reading
Researchers, led by Professor Shanhui Fan, at Stanford University are developing rooftop panels that cool buildings by sending heat into space. The panel’s materials are engineered to emit thermal radiation in a very specific wavelength that is not absorbed by the atmosphere and, so, passes through it into space. The researchers estimate that, in theory, such a device could achieve a net cooling of 100 watts per square metre. The panels would have two components, both using layers of nanostructured photonic crystals. One layer is essentially a mirror with materials optimized to minimize the amount of solar radiation absorbed by … Continue Reading
Engineers at Lockheed Martin Corp say that they have developed a desalination process which requires just 1% of the energy needed in the best systems currently available. The process enables the engineers to produce thin graphene carbon membranes with regular holes about a nanometer in diameter. These holes are large enough to allow water to pass through but small enough to block the molecules of salt in seawater. The sheets of graphene are just one atom in thickness. Because they are so thin, it takes much less energy to push the seawater through the filter to separate the salt from … Continue Reading
Scientists at the University of California in Santa Barbara, led by Professor Martin Moskovits, have developed an entirely new method for converting sunlight into energy that splits water into hydrogen and oygen. According to Professor Moskovits "It is the first radically new and potentially workable alternative to semiconductor-based solar conversion devices to be developed in the past 70 years or so." In conventional PV systems, sunlight hits the surface of semiconductor material, one side of which is electron-rich, while the other side is not. The photon excites the electrons, causing them to leave their postions and create positively-charged "holes." The result … Continue Reading
Engineers at the University of New South Wales have developed a light weight, nano-engineered material that can store and release hydrogen, overcoming a major hurdle to its use as an alternative fuel source. The engineers have synthesised nanoparticles of sodium borohydride and encased these inside nickel shells. The unique "core-shell" nanostructure has remarkable hydrogen storage properties, including the ability to release energy at much lower temperatures than previously observed. Borohydrides were known to be effective storage materials for hydrogen but it was believed that once the energy was released it could not be reabsorbed. However, Dr Kondo-Francois Aguey-Zinsou, lead author … Continue Reading
Dr. Paul Edmiston and students at the College of Wooster in Ohio have discovered a material which absorbs small organic molecules while repelling water. The material, which they call "Osorb", is a nano-engineered glass that can absorb hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and solvents which are either dispersed or disolved in water. The absorbed compounds can be separated from the glass with a heat or water treatment and the glass material itself can be regenerated over 100 times. As well as its potential use in oil spills, the material could be used to reclaim waste water from oil and … Continue Reading
Conventional silicon-based solar cells are unable to harness about 40% of the solar energy reaching Earth's surface because it lies in the near-infrared region of the spectrum. Now researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a new kind of all-carbon solar cell which could tap into that unused energy. The new cell is made of two exotic forms of carbon: carbon nanotubes and buckyballs. Because these are nanoscale materials, producing the cells would require relatively small amounts of highly purified carbon, and the resulting cells would be very lightweight As the material is transparent to visible light, such … Continue Reading
Videos
Renewables News- New Aussie Technology to Clean Polluted WaterScientists from Deakin University, together with French colleagues, say that they have manufactured a lightweight and reusable material that can absorb up to 33 times its weight in a wide range of spilt oils, chemical solvents and dyes, while repelling … Continue Reading → […]
- Aussie Researchers Make Efficient Solar Cells from Low-grade SiliconResearchers at the University of New South Wales have found a way to make very high efficiency solar cells out of cheap, low-grade silicon. It has been known for several decades that hydrogen atoms can be introduced into the atomic … Continue Reading → […]
- First Aussie “Hot Rocks” Power Plant Begins ProducingThe first power plant in Australia to produce electricity using an enhanced geothermal ("hot rocks") system has begun producing electricity in the far north-east of South Australia. The one-megawatt Habanero pilot plant near outback Innamincka is operated by Geodynamics. Geodynamics … Continue Reading → […]
- New Aussie Technology to Clean Polluted Water
