Monthly Archives: March 2009
A new process, developed by Siemens, for scrubbing carbon dioxide from power-plant exhaust gases could make carbon capture a more affordable option for the energy industry. The process, which is to be tested in Germany in August, promises to remove up to 90 percent of carbon dioxide from flue gases while using far less energy than other methods. Existing carbon-capture methods reduce a plant’s efficiency by about 11 percent. The new process could reduce this efficiency loss to 9.2 percent. Tobias Jockenhoevel, head of the project at Siemens, says that "in a power plant, that’s a huge benefit". In theory, … Continue Reading
Donald Sadoway, a professor at MIT, has developed a prototype of a novel battery that he says could potentially store enough energy for a city the size of New York. The electrodes in the unique battery are molten metals and the electrolyte, that conducts current between them, is a molten salt. The result is a battery that can quickly absorb large amounts of electricity with electrodes that can operate at electrical currents "tens of times higher than any [battery] that’s ever been measured," according to Professor Sadoway. What’s more, the materials are cheap, the design allows for simple manufacturing and … Continue Reading
Californian company, eSolar, has licensed its solar power technology for the construction of up to 1 gigawatt of solar farms in India. The development by the ACME Group will be India’s first large-scale solar development and the largest overseas sale by an American solar company. Last week, eSolar contracted to licence its technology to the US energy utility NRG for the development of 500 megawatts of solar power plants in California. Last month, one of eSolar’s rival solar thermal companies, Brightsource, signed the world’s biggest solar energy contract with Southern California Edison for the supply of 1,300 megawatts. eSolar claims … Continue Reading
Researchers Peter H. Gleick and Heather Cooley at the Pacific Institute in California have published research which shows that bottled water requires as much as 2,000 times more energy to produce than tap water. Gleick and Cooley calculated the energy requirements for various stages in bottled water production, including manufacturing the plastic bottles, processing the water and the bottles, and transporting and cooling the final product. Combining the energy for these stages, the analysis finds that producing bottled water requires between 5.6 and 10.2 megajoules of energy per litre of water – up to 2,000 times the energy cost of … Continue Reading
Videos
Renewables News- Dysol Aiming to Print Storage with Solar CellsAustralia's Dyesol Limited has acquired an equity stake in Printed Power Pte Ltd, a spinoff company of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Printed Power is focussing on integrating dye solar cell technology with printed storage and power management systems to … Continue Reading → […]
- CSIRO Printer Makes 10m of Solar Cells a MinuteCSIRO researchers have built a gigantic printer that spits out solar cells at a rate of about ten metres a minute. The printer system uses existing technology to embed polymer solar cells (also known as organic solar cells) in thin … Continue Reading → […]
- 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 → […]
- Dysol Aiming to Print Storage with Solar Cells
