By: Jeffrey Gardner, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

When people hear about prospecting, they might imagine old forty-niners (miners) with pickaxes hunting for gold, or maybe an agent for the San Francisco 49ers (football team) scouting for new talent. In my lab we do another version, called bio-prospecting – searching for useful substances from natural sources. Bio-prospecting has produced many valuable products, including anti-cancer drugs derived from plants and extremely strong silks spun by tropical spiders.

Our work focuses on enzymes, which are proteins that speed up chemical reactions. We are looking for new and powerful enzymes that can break apart polysaccharides – common molecules that consist of long chains of sugars. Polysaccharides are extremely abundant in the fruits and vegetables that we eat, the cotton clothes we wear and the lumber we use to build houses.

Enzymes that can break down polysaccharides have many uses – for example, in detergents that dissolve stains on clothes. Similar types of enzymes can also be used to release sugars found in plants, which can then be used for manufacturing biodegradeable plastic.

In my lab, we are searching for new enzymes that could improve biotechnology for making renewable fuels and chemicals.

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Scientists studying climate change have long debated exactly how much hotter Earth will become given certain amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. Models predicting this “climate sensitivity” number may be closer to the observed reality than some previously thought, according to a new study.

Observations in the past decade seemed to suggest a value lower than predicted by models. But the new study shows that two leading methods for calculating how hot the planet will get are not as far apart as they have appeared.

In climate science, the climate sensitivity is how much the surface air temperature will increase if you double carbon dioxide from pre-Industrial levels and then wait a very long time for the Earth’s temperature to fully adjust. Recent observations predicted that the climate sensitivity might be less than that suggested by models.

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When a battery is used, electrically charged ions travel between electrodes, causing those electrodes to shrink and swell. For some time, researchers have wondered why the electrode materials – which are fairly brittle – don’t crack in the expansion and contraction styles.

Now, a team of researchers from MIT, led by ECS member Yet-Ming Chiang, may have found the answer to this mystery.

This from MIT:

While the electrode materials are normally crystalline, with all their atoms neatly arranged in a regular, repetitive array, when they undergo the charging or discharging process, they are transformed into a disordered, glass-like phase that can accommodate the strain of the dimensional changes.

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A newly created material may have the capacity to double the efficiency of solar cells.

Conventional solar cells are at most one-third efficient, a limit known to scientists as the Shockley-Queisser Limit. The new material, a crystalline structure that contains both inorganic materials (iodine and lead) and an organic material (methyl-ammonium), boosts the efficiency so that it can carry two-thirds of the energy from light without losing as much energy to heat.

In less technical terms, this material could double the amount of electricity produced without a significant cost increase, according to the new study in Science.

Enough solar energy reaches the earth to supply all of the planet’s energy needs multiple times over, but capturing that energy has been difficult—as of 2013, only about 1 percent of the world’s grid electricity was produced from solar panels.

The new material, called a hybrid perovskite, would create solar cells thinner than conventional silicon solar cells, and is also flexible, cheap, and easy to make, says Libai Huang, assistant professor of chemistry at Purdue University.

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A new mathematical model may help researchers design new materials for use in high-power batteries. According to the research team, the model could benefit chemists and materials scientists who typically rely on a trial and error method when developing new materials for batteries and capacitors.

“The potential here is that you could build batteries that last much longer and make them much smaller,” says Daniel Tartakovsky, co-author of the study. “If you could engineer a material with a far superior storage capacity than what we have today, then you could dramatically improve the performance of batteries.”

Demand for affordable, efficient energy storage continues to increase as more entities transition toward renewable energy. While there are many researchers working in the area of energy storage, the team behind this development is looking at the field in a new light.

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A team of scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory is using the precision of an electron beam to instantly adhere cathode coatings for lithium-ion batteries. This new development, as reported in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society, could lead to a leap in efficiency that saves energy, reduces production cost, and eliminates the use of toxic solvents.

This from ORNL:

The technique uses an electron beam to cure coating material as it rolls down the production line, creating instantaneous cross-links between molecules that bind the coating to a foil substrate, without the need for solvents, in less than a second.

Read the full article.

“Typical curing processes can require drying machinery the length of a football field and expensive equipment for solvent recovery,” says David Wood, co-author of the study. “This approach presents a promising avenue for fast, energy-efficient manufacturing of high-performance, low-cost lithium-ion batteries.”

Read the full paper, “Electron Beam Curing of Composite Positive Electrode for Li-Ion Battery.”

Joint research from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and the Council for Scientific Research reports the development of a new ceramic electrode for lithium-ion batteries that can lead to cheaper, more efficient, and safer conventional batteries.

“What we have patented are new ceramic electrodes that are much safer and can work in a wider temperature interval,” says Alejandro Varez, co-author of the research.

To achieve this result, the researchers made ceramic sheets by way of thermoplastic extrusion molds.

“This technique allows making electrodes that are flat or tube-shaped, and these electrodes can be applied to any type of lithium-ion battery,” Varez says.

According to the researchers, the cost of production is low and it could easily be adapted into current lithium-ion battery production, making this an easy technology to move quickly to industrialization.

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Image: Kathy F. Atkinson, University of Delaware

Fuel cells are an important technology for the nation’s energy portfolio, offering a cleaner, more efficient alternative to combustion engines that utilize fossil fuels.

However, a team of researchers from the University of Delaware point out that a major challenge in the commercialization of fuel cells is the durability of the membrane, which tends to develop cracks that short is life during operation.

A new article published in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society, “Self-Healing Composite Membrane for Proton Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell Applications,” aims to address the fuel cell membrane issue by developing a self-healing membrane, incorporating microcapsules prefilled with a Nafion solution.

“The microcapsules are designed to rupture when they encounter defects in the membrane and then release the prefilled Nafion solution to heal the defects in place,” says Liang Wang, past ECS member and co-author of the study.

Testing showed that the newly developed membrane and its self-healing functionality could greatly extend its useful life.

By: Joshua D. Rhodes, University of Texas at Austin

The electric grid is an amazing integrated system of machines spanning an entire continent. The National Academy of Engineering has called it one of the greatest engineering achievements of the 20th century.

But it is also expensive. By my analysis, the current (depreciated) value of the U.S. electric grid, comprising power plants, wires, transformers and poles, is roughly US$1.5 to $2 trillion. To replace it would cost almost $5 trillion.

That means the U.S. electric infrastructure, which already contains trillions of dollars of sunk capital, will soon need significant ongoing investment just to keep things the way they are. A power plant built during the rapid expansion of the power sector in the decades after World War II is now 40 years old or older, long paid off, and likely needs to be replaced. In fact, the American Society of Civil Engineers just gave the entire energy infrastructure a barely passing grade of D+.

The current administration has vowed to invest heavily in infrastructure, which raises a number of questions with regard to the electric system: What should the energy grid of the future look like? How do we achieve a low-carbon energy supply? What will it cost?

Infrastructure seems to be an issue that can gather support from both sides of the aisle. But to make good decisions on spending, we need first to understand the value of the existing grid.

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Every year on March 22, people around the globe celebrate World Water Day to advocate for improved access to clean water internationally. To date, there are over 663 million people living without a safe water supply close to home, leading to families spending countless hours retrieving water from distant sources or coping with the health impacts of using contaminated water.

This year, the theme of World Water Day is “Wastewater.” According to the World Health Organization, over 80 percent of wastewater flows back into nature, polluting the environment and wasting what could be a recycled resource. By exploring wastewater and finding ways to safely manage and recycle it, a sustainable source of water, energy, and nutrients could be recovered.

Critical gaps in water and sanitation

For ECS members, wastewater treatment and efforts to improve access to clean water in the developing world is familiar territory.

In 2014, ECS partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to establish the first Science for Solving Society’s Problems challenge, leveraging the brainpower of scientists from around the world to create innovative solutions to some of the most pressing problems in global water and sanitation.

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