Reutilizing carbon dioxide to produce clean burning fuels David Go has always seen himself as something of a black sheep when it comes to his scientific research approach, and his recent work in developing clean alternative fuels from carbon dioxide is no exception. In 2015, Go and his research team at the University of Notre Dame were awarded a $50,000 grant to purse innovative electrochemical research in green energy technology through the ECS Toyota Young Investigator Fellowship. With a goal...
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Artificial photosynthesis has carved out a promising corner in renewable energy research in recent history. This novel process is solar-driven, harvesting renewable energy and storing in in chemical bonds. Breakthroughs in artificial photosynthesis could lead to the development of solar fuels that could potentially shift the energy infrastructure. However, while many technological barriers have been surpassed in the advancement of artificial photosynthesis, there are still hurdles to overcome. However, a research team from Forschungszentrum Juelich believes they may have just…
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Interest in electric and hybrid vehicles continues to grow across the globe. The world economy saw EV sales go from around 315,000 in 2014 to 536,000 in 2015, and trends so far for 2016 show that the number of vehicles sold this year is on track to far exceed numbers we’ve seen in previous years. Moving EVs forward But in order to make these cars, there needs to be an energy storage source that is not only sustainable, but cheap…
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With hydrogen power stations in California, a new Japanese consumer car and portable hydrogen fuel cells for electronics, hydrogen as a zero emission fuel source is now finally becoming a reality for the average consumer. When combined with oxygen in the presence of a catalyst, hydrogen releases energy and bonds with the oxygen to form water. The two main difficulties preventing us from having hydrogen power everything we have are storage and production. At the moment, hydrogen production is energy-intensive…
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Currently, electric vehicles depend on a complex interplay of batteries and supercapacitors to get you where you’re going. But a recently published paper, co-authored by ECS Fellow Hector Abruna, details the development of a new material that can take away some of the complexity of EVs. “Our material combines the best of both worlds — the ability to store large amounts of electrical energy or charge, like a battery, and the ability to charge and discharge rapidly, like a supercapacitor,”…
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Just over 45 years ago today, 500,000 women marched down New York City’s Fifth Avenue to celebrate the anniversary of the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment. Since that day, Aug. 26 has been annually celebrated in the U.S. as Women’s Equality Day – a celebration of a major turning point in the women’s rights movement: the right to vote. While women’s move toward equality has gained much momentum since the 1920s, there have been plenty of bumps in the…
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One of the biggest barriers between renewables and widespread grid implementation has been the issue of intermittency. How can we meet a nation’s energy demands with solar when the sun goes down? In an effort to move past these barriers toward a cleaner energy infrastructure, a new paper published in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society describes an effective, low-cost solution for storing solar energy. The research team from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne is looking to covert solar energy…
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Electric vehicles have become more visible in the automobile market over the past few years, but many potential buyers still cite one thing as a major deterrent in going electric: range anxiety. Range anxiety is a term many use to describe the fear of an EV’s battery running out of juice while driving, leaving them stranded away from a charging station. However, a new study published by a team from MIT and the Santa Fe Institute looked at data in…
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Many scientists believe we’re at the tipping point of our energy technology future. With the advancement of new, alternative energy sources, some are left to wonder what will happen to the energy landscape as a whole. While nuclear power has energized much of the world over the past 50 years, the establishment of new nuclear power plants has been nonexistent in recent times in light of other alternatives such as solar and wind. Now, with California phasing out its last…
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Thomas Zawodzinski is currently the Governor’s Chair in Electrical Energy Conversion and Storage, with appointments in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Dept. at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and at ORNL where he has continued his career trend of playing leadership roles in projects on fuel cell materials systems – including projects in the development of automotive applications, fuel cell durability, and batteries. In addition to his continuous involvement in a multitude of fuel cell programs, Zawodzinski has initiated and led…
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