The old lead-acid battery in your car may not be as useless or environmentally dangerous as was once thought. In fact, these batteries may be the answer to creating a cheap source of green energy. According to engineers at MIT, old lead-acid batteries can be recycled and easily converted into long-lasting, low-cost solar panels. So far, the solar cells in the panels have yielded promising results – achieving over 19 percent efficiency in converting sunlight to useable electricity.

Power through perspiration. That is the idea behind the new temporary tattoo that can store and generate electrical energy from your own sweat. This new method was announced at the American Chemical Society meeting by Dr. Wenzhao Jia of the University of California, San Diego. According to Jia’s explanation of the device in the journal Angewante Chemie, the temporary tattoo essentially acts as a sensor that measures the body’s lactate levels, which are the chemicals naturally present in sweat. From…
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Since its foundation in 1902, ECS and its members have been at the forefront of the challenge to bridge the gap between electrical engineering and chemistry. The years that followed the Society’s establishment have been filled with innovation, ingenuity, and excellence throughout the field of electrochemistry. Take a look back at some of ECS’s most prestigious members and their accomplishments. Samuel Ruben In 1918, Samuel Ruben, an 18-year old high school graduate, was hired by the Electrochemical Products Company in…
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The 2nd Annual “Multi-Scale Renewable Energy Storage – MRES 2014″Conference Northeastern University in Boston, August 19-21, 2014 The meeting will focus on the science, technology, policy and entrepreneurial challenges for enabling new novel energy storage solutions for the future sustainable green energy initiatives. Conference highlights: • Aqueous and non-aqueous flow batteries • Next generation battery technologies and materials challenges • Graphene, sodium and other new energy storage technologies • Fuel cells and hydrogen storage development and infrastructure • Safety, reliability…
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This is from the Summer 2014 edition of Interface which should have just arrived in your real-world mailbox. It’s Petr Vanysek’s “From the Editor” piece. I think that I will need to change what I do. No, I am not thinking of quitting electrochemistry and opening a kennel for German shepherds. I like chemistry and I do not see eliminating it from my life, but the college freshmen students would probably prefer to see it, at least in the name,…
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Annie Goedkoop, Director of Publications for ECS ran across this story in Phys.org. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering have created a lithium ion battery that outperforms the current industry standard by three times. The key material: sand. Yes, sand. “This is the holy grail – a low cost, non-toxic, environmentally friendly way to produce high performance lithium ion battery anodes,” said Zachary Favors, a graduate student working with Cengiz and Mihri Ozkan, both engineering…
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