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.

High-end, high-class, and high-cost are all words synonymous with the word Bentley. The luxury car CEO Adrian Hallmark says he plans to keep it that way, and for that reason, he’s giving the inclusion of electric vehicles to the Bentley family the red light—for now. Hallmark says battery technology has not evolved to the point where it would be possible to develop an ultraluxury electric vehicles, according to Tires and Parts.

In 1888, German inventor Andreas Flocken created what is widely considered the world’s first electric car. According to The Battery Issue, recently published by The Verge, the 900-pound vehicle drove at the top speed of nine miles per hour, coming to a halt after a two and a half hour test ride. Although it was considered a success, it wasn’t entirely. The car’s battery, sustainably charged with water power, had died. Today, nearly 130 years, German carmakers are still having…
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By: Richard Gunderman, Indiana University Match the following figures – Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Guglielmo Marconi, Alfred Nobel and Nikola Tesla – with these biographical facts: 1. Spoke eight languages 2. Produced the first motor that ran on AC current 3. Developed the underlying technology for wireless communication over long distances 4. Held approximately 300 patents 5. Claimed to have developed a “superweapon” that would end all war The match for each, of course, is Tesla. Surprised? Most people have…
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Don’t discount the honorable mention! Each year, the ECS San Francisco Section recognizes a deserving undergraduate student from a college or university in Northern California though the San Francisco Section Daniel Cubicciotti Student Award. The award was established in 1994 to assist a deserving student to pursue a career in the physical sciences or engineering. The award was created to honor Daniel Cubicciotti, a distinguished researcher in his own right. Recipients receive an etched metal plaque and $2,000 prize. In…
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ECS members M. Stanley Whittingham and Yury Gogotsi will be panelists at the upcoming “Electrical Energy Storage Technologies That Enable the Future” symposium, hosted by the Chemical Heritage Foundation. The event will take place on January 11, 2018 in Philadelphia, PA. Read the full program below. Moderator Daryl Boudreaux, Principal, Boudreaux & Associates Panelists M. Stanley Whittingham, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science and Engineering, SUNY Binghamton Yury Gogotsi, Distinguished University Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Drexel University

The following is a roundup of the top articles published on the ECS Redcat Blog in 2017. 1. Impact factors on the rise The journal impact factors for the Journal of The Electrochemical Society and ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology both rose by 8 percent this year. In July, Andrew Ryan, publication specialist at ECS, reported on the growth and what it means for ECS publications. As a nonprofit society in constant competition with larger publishers with…
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Our guest on this episode of the ECS Podcast is Shirley Meng, professor of NanoEngineering at the University of California, San Diego. Meng founded the Sustainable Power and Energy Center, the goal of which is solving key technical challenges in distributed energy generation, storage, and power management. Meng is also the principal investigator of Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion research group. Her group is focused on functional nano and micro-scale materials for energy storage and conversion. She talked to…
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Our guest today, James Fenton, is the director of the Florida Solar Energy Center at the University of Central Florida – the nation’s largest and most active state-supported renewable energy and energy efficiency institute. Fenton is also the current secretary of the ECS Board of Directors. Listen to the podcast and download this episode and others for free through the iTunes Store, SoundCloud, or our RSS Feed. You can also find us on Stitcher.

Researchers have found a new method for finding lithium, used in the lithium-ion batteries that power modern electronics, in supervolcanic lake deposits. While most of the lithium used to make batteries comes from Australia and Chile, but scientists say there are large deposits in sources right here in America: supervolcanoes. In a recently published study, scientists detail a new method for locating lithium in supervolcanic lake deposits. The findings represent an important step toward diversifying the supply of this valuable…
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