Lifeboat Foundation

Our cooling systems are heating the Earth as they consume fossil-fueled energy and release greenhouse gases. Air Conditioning use is expected to increase from about 3.6 billion units to 15 billion by 2050. So, how do we exit this cold room trap? What if I told you we could tap into space for electricity free air conditioning and other refrigeration tech?

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Continue reading “Space Powered Cooling May Be the Future of Energy” »

Some improvements of the new model include a significantly improved range, fuel offload capacity, operational and combat-proven advanced camera and vision system, and upgraded communications system. The tanker will have 271,700 pounds (123,241 kg) of fuel capacity – 12,000 kg more than the Airbus A330 MRTT and an almost 20-hour endurance.

“Lockheed Martin has a long and successful track record of producing aircraft for the US Air Force, and we understand the critical role tankers play in ensuring America’s total mission success,” said Greg Ulmer, executive vice president Lockheed Martin Aeronautics. “The LMXT combines proven performance and operator-specific capabilities to meet the Air Force’s refueling requirements in support of America’s National Defense Strategy.”

In addition to better range and increased payload, the LMXT tanker is equipped with a proven fly-by-wire boom currently certified and used by allies to refuel US Air Force receiver aircraft in operations around the world, the world’s first fully automatic boom/air-to-air refueling (A3R) system, and open system architecture JADC2 (Joint All-Domain Command and Control) systems.

A new study finds that hydrogen fuel produced from water using renewable energy will be cheaper than natural gas-based hydrogen with carbon capture by 2030.

New research predicts that green hydrogen — a clean fuel produced from water using renewables — will be comparable in cost and likely cheaper than blue hydrogen by 2030. This is much sooner than what the blue hydrogen industry is estimating when advocating for the natural gas-based fuel to be widely adopted — essentially eliminating the only viable argument to invest in blue hydrogen.

Continue reading “Green Hydrogen’s Rapidly Falling Costs Undermine the Gas Industry’s Argument for Blue Hydrogen” »

Michigan will become the first state in America to deploy inductive vehicle charging technology in roads, in an effort to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs).

Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, made the announcement during the opening ceremony of the Motor Bella auto show on Tuesday. The Inductive Vehicle Charging Pilot is a partnership between Michigan’s Department of Transportation (MDOT) and the Office of Future Mobility and Electrification (OFME). It will deploy an electrified roadway system allowing electric cars, buses, shuttles and other vehicles to charge while driving, allowing them to operate continuously without stopping to charge. This will address range anxiety, while turning public roads into safe, sustainable, shared energy platforms.

“Michigan was home to the first mile of paved road, and now we’re paving the way for the roads of tomorrow with innovative infrastructure that will support the economy and the environment, helping us achieve our goal of carbon neutrality by 2050,” said Governor Whitmer. “This project reinforces my commitment to accelerating the deployment of electric vehicle infrastructure in Michigan and will create new opportunities for businesses and high-tech jobs amidst the transition to electric vehicles.”

The study had been supported by LG Energy Solution’s open innovation, a program that actively supports battery-related research. LGES has been working with researchers around the world to foster related techniques.

Silicon anodes are famous for their energy density, which is 10 times greater than the graphite anodes most often used in today’s commercial lithium ion batteries. On the other hand, silicon anodes are infamous for how they expand and contract as the battery charges and discharges, and for how they degrade with liquid electrolytes. These challenges have kept all-silicon anodes out of commercial lithium ion batteries despite the tantalizing energy density. The new work published in Science provides a promising path forward for all-silicon-anodes, thanks to the right electrolyte.

Continue reading “New Solid-State Battery Surprises Researchers Who Created It” »

The newly developed battery-free system runs on harvested energy and can help massively reduce the growing e-waste problem.

LG Energy Solutions, a partner in the research, has plans for mass production of solid-state batteries by 2027.

While the transition to renewable energies is a high priority, there is also a need to develop energy storage equipment to tide over low production cycles. Lithium-ion batteries are currently our best bet but can’t serve very high energy requirements. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, in collaboration with LG Energy Solutions, may have solved our requirement of energy-dense batteries by developing a solid-state battery with a silicon anode.

Lithium-ion batteries use graphite coated in copper foil, as their anodes or negative electrode. While this system does work well, future applications such as electric-powered flight and energy storage for grids require batteries with high energy densities. Scientists around the globe are working to resolve this issue and ubiquitous silicon is a potential answer.

Continue reading “New Research Could Usher in a New Age of Solid-State Batteries” »

A surprise result for solid state physicists hints at an unusual electron behavior.

While studying the behavior of electrons in iron-based superconducting materials, researchers at the University of Tokyo observed a strange signal relating to the way electrons are arranged. The signal implies a new arrangement of electrons the researchers call a nematicity wave, and they hope to collaborate with theoretical physicists to better understand it. The nematicity wave could help researchers understand the way electrons interact with each other in superconductors.

A long-standing dream of solid state physicists is to fully understand the phenomenon of superconductivity — essentially electronic conduction without the resistance that creates heat and drains power. It would usher in a whole new world of incredibly efficient or powerful devices and is already being used on Japan’s experimental magnetic levitation bullet train. But there is much to explore in this complex topic, and it often surprises researchers with unexpected results and observations.

Working with electric utilities is one of the more time consuming parts of building new charging stations, as quite a lot of infrastructure work and planning goes into building an EV station, as the local grid has to be taken into account in such projects.

But what if electric utilities weren’t involved at all, and a station could just be delivered on a flatbed truck with a forklift?

That’s the promise of a fast-charging station dubbed Drive Booster, developed by E.ON and Volkswagen that was just opened for use in Essen, Germany. The concept behind it is quite simple: Instead of drawing power directly from the grid, the charger has its own integrated battery, and draws power from a normal power connection found in any supermarket, like a soda machine or other large appliance. The charger can juice up two EVs at once at speeds of up to 150 kW, giving them enough range in 15 minutes to travel 124 miles.