Lifeboat Foundation

Built by Natron Energy, the Edgecombe County facility is planned for 24 GWh of annual capacity, which would turn Natron from a startup into the first sodium-ion battery production juggernaut on US soil.

Sodium-ion batteries are cheaper, safer, with much longer lifespan and faster charging than conventional Li-ion packs.

Chinese companies are already using them in grid-level energy storage systems of local utilities, to balance their renewable energy mix. Some sodium-ion battery packs are even making their way into electric vehicles there, even though the chemistry offers lower energy density than Li-ion batteries.

The Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) has developed a redox-active metal-organic hybrid electrode material (SKIER-5) for Li batteries that remains stable in cold conditions as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius. By addressing the limitations of graphite as an anode material of conventional Li batteries under freezing conditions, SKIER-5 has the potential to be a superior alternative. This novel material can be used in Li batteries for a variety of applications, including electric vehicles, drones, and ultra-small electronic devices, even at low temperatures.

Currently, graphite is the conventional material used for anodes in lithium-ion batteries due to its thermodynamic stability and low cost. However, batteries with graphite anodes have significant drawbacks: their storage capacity sharply decreases at subzero temperatures, and dendrites can form on the anode surface during charging. This can lead to thermal runaway and potential explosions.

A research team led by Dr. Jungjoon Yoo, Dr. Kanghoon Yim, and Dr. Hyunuk Kim at KIER has developed a redox-active conductive metal-organic framework called “SKIER-5.” This framework is assembled from a trianthrene-based organic ligand and nickel ions. SKIER-5 exhibited a discharge capacity five times higher than that of graphite in subzero environments.

Your early morning run could soon help harvest enough electricity to power your wearable devices, thanks to a new nanotechnology developed at the University of Surrey.

Surrey’s Advanced Technology Institute (ATI) has developed highly energy-efficient, flexible nanogenerators, which demonstrate a 140-fold increase in power density when compared to conventional nanogenerators. ATI researchers believe that this development could pave the way for nano-devices that are as efficient as today’s solar cells.

The findings are published in the journal Nano Energy.

In celebration of Earth Day and Earth Month, we’ve rounded up five sustainability discoveries made possible by advancements in synthetic biology.

In a paper published in Nature Chemistry, researchers from the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London and Queen Mary University of London have shown for the first time how different arrangements of molecules in organic solar cells can improve light absorption, leading the way to better and cheaper solar panels.

Organic solar cells use small organic molecules or organic polymers to absorb and transform sunlight into electricity. The molecules can be produced synthetically at high throughput, and the resulting cells are lightweight, flexible and inexpensive to make. This makes them potentially cheaper, sustainable and more flexible than traditional cells made of silicon.

When light hits an organic solar cell, it forces the molecules to transfer electrons, which generates an electrical current. The efficiency of the process depends on the arrangement of the molecules and how well they interact.

Researchers at the School of Engineering of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have developed an eco-friendly refrigeration device with record-breaking cooling performance, setting the stage for transforming industries reliant on cooling and reducing global energy use.

With a boost in efficiency of over 48%, the new elastocaloric cooling technology opens a promising avenue for accelerating the commercialization of this disruptive technology and addressing the environmental challenges associated with traditional cooling systems.

Traditional vapor compression refrigeration technology relies on refrigerants of high global warming potential. Solid-state elastocaloric refrigeration based on latent heat in the cyclic phase transition of shape memory alloys (SMAs) provides an environmentally friendly alternative, with its characteristics of greenhouse gas-free, 100% recyclable and energy-efficient SMA refrigerants.

American energy storage technology newcomer Form Energy says it has received funding to deploy a groundbreaking 85 MW/8.5 GWh iron-air multi-day battery, which will be capable of up to 100 hours of storage and will be the world’s biggest battery once built.

The US Department of Energy last week announced $US389 million ($A579 million) in funding for the Power Up New England project which seeks to unlock up to 4.8GW of additional offshore wind and innovative battery energy storage systems in the local grids to boost resilience and optimise the delivery of renewable energy.

Part of the Power Up New England project, and easily the most exciting, is the 85 MW/8,500 MWh iron-air battery system to be built on the site of a former paper mill in rural Maine.

A new technology can extract lithium from brines at an estimated cost of under 40% that of today’s dominant extraction method, and at just a fourth of lithium’s current market price. The new technology would also be much more reliable and sustainable in its use of water, chemicals, and land than today’s technology, according to a study published in Matter by Stanford University researchers.

Global demand for lithium has surged in recent years, driven by the rise of electric vehicles and renewable energy storage. The dominant source of lithium extraction today relies on evaporating brines in huge ponds under the sun for a year or more, leaving behind a lithium-rich solution, after which heavy use of potentially toxic chemicals finishes the job. Water with a high concentration of salts, including lithium, occurs naturally in some lakes, hot springs, and aquifers, and as a byproduct of oil and natural gas operations and of seawater desalination.

Many scientists are searching for less expensive and more efficient, reliable, and environmentally friendly lithium extraction methods. These are generally direct lithium extraction that bypasses big evaporation ponds. The new study reports on the results of a new method using an approach known as “redox-couple electrodialysis,” or RCE, along with cost estimates.

The multi-layered coating is not only thinner than the silicon cells typically used in solar panels, but rivals their efficiency, too.