Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: transportation

Two-step flash Joule heating method recovers lithium‑ion battery materials quickly and cleanly

A research team at Rice University led by James Tour has developed a two-step flash Joule heating-chlorination and oxidation (FJH-ClO) process that rapidly separates lithium and transition metals from spent lithium-ion batteries. The method provides an acid-free, energy-saving alternative to conventional recycling techniques, a breakthrough that aligns with the surging global demand for batteries used in electric vehicles and portable electronics.

Published in Advanced Materials, this research could transform the recovery of critical battery materials. Traditional recycling methods are often energy intensive, generate wastewater and frequently require harsh chemicals. In contrast, the FJH-ClO process achieves high yields and purity of lithium, cobalt and graphite while reducing energy consumption, chemical usage and costs.

“We designed the FJH-ClO process to challenge the notion that battery recycling must rely on acid leaching,” said Tour, the T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor of Chemistry and professor of materials science and nanoengineering. “FJH-ClO is a fast, precise way to extract valuable materials without damaging them or harming the environment.”

Material Strength Doesn’t Follow the Rules

A textbook rule for the relationship between the structure and strength of a material breaks down for high-speed deformations, like those caused by strong impacts.

On the microscale, metallic materials are made of homogeneous crystalline regions—grains—separated by disordered boundaries. In general, materials with smaller grains are stronger because they have more grain boundaries, which impede deformation. But researchers have now demonstrated a radical departure from this rule: With rapid deformation, such as that from an explosive impact, finer grained metals are softer, not harder [1]. This new insight, the researchers hope, could be useful for engineers developing impact-resistant alloys for armor, aerospace structures, or hypersonic vehicles.

The yield strength of a material is the stress (force) at which it begins to deform permanently rather than springing back. At the atomic scale in crystalline materials, this deformation occurs when sections of the crystal slide past one another, facilitated by the motion of structural defects called dislocations. But at grain boundaries, dislocations are halted and can pile up, which translates into resistance to deformation and increased yield strength. Materials with smaller grains have more grain boundaries than those with larger grains, so smaller grains are associated with higher strength.

Cybercab Game Changers Tesla & Elon Kept Under Wraps

Questions to inspire discussion.

Design & Manufacturing Innovation.

🔧 Q: Why were conventional door locks added despite weight concerns? A: Conventional door locks on frameless doors were likely required for global market compliance, though positioning locks closer to the pivot point reduces the work required compared to weight at the door’s end.

Tire Optimization for Taxi Operations.

🛞 Q: What tire specifications optimize Cybercab for taxi service? A: 20–22 inch tires with thicker sidewalls provide smoother ride at lower speeds typical of taxi use, require less frequent changes, and achieve 6–7 miles per kilowatt hour efficiency through reduced rolling resistance.

Accessibility Features.

Continue reading “Cybercab Game Changers Tesla & Elon Kept Under Wraps” | >

Gmail’s new AI Inbox uses Gemini, but Google says it won’t train AI on user emails

Google says it’s rolling out a new feature called ‘AI Inbox,’ which summarizes all your emails, but the company promises it won’t train its models on your emails.

On Thursday, Google announced a new era of Gmail where Gemini will be taking over your default inbox screen.

Google argues that email has changed since 2004, as users are now bombarded with hundreds of emails every week, and volume keeps rising.

Synchronizing ultrashort X-ray pulses for attosecond precision

Scientists at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have, for the first time, demonstrated a technique that synchronizes ultrashort X-ray pulses at the X-ray free-electron laser SwissFEL. This achievement opens new possibilities for observing ultrafast atomic and molecular processes with attosecond precision.

Scrutinizing fast atomic and molecular processes in action requires bright and short X-ray pulses—a task in which free-electron lasers such as SwissFEL excel. However, within these X-ray pulses the light is internally disordered: its temporal structure is randomly distributed and varies from shot to shot. This limits the accuracy of certain experiments.

To tame this inherent randomness, a team of PSI researchers has succeeded in implementing a technique known as mode-locking to generate trains of pulses that are coherent in time. “We can now obtain fully ordered pulses in time and frequency in a very controlled manner,” says accelerator physicist Eduard Prat, who led the study, published in Physical Review Letters.

Will NVIDIA KILL Tesla Robotaxi?

Questions to inspire discussion.

Development & Deployment.

A: Alpameo offers open model weights, open-source inference scripts, simulation tools for edge case testing, and open datasets for training, enabling developers to adapt it into smaller runtime models or build reasoning-based evaluators and autolabeling systems.

Technical Architecture.

🧠 Q: What model architecture powers Alpamayo’s autonomous driving capabilities?

A: Alpameo uses 10B parameter models across five specialized functions: vision, language, action, reasoning, and trajectory generation, forming an integrated reasoning system for autonomous vehicles.

Continue reading “Will NVIDIA KILL Tesla Robotaxi?” | >
/* */