Harnessing Solar Energy at Night using Technology & Other Future Tech Today
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Harnessing Solar
Energy at Night using Technology
We cover a lot of solar tech @Q3TechBlog. However, Nevada’s
Crescent Dune can store solar energy at night, and is “the world’s most
advanced energy-storage technology”, according to the company.
“The difficulty with
photovoltaic is that it’s intermittent. When the sun goes down, you’re done,”
says Kevin Smith, CEO of SolarReserve, explaining the process in detail. Rather
than have a number of solar cells to store solar energy, the plant uses
multifaceted glass mirrors that follows the course of the sun and directs
sunshine towards the top of the central tower.
“We heat it to 560°C... It flows back down the tower and we
capture it in a large tank. It’s really an alternative to fossil fuel or even
nuclear. You couldn’t power a city with just PV and wind, but you could with
CSP, because of the storage capacity.” The company plans to install similar
facilities in countries like South Africa, Chile and China.
Wonder Material Will
Allow Storage of Greenhouse Gases
Around 70 years ago, we discovered two minerals in Siberia -
the stepanovite, found by Russian geologist Pavel Ivanovich Stepanov, and the
zhemchuzhnikovite, discovered by Yurii Apollonovich Zhemchezhnikov. But, as we
didn’t have the technology to study them, they remained in storage – until recently,
in 2010, when Tomislav Friščić, associate professor at the McGill University’s
chemistry, uncovered their similarity to Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) – a path
we might take to eliminate harmful greenhouse gases present in our atmosphere.
“Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are an increasingly
important family of advanced materials based on open, nanometer-scale
metal-organic architectures, whose design and synthesis are based on the
directed assembly of carefully designed subunits,” Researchers explained in
their paper.
This Battery Self
Destructs and Dissolves in Water
Transient electronics is the study of electronics that can
perform function until exposed to a destruction trigger, such as heat, light,
or water. Demonstrating this type of technology, researchers from Iowa State
University invented a battery that is capable of delivering 2.5 volts, and
dissolves in water if placed for 30 minutes. Another remarkable feature is its
size - it measures out to be 1 millimeter thick, 5 millimeters long, and 6
millimeters wide.
“Unlike conventional electronics that are designed to last
for extensive periods of time, a key and unique attribute of transient
electronics is to operate over a typically short and well-defined period, and
undergo fast and, ideally, complete self-deconstruction and vanish when
transiency is triggered,” Researchers said, “This is a battery with all the
working components. It’s much more complex than our previous work with
transient electronics.”
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