Electricity Captured from Falling Rain Conjures the Ultimate Picture of Tropical Sustainability

By Ann Fisher, CC licenseScientists in Singapore have broken a long-standing limitation on the ability to generate electricity from flowing water, suggesting that another elemental force of nature could be leveraged for renewable electricity: rain.With the simplest and smallest scale test setup, the team could power around 12 LED lightbulbs with simulated rain droplets flowing through a tube, but at scale, their method could generate meaningful amounts that could rival rooftop solar arrays.Singapore experiences significant rainfall throughout the year, averaging 101 inches (2581 millimeters) of precipitation annually. The idea of generating electricity from such falling water is attractive, but the method has long been constrained by a principle called the Debye Length.Nevertheless, the concept is possible because of a simple physical principle that charged entities on the surface of materials get nudged when they rub together—as true for water droplets as it is for a balloon rubbed against the hair on one’s head.While this is true, the power values thus generated have been negligible, and electricity from flowing water has been limited to the driving of turbines in hydropower plants.However, in a study published in the journal ACS Central Science, a team of physicists has found a way to break through the constraints of water’s...
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Viewpoint: Powering the roll-out of advanced nuclear technologies through digital, data and AI

Matt Leedham (left) and Derreck Van Gelderen (Image: PA)The deployment of advanced nuclear technologies, such as small modular reactors and advanced modular reactors, presents a promising yet complex horizon as these technologies look to support the transformation of the energy sector, write PA Consulting's Derreck Van Gelderen and Matt Leedham.As the industry edges closer to bringing these exciting new technologies to life, integrating sophisticated data systems and emerging digital and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies across all phases of the advanced nuclear technologies lifecycle is critical to the success of the nuclear renaissance.However, deploying small modular reactors (SMRs) and advanced modular reactors (AMRs) is a more complex challenge than big nuclear due to several interrelated factors:- There is no vertically integrated utility model for advanced nuclear technologies (ANT), requiring the creation of an ecosystem of reactor vendors, developers, engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) organisations, and programme integrators, as well as future operators.- A core economic promise of ANT reactors is that they are designed for fleet standardisation to unlock economies of volume. This tension between protecting global IP and local design needs, makes data sharing more sensitive.- The supply chain for...
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A guide: Uranium and the nuclear fuel cycle

A guide: Uranium and the nuclear fuel cycle Yellowcake (Image: Dean Calma/IAEA)The nuclear fuel cycle is the series of industrial processes that turns uranium into electricity. Claire Maden takes a look at the steps that make up the cycle, the major players and the potential pinch-points.The nuclear fuel cycle starts with the mining of uranium ore and ends with the disposal of nuclear waste. (Ore is simply the naturally occurring material from which a mineral or minerals of economic value can be extracted).We talk about the front end of the fuel cycle - that is, the processes needed to mine the ore, extract uranium from it, refine it, and turn it into a fuel assembly that can be loaded into a nuclear reactor - and the back end of the fuel cycle - what happens to the fuel after it's been used. If the used fuel is treated as waste, and disposed of, this is known as an "open" fuel cycle. It can also be reprocessed to recover uranium and other fissile materials which can be reused in what is known as a "closed" fuel cycle.The World Nuclear Association's Information Library has a detailed overview of the fuel cycle here. But in a nutshell, the front end of the fuel cycle is made up of mining and milling, conversion, enrichment and fuel fabrication. Fuel then spends typically about three years inside a reactor, after which it may go into...
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Renewables are cheap. So why isn’t your power bill falling?

Steve Tritton/Shutterstock Tony Wood, Grattan InstitutePower prices are set to go up again even though renewables now account for 40% of the electricity in Australia’s main grid – close to quadruple the clean power we had just 15 years ago. How can that be, given renewables are the cheapest form of newly built power generation? This is a fair question. As Australia heads for a federal election campaign likely to focus on the rising cost of living, many of us are wondering when, exactly, cheap renewables will bring cheap power. The simple answer is – not yet. While solar and wind farms produce power at remarkably low cost, they need to be built where it’s sunny or windy. Our existing transmission lines link gas and coal power stations to cities. Connecting renewables to the grid requires expensive new transmission lines, as well as storage for when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. Notably, Victoria’s mooted price increase of 0.7% was much lower than other states, which would be as high as 8.9% in parts of New South Wales. This is due to Victoria’s influx of renewables – and good connections to other states. Because Victoria can draw cheap wind from South Australia, hydroelectricity from Tasmania or coal power from New South Wales through a good transmission line network, it has kept wholesale prices...
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Jet Engine Exhaust is Turned into Electricity to Power Dallas International Airport

An example of the pods at Dallas Love Field Airport – credit: JetWind CorporationAn intuitive piece of hardware is collecting days’ worth of renewable energy from airplane engine exhaust before take-off from a Dallas airport.“Boarding is completed” is a common refrain heard over the intercom system in the moments before taxiing to the runway.At that moment, the pilot will begin a series of engine tests and pre-flight checks during which time the turbine engines are idling with their ferocious noise and exhaust fumes.A company called JetWind has realized that all that idling force is like the strong winds needed to power a wind turbine, and has built a series of pods that can capture it during the 5-10 minutes the aircraft is sitting at the gate waiting for clearance to taxi.“The main goal of our project is to harness the consistent wind created by jets and convert it into an eco-friendly energy source,” JetWind’s founder and president Dr. T. O. Souryal told Interesting Engineering.“What was once considered wasted energy can now benefit energy grids, ultimately promoting smarter and more sustainable infrastructure across the globe.”Three years of testing between 2021 and 2024 have informed the official deployment of JetWind’s flagship product at Dallas Love Field airport. 13 sets of pods will sit beneath the gate hooked up to external...
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How farmers can install solar panels in fields without damaging the rest of their operation

Snapshot freddy/Shutterstock Austin Kay, Swansea UniversityAs the world races to meet net-zero targets, emissions from all industrial sectors must be reduced more urgently than ever. Agriculture is an important area of focus as it contributes up to 22% of global greenhouse gas emissions. One approach to decarbonising agriculture involves integrating solar panels – or photovoltaics (PVs) – into fields of crops, greenhouses and livestock areas. Often known as agrivoltaics, this can help farmers reduce their carbon footprint while continuing to produce food. Agrivoltaics can also mitigate one of the main criticisms often made of solar power – that solar farms “waste” vast tracts of agricultural land that could otherwise be used for food production. In reality, solar farms currently occupy only 0.15% of the UK’s total land – not much compared to the 70% of land devoted to agriculture. The simplest example of an agrivoltaic system would be conventional, crystalline silicon PVs (the market-leading type of solar panels), installed in fields alongside livestock. This method of farm diversification has become increasingly popular in recent years for three main reasons. First, it enhances biodiversity as it means the fields are not being used for just one crop (monoculture), undergoing regular crop rotation, or being harvested...
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Scientists Turn Industrial Waste into Batteries for Storing Renewable Energy

Emily Mahoney, the new paper’s first author, in the lab – courtesy Malapit LabA team at Northwestern University has transformed an industrial waste product into a battery for storing sustainable energy.While many iterations of these batteries are in production or being researched for grid-scale applications, using a waste molecule, in this case, triphenylphosphine oxide, (TPPO) has never been done before.The batteries used in our phones, devices, and even cars rely on metals like lithium and cobalt, sourced through intensive and sometimes exploitative mining operations. Demand for these critical minerals is expected to skyrocket over the next few decades.At the same time, thousands of tons of the well-known chemical byproduct TPPO are produced each year by many organic industrial synthesis processes, including the production of vitamin supplements, but it is rendered useless and must be carefully discarded following production.In a paper published last week in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a ‘one-pot’ reaction allows chemists to turn TPPO into a usable product with the powerful potential to store energy, opening the door for the future viability of a long-imagined battery type called “redox flow” batteries.“Battery research has traditionally been dominated by engineers and materials scientists,” said Northwestern...
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South Korea develops novel nuclide separation technology

(Image: KAERI)The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute says it has developed a new concept for the world's first nuclide separation device that employs robots and sensors.In order to safely manage radioactive waste, radionuclide analysis must be conducted to determine what radionuclides are present within it. This analysis is generally divided into three processes: preprocessing, separation, and measurement.Nuclide separation is the process of adding a reagent that reacts with a specific nuclide to a sample of melted radioactive waste to separate each nuclide. There is currently a manual method of adding the reagent to a separation container by gravity and an automatic method using a pump.The manual method cannot control the speed of the reagent, the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) notes, and the automatic method has the disadvantage of having complex components such as pumps, valves, and numerous tubes connected to the valves, and that the valves must be controlled according to a predetermined time. In particular, the automatic method requires cleaning each time to ensure that no radioactive samples remain in the valves that control the injection of the reagent and the tubes through which the reagent moves.KAERI says the separation device it has developed uses an automatic method, but a liquid handling robot that...
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If our hot water heaters ran off daytime solar, we would slash emissions and soak up cheap energy

nikkytok/Shutterstock Baran Yildiz, UNSW Sydney and Hossein Saberi, UNSW SydneyYour hot shower or bath uses 15-30% of your household’s total energy, second only to the heating and cooling of air. More than half of all Australian households rely on electric water heaters with a storage tank. These act like thermal batteries and often store more energy than a home battery. Traditionally, these heaters operated during off-peak hours overnight when power demand was low. This practice also helps maintain stability for coal power stations. But there’s a better option: cheap heating at daytime. More than 40% of freestanding Australian houses now have solar. Switching water heaters to charge during the day can soak up solar power going to waste – known as curtailment – and make sure electricity supply and demand match. In our new real world trial, we put this technique to the test and found it works. The smart meter rollout is complete in Victoria, while other states are following suit. ARVD73/ShutterstockFrom propping up coal to soaking up solar Electric water heaters have traditionally be set to operate off-peak. On your electricity bill, it would be listed as a “controlled load” item. Switching from night to day isn’t as easy as flicking a switch. It’s often hardwired. The solution: use smart meters. Almost all Victorian...
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China building more wind, solar capacity than rest of world combined: report

BEIJING - China is building almost twice as much wind and solar energy capacity as every other country combined, research published on Thursday showed.The world's second-largest economy is the biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases that drive climate change.China has committed to bring carbon emissions to a peak by 2030 and to net zero by 2060.It has endured several waves of extreme weather in recent months that scientists say are rendered more severe by climate change.China currently has a total of 339 gigawatts (GW) of capacity under construction, including 159 GW of wind and 180 GW of solar.That is "nearly twice as much as the rest of the world combined", according to the study by Global Energy Monitor, a US-based NGO.The figure far exceeds the second-ranked nation, the United States, which is building a total of just 40 GW, the report said.It said China has broken ground on a third of new wind and solar capacity it has announced to date, compared to a global average of just seven percent."The stark contrast in construction rates illustrates the active nature of China's commitment to building renewables projects," the study said.China's national grid still relies on heavily polluting coal plants to deal with surges in power demandAFP/File | HECTOR RETAMALBeijing's vast renewable energy buildout does have some drawbacks.The national...
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US leads call to triple nuclear power at COP28

DUBAI - More than 20 nations including the United States called for a tripling of nuclear energy to drive down emissions on Saturday as world leaders assembled for a second day at UN climate talks in Dubai.With smoggy skies in Dubai highlighting the challenges facing the world, other pledges are expected at the COP28 conference, including stepping up the deployment of renewable energy and cutting methane emissions.The use of nuclear power as a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels is highly controversial as environmental groups are concerned about safety and the disposal of nuclear waste.But more than 20 nations ranging from the US to Ghana, Japan and several European countries said in a declaration that it plays a "key role" in the global goal of achieving carbon neutrality by mid-century.They called for the tripling of nuclear energy capacity by 2050 from 2020 levels."We are not making the argument to anybody that this is absolutely going to be a sweeping alternative to every other energy source," US climate envoy John Kerry said at the COP28 conference in Dubai."But we know because the science and the reality of facts and evidence tell us that you can't get to net zero 2050 without some nuclear," he said.The other signatories include Britain, France, South Korea, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates, but nuclear powers Russia and...
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What is 3-phase power? And how do I know if my house needs it?

Asma Aziz, Edith Cowan UniversityIf you’re building, renovating or planning to install a solar battery, your builder or installer might ask whether you’ve considered upgrading from single-phase to three-phase power. This upgrade often comes with a hefty price tag. So what’s the difference between single-phase and three-phase power, and which one will you need? Understanding your electricity needs Each house service connection has a maximum amount of electricity that can be drawn from the grid at any one time before the main fuse blows. The limit varies, according to whether you have single- or three-phase power. The amount is calculated by multiplying a house’s “amps” and “voltage”. An “amp” is a unit of electric current. Most houses in Australia with single-phase connections have a standard capacity of 63 amps. In New South Wales, the standard is 100 amps. However, some older or rural homes in Australia may still have connections of 32 or 40 amps. Then there’s voltage, which is the pressure that pushes the current through your wiring to power your house. Current and voltage values are determined by the local distribution network service provider, the company that owns and operates the poles and wires. Since 2000, the standard voltage in most areas of Australia has been 230 volts. In Western Australia, it’s 240 volts....
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