Good Ideas!

[ekim68]

Smart bricks store energy in the walls themselves

Boring old bricks might not seem like something that can really be made high-tech, but researchers keep proving us wrong. Now, a team has found a way to turn bricks into energy storage devices, using them to power a green LED in a proof of concept study.

A brick wall doesn’t exactly do much – sure it holds up the roof and keeps the cold out, but maybe the bricks could pull their weight a bit more. That was the goal for a team of scientists at Washington University in St Louis, who wanted to test whether bricks could be used to store electricity.

 

[Johnny b]

Smart bricks store energy in the walls themselves

I read a similar article earlier.
But I wondered, would/could something like this attract a nearby lightning strike?

 

[ekim68]

Transparent solar panels for windows hit record 8% efficiency

In a step closer to skyscrapers that serve as power sources, a team led by University of Michigan researchers has set a new efficiency record for color-neutral, transparent solar cells.

 

[ekim68]

"Cold Tube" cooling system uses half the energy of an air conditioner

Air conditioners are a convenient way to cool down offices and homes, but they use huge amounts of energy in the process. A team of scientists has been developing an alternative solution for those warm summer months called the Cold Tube, which works by absorbing body heat emitted from a person and can use around half the energy of traditional systems as a result.

 

[ekim68]

Thin-skinned solar panels printed with inkjet

Until now, ultrathin organic solar cells were typically made by spin-coating or thermal evaporation, which are not scalable and which limit device geometry. This technique involved using a transparent and conductive, but brittle and inflexible, material called indium tin oxide (ITO) as an electrode. To overcome these limitations, the team applied inkjet printing. "We formulated functional inks for each the layer of the solar cell architecture," says Daniel Corzo, a Ph.D. student in Baran's team.

 

[ekim68]

Oceanbird's huge 80-meter sails reduce cargo shipping emissions by 90%

In response to the increasingly obvious consequences of climate change, a number of companies are working on ways to bring emissions-free sail propulsion back to the cargo shipping world, taking advantage of advanced materials, computer controls and some interesting new designs to take performance and speed to the next level.

The latest concept is the Oceanbird, a giant Pure Car and Truck Carrier capable of transporting up to 7,000 cars at an average speed of 10 knots on a North Atlantic crossing. That's not quite as quick as a conventional ship; you're looking at around 12 days instead of the typical 8, but the Oceanbird's four colossal 80-meter (260-ft) high extendable wing sails promise to reduce emissions by as much as 90 percent.

 

[ekim68]

The story of cheaper batteries, from smartphones to Teslas

In 2010, a lithium-ion battery pack with 1 kWh of capacity—enough to power an electric car for three or four miles—cost more than $1,000. By 2019, the figure had fallen to $156, according to data compiled by BloombergNEF. That's a massive drop, and experts expect continued—though perhaps not as rapid—progress in the coming decade. Several forecasters project the average cost of a kilowatt-hour of lithium-ion battery capacity to fall below $100 by the mid-2020s.