Renewables

Engineers from the University of Southampton are helping to develop an electric-hybrid engine for Venice water taxis this summer to provide cleaner, greener transport. Venice, a UNESCO World Heritage city, has approximately 20,000 leisure craft and 550 taxi boats serving some 32m visitors every year. All are currently diesel-powered meaning Venice suffers from high levels of air and noise pollution which affects the water, architecture and h...

A way of recycling millions of tons of plastic garbage into liquid fuel has been devised by researchers from the UC Irvine and the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry (SIOC) in China. "Synthetic plastics are a fundamental part of modern life, but our use of them in large volume has created serious environmental problems," said UCI chemist Zhibin Guan. "Our goal through this research was to address the issue of plastic pollution as well as ach...

A global provider of power electronic systems and solutions for industrial power supplies and renewable energy applications, AEG Power Solutions has announced it has developed a unique Hybrid Energy Storage System which combines standard battery storage with power-to-heat technology to reduce the total cost of energy storage operation.

  The section between Kungsgården and Sandviken is the world’s first electric road for heavy traffic on a public road. On 22nd June, 2016 the section will be inaugurated, with a ministerial visit, an exhibition and a panel discussion.

At INTERSOLAR 2015, Markus Köhler, the managing director of FLYING INSPECTION SERVICE, found himself hustling for new orders. This year, however, things are all set to be different: the know-how of the company from the town of Blankenburg in Saxony-Anhalt is both new and highly sought after in the sector.

Space agencies examine the extent of greenhouse gases in the air via prisms and gratings in satellites. The latest technology now makes it possible to connect both components with each other so that they are suitable for space thus achieving a new level of quality for spectral resolution. In addition to industrial CO2 emissions, agriculture also contributes significantly to climate change: above all methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), which ar...

Energy storage systems with high energy density are essential to fulfilling the ever-increasing demands of electronic devices, electric vehicles, and smart grids for intermittent solar or wind power. The Li-S battery is a promising candidate for next-gen energy storage, with an extremely high theoretical energy density that is five to seven times higher than that of conventional LIBs.

  Intense sunlight, searing heat and high exposure to dust; solar modules in the desert are exposed to different climate conditions than those in Germany. An interesting challenge for the solar researchers at the Fraunhofer CSP in Halle. Author: Kathrain Graubaum (text and photo)

In a study published in ACS Nano, a team of researchers led by Zhong Lin Wang at the Georgia Institute of Technology has developed a device that can harvest ocean waves in a very broad frequency range that encompasses almost all of the ocean wave energy spectrum, including the hard-to-reach low frequencies that are inaccessible to most harvesters. The device is a hybrid system that consists of two generators.

Duncan Frazer, Applications Manager, System & Software Group, Imagination Technologies, explains how the company is working with a service provider and a system integrator to help increase productivity on a blueberry farm in Portugal.