Entangled states enhance energy transfer in models of molecular systems

A study from Rice University, published in PRX Quantum, has found that energy transfers more quickly between molecular sites when it starts in an entangled, delocalized quantum state instead of from a single site. The discovery could lead to the development of more efficient light-harvesting materials that enhance the conversion of energy from light into other forms of energy.

Many , including photosynthesis, depend on rapid and efficient energy transfer following absorption. Understanding how quantum mechanical effects like entanglement influence these processes at room temperature could significantly change our approach to creating artificial systems that mimic nature’s efficiency.

“Delocalizing the initial excitation across multiple sites accelerates the transfer in ways that starting from a single site cannot achieve,” said Guido Pagano, the study’s corresponding author and assistant professor of physics and astronomy.

Model and method

The study uses a simplified model molecule consisting of two regions: a donor, where energy is initially absorbed, and an acceptor, where the energy must eventually arrive. Energy can hop between sites within each region; although longer hops are less likely, they are still included in the model. The model also accounts for interactions with the environment, which can couple with the molecule’s vibrations and affect the energy transfer process.

A key focus of the research was determining whether it is more effective for energy to start entirely at one donor site or in a delocalized or entangled superposition spread over two or more donor sites. The researchers explored whether this quantum mechanical property impacts transfer speed in a system with long-range interactions.

“Starting in a delocalized provides the system with more pathways,” Pagano said. “Our simulations indicate that this added coherence allows for quicker transfer to the acceptor, even in the presence of environmental noise.”

Findings and implications

The research team discovered that when energy begins in an entangled initial state, transfer to the acceptor occurs significantly faster than in scenarios where the energy starts at a single site. This finding holds true across various model parameters, including the strength of environmental coupling, the range of interactions between sites and disorder within the system.

“This suggests that nature may be using entanglement and coherence to optimize the speed of excitation transfer, thereby enhancing the robustness of this process,” Pagano said.

Although the model is intentionally minimal, the researchers argue that its implications extend to more complex molecular systems. They propose that could be conducted using controllable quantum platforms such as trapped-ion systems to simulate the physics of molecular energy transfer.

“Our goal is to bridge the abstract world of quantum information with the tangible mechanisms observed in biology,” said Diego Fallas Padilla, the study’s first author and Rice alumnus. “This study serves as a step toward illustrating that quantum coherence is not just a theoretical curiosity but a practical component of nature’s design.”

Co-authors of the study include Rice’s Visal So, Abhishek Menon, Roman Zhuravel and Han Pu.

More information: Diego Fallas Padilla et al, Delocalized Excitation Transfer in Open Quantum Systems with Long-Range Interactions, PRX Quantum (2025). DOI: 10.1103/bxwl-sbsn

Journal information: PRX Quantum

Provided by Rice University

Source: Entangled states enhance energy transfer in models of molecular systems

Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website

Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai stood smiling in a leafy-green California garden in September 2020 and declared that the IT behemoth was entering the “most ambitious decade yet” in its climate action.

“Today, I’m proud to announce that we intend to be the first major company to operate carbon free — 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year,” he said, in a video announcement at the time.

Pichai added that he knew the “road ahead would not be easy,” but Google “aimed to prove that a carbon-free future is both possible and achievable fast enough to prevent the most dangerous impacts of climate change.”

Five years on, just how hard Google’s “energy journey” would become is clear. In June, Google’s Sustainability website proudly boasted a headline pledge to achieve net-zero emissions by 2030. By July, that had all changed.

An investigation by Canada’s National Observer has found that Google’s net-zero pledge has quietly been scrubbed, demoted from having its own section on the site to an entry in the appendices of the company’s sustainability report.

Genna Schnurbach, an external spokesperson for Google, referring to its Environment 2025 report, told us: “As you can see from the document, Google is still committed to their ambition of net-zero by 2030.”

By tracing back through the history of Google’s Sustainability website, however, we found that the company edited it in late June, removing almost all mention of its lauded net-zero goals. (A separate website referring to data centres specifically has maintained its existing language around net-zero commitments.)

Five years ago, Google’s climate action ambitions were the gold standard for Big Tech. Then, with power demand spikes from AI data centres, in July it scrubbed its sustainability website of its 2030 net zero pledge.

The page on Operating Sustainably has been rebranded to Operations, and the section on net-zero carbon was deleted. In its place is a new priority area: Energy.

[…]

Source: Google deletes net-zero pledge from sustainability website | Canada’s National Observer: Climate News

New self-assembling material could be the key to recyclable EV batteries

Today’s electric vehicle boom is tomorrow’s mountain of electronic waste. And while myriad efforts are underway to improve battery recycling, many EV batteries still end up in landfills.

A research team from MIT wants to help change that with a new kind of self-assembling battery material that quickly breaks apart when submerged in a simple organic liquid. In a new paper published in Nature Chemistry, the researchers showed the material can work as the electrolyte in a functioning, solid-state battery cell and then revert back to its original molecular components in minutes.

The approach offers an alternative to shredding the battery into a mixed, hard-to-recycle mass. Instead, because the electrolyte serves as the battery’s connecting layer, when the new material returns to its original molecular form, the entire battery disassembles to accelerate the recycling process.

[…]

To simplify the recycling process, the researchers decided to make a more sustainable electrolyte. For that, they turned to a class of molecules that self-assemble in water, named aramid amphiphiles (AAs), whose chemical structures and stability mimic that of Kevlar. The researchers further designed the AAs to contain polyethylene glycol (PEG), which can conduct lithium ions, on one end of each molecule. When the molecules are exposed to water, they spontaneously form nanoribbons with ion-conducting PEG surfaces and bases that imitate the robustness of Kevlar through tight hydrogen bonding. The result is a mechanically stable nanoribbon structure that conducts ions across its surface.

“The material is composed of two parts,” Cho explains. “The first part is this flexible chain that gives us a nest, or host, for lithium ions to jump around. The second part is this strong organic material component that is used in the Kevlar, which is a bulletproof material. Those make the whole structure stable.”

When added to water, the nanoribbons self-assemble to form millions of nanoribbons that can be hot-pressed into a solid-state material.

“Within five minutes of being added to water, the solution becomes gel-like, indicating there are so many nanofibers formed in the liquid that they start to entangle each other,” Cho says. “What’s exciting is we can make this material at scale because of the self-assembly behavior.”

The team tested the material’s strength and toughness, finding it could endure the stresses associated with making and running the battery. They also constructed a solid-state battery cell that used lithium iron phosphate for the cathode and lithium titanium oxide as the anode, both common materials in today’s batteries. The nanoribbons moved lithium ions successfully between the electrodes, but a side-effect known as polarization limited the movement of lithium ions into the battery’s electrodes during fast bouts of charging and discharging, hampering its performance compared to today’s gold-standard commercial batteries.

“The lithium ions moved along the nanofiber all right, but getting the lithium ion from the nanofibers to the metal oxide seems to be the most sluggish point of the process,” Cho says.

When they immersed the battery cell into organic solvents, the material immediately dissolved, with each part of the battery falling away for easier recycling. Cho compared the materials’ reaction to cotton candy being submerged in water.

“The electrolyte holds the two battery electrodes together and provides the lithium-ion pathways,” Cho says. “So, when you want to recycle the battery, the entire electrolyte layer can fall off naturally and you can recycle the electrodes separately.”

Validating a new approach

Cho says the material is a proof of concept that demonstrates the recycle-first approach.

[…]

Cho also sees a lot of room for optimizing the material’s performance with further experiments.

Now, the researchers are exploring ways to integrate these kinds of materials into existing battery designs as well as implementing the ideas into new battery chemistries.

[…]

Source: New self-assembling material could be the key to recyclable EV batteries | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Physicist simulates turning nuclear waste into fusion fuel

[…] The American Chemical Society on Monday shared preliminary findings from Los Alamos physicist Terence Tarnowsky, who has uncovered evidence – albeit from simulations – that the waste from traditional nuclear reactors could be further refined into tritium, turning more than 90,000 metric tons of useless and deadly garbage into a valuable resource.

And by valuable, we mean valuable.

“Right now, the value of commercial tritium is about $15 million per pound [$33 million per kilogram], and the US doesn’t have any domestic capability to create it,” Tarnowsky told the ACS for the announcement of his research, which has yet to be published. According to an abstract of his paper shared with the press release, a 1 GW(th) deuterium–tritium fusion plant would require more than 55 kg of tritium per year.

[…]

According to Tarnowsky’s simulations, all one would need is a particle accelerator to “jump-start atom-splitting reactions” in the waste that would “ultimately produce tritium after a series of other nuclear reactions.”

The idea isn’t new, Tarnowsky admitted, but modern tech finally makes it practical.

According to his research – all simulated thus far, mind you – an accelerator-driven system running at about a gigawatt of thermal power could produce around 2 kilograms of tritium per year, roughly matching the annual commercial output of Canada’s CANDU reactors.

That’s all well and good, but ACS fails to mention some things in the preliminary bit of information it shared ahead of Tarnowsky’s presentation at its Fall expo this week. It’s not clear what the ratio of nuclear waste input to tritium output is, for example. ACS also didn’t mention if there are other byproducts of the process that could be harmful. The org noted in its release that efficiency calculations are the next step Tarnowsky has planned for his ongoing project, and the group didn’t respond to questions before publication.

[…]

Source: Physicist simulates turning nuclear waste into fusion fuel • The Register

New electrolyte highway enables low-temperature hydrogen fuel cells

[…]Researchers at Kyushu University in Japan have developed a new type of solid-oxide fuel cell (SOFC) that operates at 300℃ (500°F) , a notable reduction from typical operating temperatures. “The team expects that their new findings will lead to the development of low-cost, low-temperature SOFCs and greatly accelerate the practical application of these devices,” said the researchers in a press release

….

Such heat requires costly, specialized heat-resistant materials, making the technology expensive for many applications. A lower operating temperature is expected to reduce these manufacturing costs

….

The implications of this work extend beyond this specific fuel cell. The design principle of creating efficient ion pathways in materials provides a basis for developing other energy technologies.Professor Yamazaki suggests the same concept could be applied to improve other tools for decarbonization. “Beyond fuel cells, the same principle can be applied to other technologies, such as low-temperature electrolyzes, hydrogen pumps, and reactors that convert CO₂ into valuable chemicals, thereby multiplying the impact of decarbonization,” he highlighted.

Source: New electrolyte highway enables low-temperature hydrogen fuel cells

Ore Energy makes history with first grid-connected iron-air battery system

“Rust battery” now operational in the Netherlands; first multi-day long-term energy storage system, designed to be implemented using exclusively European production and materials

Ore Energy , the Dutch iron-air long-term energy storage startup, today announced that it has successfully connected its flagship iron-air battery to the Delft electricity grid – the world’s first known fully grid-connected iron-air system. The pilot system is also the first multi-day long-term energy storage (LDES) system designed, built, and installed entirely within the European Union using materials exclusively sourced within Europe. This unique deployment represents a significant technological milestone in long-term energy storage and marks a defining moment in European energy sovereignty and resilience.

Ore Energy’s pilot system—which uses iron, air, and water to store clean energy for up to 100 hours—was deployed at The Green Village, a testing ground for next-generation climate and energy innovations at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). The system charges by using electricity to convert iron oxides (such as rust) back into metallic iron. During discharge, the metallic iron reacts with oxygen in the air to form iron oxides again, releasing electrical energy. The installation is now collecting real-world operational data and will serve as a testbed for multi-day energy shifting, a key milestone on the road to full integration of renewable energy grids. Ore Energy’s entire system will utilize modular 12-meter containers, each providing several MWh of multi-day energy storage, optimized for low-cost and compact deployment.

“This achievement proves that Europe can lead the world in energy innovation and energy resilience. We’ve shown that breakthrough solutions like iron-air can be brought from the lab to the grid in just two years and can be built entirely within a European supply chain,” said Aytaç Yilmaz, co-founder and CEO of Ore Energy. “Our battery not only stores clean energy, but also solves three of the biggest problems facing the grid: it reduces renewables’ downtime, replaces fossil fuel backups, and reduces the need to overbuild wind and solar power. Long-term storage like ours makes renewable energy reliable, affordable, and sovereign. And now it’s ready.”

“The Green Village aims to bring bold ideas from the lab to the real world. Ore Energy’s iron-air battery is just such a breakthrough,” says Lidewij van Trigt, Energy Transition Project Manager at The Green Village. “The connection of the first grid-ready iron-air system here in Delft demonstrates what’s possible when research, regulations, and industry are aligned. We’re proud to offer a testing ground for technologies that will shape the future of the European energy system.”

 

Source: Ore Energy makes history with first grid-connected iron-air battery system – Energy Storage NL (translated from Dutch)

Sodium fuel cell could enable electric aviation, 3x more energy density than battery, sucks up CO2

Instead of a battery, the new concept is a kind of fuel cell — which is similar to a battery but can be quickly refueled rather than recharged. In this case, the fuel is liquid sodium metal, an inexpensive and widely available commodity. The other side of the cell is just ordinary air, which serves as a source of oxygen atoms. In between, a layer of solid ceramic material serves as the electrolyte, allowing sodium ions to pass freely through, and a porous air-facing electrode helps the sodium to chemically react with oxygen and produce electricity.

In a series of experiments with a prototype device, the researchers demonstrated that this cell could carry more than three times as much energy per unit of weight as the lithium-ion batteries used in virtually all electric vehicles today. Their findings are being published today in the journal Joule, in a paper by MIT doctoral students Karen Sugano, Sunil Mair, and Saahir Ganti-Agrawal; professor of materials science and engineering Yet-Ming Chiang; and five others.

[…]

this technology does appear to have the potential to be quite revolutionary, he suggests. In particular, for aviation, where weight is especially crucial, such an improvement in energy density could be the breakthrough that finally makes electrically powered flight practical at significant scale.

“The threshold that you really need for realistic electric aviation is about 1,000 watt-hours per kilogram,” Chiang says. Today’s electric vehicle lithium-ion batteries top out at about 300 watt-hours per kilogram — nowhere near what’s needed. Even at 1,000 watt-hours per kilogram, he says, that wouldn’t be enough to enable transcontinental or trans-Atlantic flights.

[…]

A great deal of research has gone into developing lithium-air or sodium-air batteries over the last three decades, but it has been hard to make them fully rechargeable. “People have been aware of the energy density you could get with metal-air batteries for a very long time, and it’s been hugely attractive, but it’s just never been realized in practice,” Chiang says.

By using the same basic electrochemical concept, only making it a fuel cell instead of a battery, the researchers were able to get the advantages of the high energy density in a practical form. Unlike a battery, whose materials are assembled once and sealed in a container, with a fuel cell the energy-carrying materials go in and out.

[…]

Tests using an air stream with a carefully controlled humidity level produced a level of more than 1,500 watt-hours per kilogram at the level of an individual “stack,” which would translate to over 1,000 watt-hours at the full system level, Chiang says.

The researchers envision that to use this system in an aircraft, fuel packs containing stacks of cells, like racks of food trays in a cafeteria, would be inserted into the fuel cells; the sodium metal inside these packs gets chemically transformed as it provides the power. A stream of its chemical byproduct is given off, and in the case of aircraft this would be emitted out the back, not unlike the exhaust from a jet engine.

But there’s a very big difference: There would be no carbon dioxide emissions. Instead the emissions, consisting of sodium oxide, would actually soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This compound would quickly combine with moisture in the air to make sodium hydroxide — a material commonly used as a drain cleaner — which readily combines with carbon dioxide to form a solid material, sodium carbonate, which in turn forms sodium bicarbonate, otherwise known as baking soda.

[…]

Using sodium hydroxide to capture carbon dioxide has been proposed as a way of mitigating carbon emissions, but on its own, it’s not an economic solution because the compound is too expensive. “But here, it’s a byproduct,” Chiang explains, so it’s essentially free, producing environmental benefits at no cost.

Importantly, the new fuel cell is inherently safer than many other batteries, he says. Sodium metal is extremely reactive and must be well-protected. As with lithium batteries, sodium can spontaneously ignite if exposed to moisture. “Whenever you have a very high energy density battery, safety is always a concern, because if there’s a rupture of the membrane that separates the two reactants, you can have a runaway reaction,” Chiang says. But in this fuel cell, one side is just air, “which is dilute and limited. So you don’t have two concentrated reactants right next to each other. If you’re pushing for really, really high energy density, you’d rather have a fuel cell than a battery for safety reasons.”

While the device so far exists only as a small, single-cell prototype, Chiang says the system should be quite straightforward to scale up to practical sizes for commercialization. Members of the research team have already formed a company, Propel Aero, to develop the technology. The company is currently housed in MIT’s startup incubator, The Engine.

[…]

Source: New fuel cell could enable electric aviation | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Scientists May Have Discovered How To Extract Power From the Earth’s Rotation

No more burning fossil fuels, playing with fissile material, damming rivers, erecting wind mills, or making solar panels. All of our energy needs could potentially be supplied by the angular kinetic energy of the Earth — and because of the mass of the planet, doing so would slow its rotation down by a mere 7ms per century. [Which is similar to speed changes caused by natural phenomena such as the Moon’s pull and changing dynamics inside the planet’s core.”]

Normally this would be considered impossible as the Earth’s large and uniform field does not induce a current in conductors, but researchers believe that a hollow cylinder of manganese, zinc and iron can alter the interaction with our planetary magnetic field and allow the extraction of energy from it. So far, the results are positive but still below the level where they cannot be explained by multiple possible causes of experimental error. Further research is required to confirm the effect.

“The effect was identified only in a carefully crafted device and generated just 17 microvolts,” reports Scientific American, “a fraction of the voltage released when a single neuron fires — making it hard to verify that some other effect isn’t causing the observations.”

But if another group can verify the results, the experiment’s lead says the next logical step is trying to scale up the device to generate a useful amount of energy.

Source: Scientists May Have Discovered How To Extract Power From the Earth’s Rotation

New Battery Harvests Energy From Radioactive Nuclear Waste

[…] researchers in Ohio have developed a small battery powered by nuclear waste. They exposed scintillator crystals—a material that emits light when it absorbs radiation—to gamma radiation, which is produced by nuclear waste. The crystals’ light then powered a solar battery. The study, published January 29 in the journal Optical Materials: X, demonstrates that background levels of gamma radiation could power small electronics, such as microchips.

“We’re harvesting something considered as waste and by nature, trying to turn it into treasure,” lead author Raymond Cao said in an Ohio State University statement. He is the director of Ohio State’s Nuclear Reactor Lab.

The team tested the battery prototype with cesium-137 and cobalt-60, common radioactive byproducts of nuclear reactors. Using cesium-137, the battery produced 288 nanowatts of power, while cobalt-60 generated 1.5 microwatts—enough to power a small sensor.

Though this might seem like a small victory—a standard 10W LED light bulb requires 10 million microwatts—Cao and his colleagues argue that their approach could be scaled up to power technology at the watt scale (as opposed to microwatts) or even higher. Such batteries could be used in environments where nuclear waste is produced, such as nuclear waste storage pools. They have the potential to be long-lasting and require little to no routine maintenance.

“The nuclear battery concept is very promising,” said Ibrahim Oksuz, co-author of the study and an Ohio State mechanical and aerospace engineer. “There’s still lots of room for improvement, but I believe in the future, this approach will carve an important space for itself in both the energy production and sensors industry.”

The researchers also noted that the structure of the scintillator crystals may affect the battery’s energy output, theorizing that larger crystals absorb more radiation and emit more light. A solar battery with a larger surface area can also absorb more light, and consequently produce more energy.

“This two-step process is still in its preliminary stages, but the next step involves generating greater watts with scale-up constructs,” Oksuz explained.
[…]

Source: New Battery Harvests Energy From Radioactive Nuclear Waste

These buildings use batteries made of ice to stay cool and save money

Thousands of buildings across the United States are staying cool with the help of cutting-edge batteries made from one of the world’s simplest materials: ice.

When electricity is cheap, the batteries freeze water. When energy costs go up, building managers turn off their pricey chillers and use the ice to keep things cool.

A typical building uses about a fifth of its electricity for cooling, according to the International Energy Agency. By shifting their energy use to cheaper times of day, the biggest buildings can save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on their power bills. They can also avoid using electricity from the dirtiest fossil fuel plants.

In places where the weather is hot and energy prices swing widely throughout the day — for instance, Texas, Southern California and most of the American Southwest — buildings could cut their power bills and carbon emissions by as much as a third, experts say.

“That’s huge and absolutely worth doing when you consider how many buildings exist that need cooling,” said Neera Jain, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University.

So far, ice batteries have been mostly limited to big commercial buildings with central cooling systems and extra storage space for a giant vat of ice. But new designs could bring the batteries into smaller buildings and even houses.

Source: These buildings use batteries made of ice to stay cool and save money

External Li supply reshapes Li deficiency and lifetime limit of batteries

Lithium (Li) ions are central to the energy storing functionality of rechargeable batteries1. Present technology relies on sophisticated Li-inclusive electrode materials to provide Li ions and exactingly protect them to ensure a decent lifetime2. Li-deficient materials are thus excluded from battery design, and the battery fails when active Li ions are consumed3. Our study breaks this limit by means of a cell-level Li supply strategy. This involves externally adding an organic Li salt into an assembled cell, which decomposes during cell formation, liberating Li ions and expelling organic ligands as gases. This non-invasive and rapid process preserves cell integrity without necessitating disassembly

[…]

As a proof-of-concept, we demonstrated a 3.0 V, 1,192 Wh kg−1 Li-free cathode, chromium oxide, in the anode-less cell, as well as an organic sulfurized polyacrylonitrile cathode incorporated in a 388 Wh kg−1 pouch cell with a 440-cycle life. These systems exhibit improved energy density, enhanced sustainability and reduced cost compared with conventional Li-ion batteries. Furthermore, the lifetime of commercial LiFePO4 batteries was extended by at least an order of magnitude. With repeated external Li supplies, a commercial graphite|LiFePO4 cell displayed a capacity retention of 96.0% after 11,818 cycles.

Source: External Li supply reshapes Li deficiency and lifetime limit of batteries | Nature

Researchers make comfortable materials that generate power when worn

Researchers have demonstrated new wearable technologies that both generate electricity from human movement and improve the comfort of the technology for the people wearing them. The work stems from an advanced understanding of materials that increase comfort in textiles and produce electricity when they rub against another surface.

At issue are molecules called amphiphiles, which are often used in consumer products to reduce friction against human skin. For example, amphiphiles are often incorporated into diapers to prevent chafing.

“We set out to develop a model that would give us a detailed fundamental understanding of how different amphiphiles affect the surface friction of different materials,” says Lilian Hsiao

[…]

Specifically, we wanted to know if we could create energy from friction in amphiphile-modified materials. It turns out we could not only generate electricity, but we could do so while also reducing the friction that people wearing these materials experience.”

In other words, the researchers found they could use amphiphiles to create wearable fabrics with slippery surfaces that feel good against human skin.

[…]

“The technology for harvesting static energy is well established but devices that can be worn for long periods of time are still missing.” Hsiao says. “In our proof-of-concept testing, we found these amphiphile materials not only feel good on the skin but could generate up to 300 volts, which is remarkable for a small piece of material.”

“An optimal balance between friction needed to generate power and maintaining the comfort of the wearer is paramount in designing haptic technologies and amphiphile chemistry offers a facile way to do so,” Khan says. “We’re interested in doing more to make use of these materials, such as exploring how they can be incorporated into existing haptic devices. And we’re open to working with industry partners on identifying new applications.”

The paper, “Compressing Slippery Surface-Assembled Amphiphiles for Tunable Haptic Energy Harvesters,” will be published Sept. 15 in the journal Science Advances.

[…]

Source: Researchers make comfortable materials that generate power when worn | ScienceDaily

The carbon emissions of writing and illustrating are lower for AI than for humans

[…] In this article, we present a comparative analysis of the carbon emissions associated with AI systems (ChatGPT, BLOOM, DALL-E2, Midjourney) and human individuals performing equivalent writing and illustrating tasks. Our findings reveal that AI systems emit between 130 and 1500 times less CO2e per page of text generated compared to human writers, while AI illustration systems emit between 310 and 2900 times less CO2e per image than their human counterparts. Emissions analyses do not account for social impacts such as professional displacement, legality, and rebound effects. In addition, AI is not a substitute for all human tasks. Nevertheless, at present, the use of AI holds the potential to carry out several major activities at much lower emission levels than can humans.

[…]

Source: The carbon emissions of writing and illustrating are lower for AI than for humans | Scientific Reports

Note: the graphs have a logarithmic y-axis

Surprise: EV batteries might have a longer shelf live than once thought

[…]

new research suggests these batteries, once thought to have short-lived, inherently  expendable shelf-lives, may actually last significantly longer than expected. In some cases, properly cared for EVs may even outlive their fossil fuel counterparts. That’s potentially good news: longer-lasting EVs might buy manufacturers much-need time to fabricate components needed to meet increasing global demands.

The new findings, published today in the journal Nature Energy by researchers from the SLAC-Stanford Battery Center, suggest EV batteries may actually last about a third longer than previous forecasts. That means drivers could potentially keep driving their modern EV without replacing the battery for several additional years. The researchers note the shocking disparity in battery life estimates stems from fundamentally unrealistic testing environments that became an industry standard. When the researchers tested batteries for two years in ways they say are more closely aligned with how drivers actually use EVs day-to-day, the battery life expectancy improved significantly.

“We’ve not been testing EV batteries the right way,” Stanford associate professor and paper senior author Simona Onori said in a statement. “To our surprise, real driving with frequent acceleration, braking that charges the batteries a bit, stopping to pop into a store, and letting the batteries rest for hours at a time, helps batteries last longer than we had thought based on industry standard lab tests.”

SLAC-Stanford Battery Center states on its website that its ultimate goal is to “accelerate the deployment of battery and energy storage technologies at scale,” in an effort to address climate change. The research paper was primarily funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program and the Stanford Chevron Fellowship in Energy.

Related: [ ‘Everything has a cost:’ High-tech products and the new era of mineral mining ]

More ‘realistic’ driving led to less battery degradation

Researchers tested 92 commercial lithium ion EV batteries over two years across four different types of driving profiles. The industry standard approach uses a “constant rate of [battery] discharge” followed immediately by a recharge. In the real world, this would look like someone driving their vehicle until the battery is almost fully diminished and then plugging it in to charge completely. This process of constant battery expenditure and recharging resembles how most people use a smartphone.

Stanford school of engineering PhD student and paper coauthor Alexis Geslin told Popular Science these “constant current rates” were adopted as the testing default because it generally requires simpler hardware and is easier to implement for the lab user.

But that’s not how many drivers actually use their vehicles. EV owners, the researchers note, who drive their vehicle in short bursts to and from work or around town, may go several days or even a week without recharging. The researchers attempted to represent that more realistic, periodic driving method in one of the driving profiles. In the end, the more realistic profile resulted in an increased battery lifetime by up to 38%.

“This work illustrates the importance of testing batteries under realistic conditions of use and challenges the broadly adopted convention of constant current discharge in the laboratory,” the researchers wrote in the paper.

The findings similarly seem to contradict commonly held assumptions about what types of driving quickly degrades batteries. Though many drivers believe rapidly accelerating and braking degrades EV batteries faster than steady driving, the researchers found a correlation in their data suggesting sharp, short accelerations may actually lead to slower battery degradation. Pressing down hard on pedals with a lead foot didn’t seem to speed up battery aging. It may have actually had the opposite effect.

[…]

Source: Surprise: EV batteries might have a longer shelf live than once thought | Popular Science

Boffins build diamond battery that lasts millennia

The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and the University of Bristol have built a diamond battery capable of delivering power, albeit a tiny amount, for thousands of years.

The university had an idea for a battery powered by carbon-14, the longest-lived radioactive isotope of carbon with a half-life of around 5,700 years. For safety reasons, they wanted to encapsulate it in synthetic diamond so there was no risk of human harm, and so went to the UKAEA for help.

The result is a microwatt-level battery around the same diameter as a standard lithium-ion coin battery, albeit much thinner, as shown below. As the carbon-14 decays, the electrons produced are focused by the diamond shell and can be used to power devices – if they only require very little power, of course.

“This is about UK innovation and no one’s ever done this before,” said Professor Tom Scott, professor in materials at the University of Bristol. “We can offer a technology where you never have to replace the battery because the battery will literally, on human timescales, last forever.”

Working together, the team built a plasma deposition system at UKAEA’s Culham Campus. This lays down thin layers of synthetic diamond around the battery’s carbon-14 heart. The team is now trying to scale up the machinery so that larger batteries can be developed.

“Diamond batteries offer a safe, sustainable way to provide continuous microwatt levels of power. They are an emerging technology that uses a manufactured diamond to safely encase small amounts of carbon-14,” said Sarah Clark, director of Tritium Fuel Cycle at UKAEA.

The first use case for the technology would be extreme environments like powering small satellites (the European Space Agency funded some of the research) or sensors on the sea floor. But the team also envisaged the technology being implanted in humans to power devices such as pacemakers or cochlear implants that could receive power for longer than the human carrying them would need. ®

Source: Boffins build diamond battery that lasts millennia • The Register

Oxford scientists’ new light-absorbing material can turn everyday objects into solar panels

Oxford University scientists may have solved one of the greatest hindrances of expanding access to solar energy. Scientists from the university’s physics department have created an ultra-thin layer of material that can be applied to the exterior of objects with sunlight access in place of bulky silicon-based solar panels.

The ultra-thin and flexible film is made by stacking layers of light-absorbing layers of perovskite that are just over one micron thick. The new materials are also 150 times thinner than a traditional silicon wafer and can produce 5 percent more energy efficiency than traditional, single-layer silicon photovoltaics, according to a statement released by Oxford University.

Dr. Shauifeng Hu, a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford’s physics department, says he believes “this approach could enable the photovoltaic devices to achieve far greater efficiencies, exceeding 45 percent.”

This new approach to solar energy technology could also reduce the cost of solar energy. Due to their thinness and flexibility, they can be applied to almost any surface. This reduces the cost of construction and installation and could increase the number of solar energy farms producing more sustainable energy.

This technology, however, is still in the research stage and the university doesn’t mention the long-term stability of the newly designed perovskite panels. Going from 6 to 27 percent solar energy efficiency in five years is an impressive feat but stability has always been limited compared to photovoltaic technology, according to the US Department of Energy. A 2016 study in the science journal Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells also noted that perovskite can provide “efficient, low-cost energy generation” but it also has “poor stability” due its sensitivity to moisture.

Source: Oxford scientists’ new light-absorbing material can turn everyday objects into solar panels

A hydrogen-powered air taxi flew 523 miles emitting only water vapor

A flying-car-like vertical takeoff aircraft created by Joby Aviation has completed a first-of-its-kind, 523 mile test flight using hydrogen power. The aircraft, which reportedly left only a trail of water vapor in its wake, is being pitched as a more environmentally friendly alternative to traditional gas powered jets for mid-range, regional travel. Though questions remain about hydrogen power’s long-term viability at scale, the test flight proves it’s possible to retrofit existing electric powered aircraft with hydrogen fuel cells to effectively extend their range.

Joby is one of several companies attempting to create an air taxi service around vertical takeoff and landing vehicles (VTOLs). Up until now Joby has focused on creating fully electric battery powered aircraft with a range of roughly 100 miles intended to transport people and products within cities or to major airports. For the new test flight, Joby took a pre-production prototype of one of its battery-electric aircraft and outfitted it with a liquid hydrogen fuel tank and fuel system. The modified, hydrogen-powered VTOL was able to complete a 523 mile flight above Marina, California with no in-flight emissions. When it landed, the aircraft still had 10% of its remaining hydrogen fuel load.

Joby accelerated its exploration of hydrogen power back in 2022 with its acquisition of hydrogen-powered aircraft startup H2Fly. That company completed the first piloted flight of a liquid-hydrogen powered electric aircraft last year. Since then, two other California startups have successfully tested hydrogen fuel sources to power propeller planes. One of those firms, Universal Hydrogen, reportedly flew as high as 10,000 feet at around 170 knots (195 mph.) Joby’s test flight, by contrast, is the first reported example of a VTOL-style aircraft completing a test flight using hydrogen power.

[…]

If all of this sounds too good to be true from an emissions stand point, that’s because it really still is. Hydrogen power is still far more expensive to produce than its electric or fossil fuel alternatives. It’s also not as environmentally friendly as it may initially seem. Though various energy sources can be technically used to release hydrogen from hydrocarbon molecules, around 95% of hydrogen currently produced in the US is made using natural gas which is itself a major source of CO2 emissions. So-called “green hydrogen” sourced from renewable resources remains relatively rare but that could change thanks to the Biden Administration initiative aiming to inject $7 billion into new hydrogen hub centers. Hydrogen power, not long ago considered a sci-fi pipe dream, is climbing closer to reality.

Hydrogen is also just one of several alternatives and options being explored by the air travel industry. Aircraft startups like Elysian are leaning on advances in battery technology to develop an electric-powered passenger plane they hope can transport 90 travelers up to 500 miles without recharging. Jet Blue, Virgin Atlantic, and other airliners are also investing in so-called “sustainable jet fuel” which would use feedstocks, waste products, and other renewable starting materials in place of fossil fuels. Some mix of all of these alternatives will likely be needed to prevent aircraft related carbon emissions from soaring in coming years, especially as passengers show no signs of cutting down on overall air travel any time soon.

Source: A hydrogen-powered air taxi flew 523 miles emitting only water vapor | Popular Science

Lithium Ion Batteries a Growing Source of PFAS Pollution, Study Finds

“Nature recently published an open-access article (not paywalled) that studies the lifecycle of lithium-ion batteries once they are manufactured,” writes Slashdot reader NoWayNoShapeNoForm. “The study is a ‘cradle-to-grave’ look at these batteries and certain chemicals that they contain. The University researchers that authored the study found that the electrolytes and polymers inside lithium-ion batteries contain a class of PFAS known as bis-FASI chemicals. PFAS chemicals are internationally recognized pollutants, yet they are found in consumer and industrial processes, such as non-stick coatings, surfactants, and film-forming foams. PFAS chemicals have been found in windmill coatings, semiconductors, solar collectors, and photovoltaic cells.” Phys.org reports: Texas Tech University’s Jennifer Guelfo was part of a research team that found the use of a novel sub-class of per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) in lithium ion batteries is a growing source of pollution in air and water. Testing by the research team further found these PFAS, called bis-perfluoroalkyl sulfonimides (bis-FASIs), demonstrate environmental persistence and ecotoxicity comparable to older notorious compounds like perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). The researchers sampled air, water, snow, soil and sediment near manufacturing plants in Minnesota, Kentucky, Belgium and France. The bis-FASI concentrations in these samples were commonly at very high levels. Data also suggested air emissions of bis-FASIs may facilitate long-range transport, meaning areas far from manufacturing sites may be affected as well. Analysis of several municipal landfills in the southeastern U.S. indicated these compounds can also enter the environment through disposal of products, including lithium ion batteries.

Toxicity testing demonstrated concentrations of bis-FASIs similar to those found at the sampling sites can change behavior and fundamental energy metabolic processes of aquatic organisms. Bis-FASI toxicity has not yet been studied in humans, though other, more well-studied PFAS are linked to cancer, infertility and other serious health harms. Treatability testing showed bis-FASIs did not break down during oxidation, which has also been observed for other PFAS. However, data showed concentrations of bis-FASIs in water could be reduced using granular activated carbon and ion exchange, methods already used to remove PFAS from drinking water.
“Our results reveal a dilemma associated with manufacturing, disposal, and recycling of clean energy infrastructure,” said Guelfo, an associate professor of environmental engineering in the Edward E. Whitacre Jr. College of Engineering. “Slashing carbon dioxide emissions with innovations like electric cars is critical, but it shouldn’t come with the side effect of increasing PFAS pollution. We need to facilitate technologies, manufacturing controls and recycling solutions that can fight the climate crisis without releasing highly recalcitrant pollutants.”

source: Lithium Ion Batteries a Growing Source of PFAS Pollution, Study Finds

A breakthrough in solid state sodium batteries: inexpensive, clean, fast-charging

[…] “Although there have been previous sodium, solid-state, and anode-free batteries, no one has been able to successfully combine these three ideas until now,” said UC San Diego PhD candidate Grayson Deysher, first author of a new paper outlining the team’s work.

The paper, published today in Nature Energy, demonstrates a new sodium battery architecture with stable cycling for several hundred cycles. By removing the anode and using inexpensive, abundant sodium instead of lithium, this new form of battery will be more affordable and environmentally friendly to produce. Through its innovative solid-state design, the battery also will be safe and powerful.

[…]

“In any anode-free battery there needs to be good contact between the electrolyte and the current collector,” Deysher said. “This is typically very easy when using a liquid electrolyte, as the liquid can flow everywhere and wet every surface. A solid electrolyte cannot do this.”

However, those liquid electrolytes create a buildup called solid electrolyte interphase while steadily consuming the active materials, reducing the battery’s usefulness over time.

A solid that flows

The team took a novel, innovative approach to this problem. Rather than using an electrolyte that surrounds the current collector, they created a current collector that surrounds the electrolyte.

They created their current collector out of aluminum powder, a solid that can flow like a liquid.

During battery assembly the powder was densified under high pressure to form a solid current collector while maintaining a liquid-like contact with the electrolyte, enabling the low-cost and high-efficiency cycling that can push this game-changing technology forward.

[…]

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Chicago. Original written by Paul Dailing. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:

  1. Grayson Deysher, Jin An Sam Oh, Yu-Ting Chen, Baharak Sayahpour, So-Yeon Ham, Diyi Cheng, Phillip Ridley, Ashley Cronk, Sharon Wan-Hsuan Lin, Kun Qian, Long Hoang Bao Nguyen, Jihyun Jang, Ying Shirley Meng. Design principles for enabling an anode-free sodium all-solid-state battery. Nature Energy, 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41560-024-01569-9

Source: A breakthrough in inexpensive, clean, fast-charging batteries | ScienceDaily

Capacitor Breakthrough: 19-Fold Increase in Energy Storage Potential – could kill batteries

A battery’s best friend is a capacitor. Powering everything from smartphones to electric vehicles, capacitors store energy from a battery in the form of an electrical charge and enable ultrafast charging and discharging. However, their Achilles’ heel has always been their limited energy storage efficiency.

Now, Washington University in St. Louis researchers have unveiled a groundbreaking capacitor design that looks like it could overcome those energy storage challenges.

In a study published in Science, lead author Sang-Hoon Bae, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, demonstrates a novel heterostructure that curbs energy loss, enabling capacitors to store more energy and charge rapidly without sacrificing durability.

While batteries excel in storage capacity, they fall short in speed, unable to charge or discharge rapidly. Capacitors fill this gap, delivering the quick energy bursts that power-intensive devices demand. Some smartphones, for example, contain up to 500 capacitors, and laptops around 800. Just don’t ask the capacitor to store its energy too long.

Within capacitors, ferroelectric materials offer high maximum polarization. That’s useful for ultra-fast charging and discharging, but it can limit the effectiveness of energy storage or the “relaxation time” of a conductor.

[…]

Bae makes the change—one he unearthed while working on something completely different—by sandwiching 2D and 3D materials in atomically thin layers, using chemical and nonchemical bonds between each layer. He says a thin 3D core inserts between two outer 2D layers to produce a stack that’s only 30 nanometers thick

[…]

“Initially, we weren’t focused on energy storage, but during our exploration of material properties, we found a new physical phenomenon that we realized could be applied to energy storage,” Bae says in a statement

[…]

The sandwich structure isn’t quite fully conductive or nonconductive. This semiconducting material, then, allows the energy storage, with a density up to 19 times higher than commercially available ferroelectric capacitors, while still achieving 90 percent efficiency—also better than what’s currently available.

The capacitor can hang on to its energy thanks to the minuscule gap in the material structure.

[…]

The study team will continue to optimize the material structure to ensure ultrafast charging and discharging with a new high-energy density. “We must be able to do that without losing storage capacity over repeated charges,” Bae says, “to see this material used broadly in large electronic like electric vehicles.”

Source: Capacitor Breakthrough: 19-Fold Increase in Energy Storage Potential

Window coating blocks sun heat from any angle but not view

Windows welcome light into interior spaces, but they also bring in unwanted heat. A new window coating blocks heat-generating ultraviolet and infrared light and lets through visible light, regardless of the sun’s angle. The coating can be incorporated onto existing windows or automobiles and can reduce air-conditioning cooling costs by more than one-third in hot climates.

[…]

Window coatings used in many recent studies are optimized for light that enters a room at a 90-degree angle. Yet at noon, often the hottest time of the day, the sun’s rays enter vertically installed windows at oblique angles.

Luo and his postdoctoral associate Seongmin Kim previously fabricated a transparent window coating by stacking ultra-thin layers of silica, alumina and titanium oxide on a glass base. A micrometer-thick silicon polymer was added to enhance the structure’s cooling power by reflecting thermal radiation through the atmospheric window and into outer space.

Additional optimization of the order of the layers was necessary to ensure the coating would accommodate multiple angles of solar light.

[…]

Their model produced a coating that both maintained transparency and reduced temperature by 5.4 to 7.2 degrees Celsius in a model room, even when light was transmitted in a broad range of angles. The lab’s results were recently published in Cell Reports Physical Science.

[…]

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Notre Dame. Original written by Karla Cruise. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:

  1. Seongmin Kim, Serang Jung, Alexandria Bobbitt, Eungkyu Lee, Tengfei Luo. Wide-angle spectral filter for energy-saving windows designed by quantum annealing-enhanced active learning. Cell Reports Physical Science, 2024; 5 (3): 101847 DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2024.101847

Source: Sunrise to sunset, new window coating blocks heat — not view | ScienceDaily

Wind Wing sails saved cargo ship up to 12 tons of fuel per day

A shipping vessel left China for Brazil while sporting some new improvements last August—a pair of 123-feet-tall, solid “wings” retrofitted atop its deck to harness wind power for propulsion assistance. But after its six-week maiden voyage testing the green energy tech, the Pyxis Ocean MC Shipping Kamsarmax vessel apparently had many more trips ahead of it. Six months later, its owners at the shipping company, Cargill, shared the results of those journeys this week—and it sounds like the vertical WindWing sails could offer a promising way to reduce existing vessels’ emissions.

Using the wind force captured by its two giant, controllable sails to boost its speed, Pyxis Ocean reportedly saved an average of 3.3 tons of fuel each day. And in optimal weather conditions, its trips through portions of the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans reduced fuel consumption by over 12 tons a day. According to Cargill’s math, that’s an average of 14 percent less greenhouse gas emissions from the ship. On its best days, Pyxis Ocean could cut that down by 37 percent. In all, the WindWing’s average performance fell within 10 percent ts designers’ computational fluid dynamics simulation predictions.

[Related: A cargo ship with 123-foot ‘WindWing’ sails has just departed on its maiden voyage.]

In total, an equally sized ship outfitted with two WindWings could annually save the same amount of emissions as removing 480 cars from roads—but that could even be a relatively conservative estimate, according to WindWing’s makers at BAR Technologies.

“[W]hile the Pyxis Ocean has two WindWings, we anticipate the majority of Kamsarmax vessels will carry three wings, further increasing the fuel savings and emissions reductions by a factor of 1.5,” BAR Technologies CEO John Cooper said in a statement on Tuesday.

[…]

Source: A cargo ship’s ‘WindWing’ sails saved it up to 12 tons of fuel per day | Popular Science

Satellite beamed power from space to Earth for the first time ever

The first experiment to transmit power to Earth from space could lead to a space-based solar power station within 10 years, according to one of the researchers involved.

Such a station would benefit from greater exposure to the sun, due to the lack of clouds and atmosphere along with the ability to avoid nighttime darkness. However, the difficulty of designing and making structures large enough to be useful but light enough to launch by rocket has made such a facility impractical.

In a step forward, Ali Hajimiri at the California Institute of Technology and his colleagues launched the Microwave Array Power Transfer LEO Experiment (MAPLE) to space in January 2023. Two months later, they successfully beamed the first power to Earth, after which they ran the experiment for a further eight months.

MAPLE consists of a lightweight array of microwave-producing chips that can direct a beam to a specified location, though it can’t yet generate these microwaves from sunlight.

The team found that MAPLE could send 100 milliwatts of power through space and quickly refocus the beam to new locations. Over the course of the experiment, the team attempted to send power to Earth three times, receiving just 1 milliwatt on the ground each time.

A fully functional system capable of transmitting 100 megawatts, enough to power tens of thousands of homes, would need to be around a square kilometre in size, compared with the 150 square centimetres or so of MAPLE.

“The size of the system is many orders of magnitude smaller than the system that you would need to use for a full-blown application, but the key part here is to have the technology demonstrated in space,” says Hajimiri.

 

Source: Satellite beamed power from space to Earth for the first time ever | New Scientist

Deep Abandoned Mine In Finland To Be Turned Into A Giant Gravity Battery

[…]

the idea behind gravity batteries is really simple. During times when energy sources are producing more energy than the demand, the excess energy is used to move weights (in the form of water or sometimes sand) upwards, turning it into potential energy. When the power supply is low, these objects can then be released, powering turbines as our good friend (and deadly enemy) gravity sends them towards the Earth.

 

Though generally gravity batteries take the form of reservoirs, abandoned mines moving sand or other weights up when excess power is being produced have also been suggested. Scottish company Gravitricity created a system of winches and hoists that can be installed in such disused mineshafts. The company will install the system in the 1,400-meter-deep (4,600 feet) zinc and copper mine in Pyhäjärvi, Finland.

[…]

Source: Deep Abandoned Mine In Finland To Be Turned Into A Giant Gravity Battery | IFLScience

Turning glass into a ‘transparent’ light-energy harvester

What happens when you expose tellurite glass to femtosecond laser light? That’s the question that Gözden Torun at the Galatea Lab at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, in collaboration with Tokyo Tech scientists, aimed to answer in her thesis work when she made the discovery that may one day turn windows into single material light-harvesting and sensing devices. The results are published in Physical Review Applied.

Interested in how the atoms in the tellurite would reorganize when exposed to fast pulses of high energy femtosecond laser light, the scientists stumbled upon the formation of nanoscale tellurium and tellurium oxide crystals, both etched into the glass, precisely where the glass had been exposed. That was the eureka moment for the scientists, since a semiconducting material exposed to daylight may lead to the generation of electricity.

“Tellurium being semiconducting, based on this finding we wondered if it would be possible to write durable patterns on the tellurite glass surface that could reliably induce electricity when exposed to light, and the answer is yes,” explains Yves Bellouard who runs EPFL’s Galatea Laboratory. “An interesting twist to the technique is that no additional materials are needed in the process. All you need is tellurite glass and a femtosecond laser to make an active photoconductive material.”

Using tellurite glass produced by colleagues at Tokyo Tech, the EPFL team brought their expertise in technology to modify the glass and analyze the effect of the laser. After exposing a simple line pattern on the surface of a tellurite glass 1 cm in diameter, Torun found that it could generate a current when exposing it to UV light and the , and this, reliably for months.

“It’s fantastic, we’re locally turning glass into a semiconductor using light,” says Yves Bellouard. “We’re essentially transforming materials into something else, perhaps approaching the dream of the alchemist.”

More information: Gözden Torun et al, Femtosecond-laser direct-write photoconductive patterns on tellurite glass, Physical Review Applied (2024). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevApplied.21.014008

Source: Turning glass into a ‘transparent’ light-energy harvester