Research

Temple University researchers have found that managed sheep grazing on an acre of recovering agricultural soil with native plants may sequester 1 ton of carbon per year, which could accumulate for 12 to 15 years before reaching saturation.

Scientists in South Korea developed a porous carbon material that, when applied as a coating to the separator film in a lithium-sulfur battery, was shown to reduce an unwanted side effect and improve the battery’s performance and reliability. The coating is based on methylene blue, a type of salt commonly used in textile dying.

Australia’s electricity retailers have been ranked from best to worst in terms of green credentials, igniting calls for retailers to make emissions information public and transparent.

Perovskite-silicon tandem cells offer one of the surest pathways to much higher solar efficiencies, one that has moved close to commercialisation in the past few years. Much of the work getting to this stage has naturally focused on developing a viable perovskite top cell. Optimisations to the silicon layer underneath, however, will also be important to the overall device function and efficiency. Scientists in Germany examined five different silicon cell concepts similar to those in mass production today, finding that with a few optimisations these could reach efficiencies up to 30.4%.

A pair of researchers from the University of California San Diego have proposed to precompute certain data when the grid is flooded with solar or wind power, and then store it on servers for later use.

Researchers from Finland and Sweden have reviewed different ways to store compressed gaseous hydrogen, including storage vessels, geological storage, and other underground options.

Conceived by scientists in China, the device combines an integrated carbon-based perovskite solar cell module with a rechargeable aqueous zinc metal cell. The proposed system achieved an overall efficiency of 6.4%, and a steady operation for more than 200 cycles with little performance degradation.

The uptake of EVs in the years ahead will add up to staggering battery capacity, mostly sitting idle on driveways. The two-way flow of electricity from EV batteries, known as vehicle to grid, could not only enable power systems to rely on intermittent renewables, but could also be the trump card for network operators to respond to grid disturbances. However, there are still a few catches to be worked out, as Marija Maisch explains.

Researchers at the Australian National University say they have set a perovskite solar cell efficiency record at 22.6%. This efficiency, however, appears to be lower than that achieved in January by a group of Swiss and Korean researchers who used quantum dots to achieve an efficiency of 25.7% in an area of 0.08cm2 and 23.3% in 1cm2.

U.S. researchers have investigated how rooftop PV systems may affect air and building temperature in urban environments and, conversely, how the urban heat island (UHI) effect may have a negative impact on PV system performance. Their work considered urban air temperature, urban air pollution, the partial shading of the PV system, soiling, building heating and cooling loads, and outdoor shade.