Posted Sep 10, 2013, 4:59 PM
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: lodged against an abutment
Posts: 7,556
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Quote:
First uses of new solar energy technology: Killing germs on medical, dental instruments
INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 8, 2013 — A revolutionary new solar energy technology that turns water into steam without boiling the entire container of water has become the basis for new devices to sanitize medical and dental instruments and human waste in developing countries, scientists said here today.
Prototypes of the devices, which need no electricity or fuel, were the topic of one of the keynote addresses at the opening of the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society. The meeting, which features almost 7,000 reports on new advances in science and other topics, continues through Thursday in the Indiana Convention Center and downtown hotels.
Naomi Halas, D.Sc., pointed out that almost 2 billion people live in areas of the world without a regular supply of electricity. That electricity is key to using machines called autoclaves, which produce scorching-hot steam to sterilize medical and dental instruments. Without that basic machine, doctors must rely on chemicals, which can be costly and difficult to transport, to prevent the spread of germs and disease from medical and dental instruments.
“We have developed a solution, our solar steam technology,” Halas said. She is with Rice University. “It is completely off-grid, uses sunlight as the energy source, is not that large, kills disease-causing microbes effectively and relatively quickly and is easy to operate. This is an incredibly promising technology.”
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http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pr...struments.html
Quote:
Stanford scientists calculate the energy required to store wind and solar power on the grid
Renewable energy holds the promise of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. But there are times when solar and wind farms generate more electricity than is needed by consumers. Storing that surplus energy in batteries for later use seems like an obvious solution, but a new study from Stanford University suggests that might not always be the case.
"We looked at batteries and other promising technologies for storing solar and wind energy on the electrical grid," said Charles Barnhart, the lead author of the study and a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford's Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP).
"Our primary goal was to calculate their overall energetic cost – that is, the total amount of fuel and electricity required to build and operate these storage technologies. We found that when you factor in the energetic costs, grid-scale batteries make sense for storing surplus solar energy, but not for wind."
The study, which is supported by GCEP, is published in the online edition of the journal Energy and Environmental Science.
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http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-ssc090913.php
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Penn Scientists Demonstrate New Method for Harvesting Energy from Light
September 9, 2013
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated a new mechanism for extracting energy from light, a finding that could improve technologies for generating electricity from solar energy and lead to more efficient optoelectronic devices used in communications.
Dawn Bonnell, Penn’s vice provost for research and Trustee Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, led the work, along with David Conklin, a doctoral student. The study involved a collaboration among additional Penn researchers, through the Nano/Bio Interface Center, as well as a partnership with the lab of Michael J. Therien of Duke University.
“We’re excited to have found a process that is much more efficient than conventional photoconduction,” Bonnell said. “Using such an approach could make solar energy harvesting and optoelectronic devices much better.”
The study was published in the journal ACS Nano and was discussed at a press conference at the American Chemical Society National Meeting and Exhibition in Indianapolis today.
The new work centers on plasmonic nanostructures, specifically, materials fabricated from gold particles and light-sensitive molecules of porphyin, of precise sizes and arranged in specific patterns. Plasmons, or a collective oscillation of electrons, can be excited in these systems by optical radiation and induce an electrical current that can move in a pattern determined by the size and layout of the gold particles, as well as the electrical properties of the surrounding environment.
Because these materials can enhance the scattering of light, they have the potential to be used to advantage in a range of technological applications, such as increasing absorption in solar cells.
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http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/news/p...g-energy-light
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