Researchers at the US Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratory have successfully tested a new power system based on a closed-loop Brayton cycle to deliver electricity to the grid. The system could dramatically increase the efficiency of power plants including current and new advanced reactor systems as well as gas-fired and concentrated solar plants.

At the heart of energy conversion, electrons and protons move in an intricate, coordinated dance. Chemists at Yale and in Sweden say they may have learned the steps to a new, photo-chemical rhumba.

Scientists reveal a way to make ammonia from its constituent molecules of nitrogen and hydrogen at ambient pressure.

The nitrate runoff problem, a source of carcinogens and a cause of suffocating algal blooms in U.S. waterways, may not be all gloom and doom. A new study led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign demonstrates an approach for the integrated capture and conversion of nitrate-contaminated waters into valuable ammonia within a single electrochemical cell.

Hundreds of coal power plant sites across the USA could be converted to nuclear plant sites, providing huge decarbonisation gains as well as bringing tangible economic, employment and environmental benefits to the communities where those plants are located, a new US Department of Energy study has found.

In Texas, Vertex Energy announced the successful completion of the startup procedures for its renewable diesel conversion project at its Mobile, Alabama, refining facility. Additionally, the Company announced that it has entered into a new working capital facility with existing liquidity provider, Macquarie Group's Commodities and Global Markets business, to supply the necessary liquidity for […]

From first principles, the energy conversion associated with higher moments is calculated for a plasma that is far from local thermodynamic equilibrium.

In Texas, Prairie Energy Partners, a wholly owned company of Southern Rock Energy Partners, is working to finalize the location of its proposed $5.56 billion and 423-job, next-generation, full conversion crude refinery—with the final two competing sites in Victoria County, Texas, and Payne and Lincoln County, Oklahoma. The refinery complex will reduce and eliminate 95 […]

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversion Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33246857 Points: 1 # Comments: 1

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In California, Vertimass and European Energy have completed a Letter of Intent to integrate technologies for capturing carbon dioxide and converting it into hydrocarbon products around the world, a result that would reduce emissions of carbon dioxide that contribute to climate change.  This unique combination takes advantage of European Energy's expertise in capturing carbon dioxide […]

A team of MIT researchers has demonstrated a way to precisely control the size, composition, and other properties of nanoparticles key to the reactions involved in a variety of clean energy and environmental technologies.

To combine two low-energy photons into one high-energy photon efficiently, the energy must be able to hop freely, but not too quickly, between randomly oriented molecules of a solid. This Kobe University discovery provides a much-needed design guideline for developing materials for more efficient PV cells, displays, or even anti-cancer therapies.

In Alberta, Steeper Energy has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Invest Alberta Corporation (Invest Alberta) to commercialize Steeper's proprietary Hydrofaction technology within Alberta, aligning with Alberta's broader goal of becoming Canada's cleantech leader. The MOU formalizes the intent of Invest Alberta and Steeper to realize the development of a first-of-its-kind Hydrofaction commercial plant in […]

A synthetic carbon-based crystalline material called graphdiyne (GDY) has become a probable key element in driving the next significant leap in battery technology—one not seen since lithium surpassed lead and other heavy metals in the early 1990s.

Using perovskite with existing solar cell technologies can increase their energy conversion efficiencies. It is only about scaling it up reliably now

Borophene, as a rising-star monoelemental two-dimensional (2D) material, has motivated great interest because of its novel properties, such as anisotropic plasmonics, high carrier mobility, mechanical compliance, optical transparency, ultrahigh thermal conductance, and superconductivity. These properties make it an ideal candidate for use in the field of energy, sensors, and information storage. Stimulated by the…

A team of researchers affiliated with several universities in Germany has developed a novel way to store energy captured from the sun for use in conversion to hydrogen fuel. In their paper published in the journal Nature Chemistry, the group describes how they produced a molecule capable of holding energy captured from the sun that could then be used later to produce hydrogen fuel.

Plants convert light into a form of energy that they can use—a molecule called adenosine triphosphate (ATP)—through photosynthesis. This is a complex process that also produces sugar, which the plant can use for energy later, and oxygen. Some bacteria that live in the light-exposed layers of water sources can also convert light to ATP, but the process they use is simpler and less efficient than photosynthesis.…

Where you live can have a big impact on what you pay each year for energy.