In order to satisfy growing energy demands, scientists are looking for ways to develop and deploy a broad range of alternative energy sources that can be both efficient and environmentally friendly. At Missouri University of Science and Technology, a team is working to make clean energy more accessible through the development of a cheap, simple way to split hydrogen and oxygen through a new electrodeposition method.

ECS member and head researcher in the project, Jay Switzer, believes that the new development will produce highly efficient solar cells. He and ECS student member James Hill predict the process will be able to effectively gather solar energy for use as fuel, further increasing the amount of hydrogen available for fuel usage.

“The work helps to solve the problem that solar energy is intermittent,” says Switzer. “Obviously, we cannot have the sun produce energy on one spot the entire day, but our process converts the energy into a form that is more easily stored.”

Electrodeposition for Hydrogen

This from Missouri University of Science and Technology:

Switzer and his team use silicon wafers to absorb solar energy. The silicon is submerged in water, with the front surface exposed to a solar energy simulator and the back surface covered in electrodes to conduct the energy. The silicon has cobalt nano-islands formed onto it using a process called electrodeposition.

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Communities are facing pressing water and sanitation issues across the globe. Recently, ECS tackled this issue through a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to establish the Science for Solving Society’s Problems Challenge. While ECS is working on a global level to encourage life-saving research in water and sanitation, researchers at Stanford University and working on innovative solutions to these issues in their own back yard.

Solving Sanitation

The water infrastructure that is currently in place in many semiarid and highly populated regions is reaching its limit. When taking recent droughts and population booms into consideration, many communities are beginning to fear water shortages. However, environmental engineer and Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment Senior Fellow, Richard Luthy, believes that answer to this problem has been right in front of us all along.

“These are billion-dollar problems,” said Luthy. “Meeting water needs in the future is going to depend a lot on how we reuse water and what we do with stormwater.”

Capture and Reuse Stormwater

Luthy is currently looking at ways to capture and treat stormwater to assist in alleviating current water supply issues in densely populated, semiarid environments. The environmental engineer is proposing a stormwater capture center that would be situated on 50-acres of currently unused space. Not only could the treatment plant help secure water infrastructure and the needs of the community, but it could also help the environment.

With stormwater comes runoff. This runoff is contaminated with harmful chemicals and often makes its way into oceans and streams. By recovering and cleaning a large portion of the stormwater, researchers believe that we will see a decrease in water pollution due to runoff.

Wind energy has been rising in the ranks when it comes to renewable energy sources. In the United States alone, wind energy produces enough electricity to power roughly 18 million homes—with about 48,000 utility-scale wind turbines operating nationally. While wind energy shows promising potential, there is still room for scientists to tweak this technology in order to yield higher efficiency levels.

The latest prototype of a new wind turbine system was developed with that goal in mind. The new system from researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) is set to yield 8.5 percent more electricity than current wind turbines.

Powering the Future

While wind turbines are a promising source of alternative energy, they tend to produce a decent amount of surplus energy that has not been able to be harvested and utilized. The newly developed turbine prototype examines that issue and can now store surplus energy for later use as electricity.

When comparing the new prototype and current generation wind turbines, the new turbines have the potential to yield up to an extra 16,400 kwh of electricity per month—coming in around 18 times the amount of energy a single United States household uses in a month.

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An interdisciplinary team has set a new record for direct solar water splitting efficiency. Surpassing the 17 year old record of 12.4 percent, the new achieved efficiency level of 14 percent guarantees a promising future for solar hydrogen production.

While the potential for renewable energy is available across the globe, the ability to harvest and store this energy is not. One solution to achieving global renewable energy is through artificial photosynthesis.

How to Power the Future

Much like organic photosynthesis, artificial photosynthesis coverts sunlight into chemical energy. This highly-researched concept also has the ability to be carried into semiconductor technology.

Essentially, researchers can take the sun’s electrical power and split water into oxygen and hydrogen with high energy density levels. This type of development has the potential to replace current fossil fuels and create a type of energy that does not emit harmful carbon dioxide.

The concept has not been utilized on a commercial level due to the high cost. However, this new development could raise the efficiency levels to a high enough percentage to make the process economically viable.

This from the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres:

Lead author Matthias May … processed and surveyed about one hundred samples in his excellent doctoral dissertation to achieve this. The fundamental components are tandem solar cells of what are known as III-V semiconductors. Using a now patented photo-electrochemical process, May could modify certain surfaces of these semiconductor systems in such a way that they functioned better in water splitting.

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One of the more common issues with solar cell efficiency is their inability to move with the sun as it crosses the sky. While large scale solar panels can be fitted with bulky motorized trackers, those with rooftop solar panels do not have that luxury. In an effort to solve this issues, researchers are drawing some inspiration from art in their mission toward higher solar efficiency.

Scientists are applying some of the shapes and designs from the ancient art of kirigami—the Japanese art of paper cutting—to develop a solar cell that can capture up to 36 percent more energy due to the design’s ability to grab more sun.

“The design takes what a large tracking solar panel does and condenses it into something that is essentially flat,” said Aaron Lamoureux, a doctoral student in materials science and engineering and first author on the paper.

In the United States alone, there are currently over 20,000 MW of operational solar capacity. Nearly 640,000 U.S. homes have opted to rely on solar power. However, if the home panels were able to follow the sun’s movement on a daily basis, we could see a dramatic increase in efficiency and usage.

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Scientists working in the field of synthetic photosynthesis have recently developed an artificial “leaf” the can produce natural gas from carbon dioxide. This marks a major step toward producing renewable fuels.

Through a combination of semiconducting nanowires and bacteria, the researchers were able to design an artificial plant that can make natural gases using only sunlight—making the likelihood of a cleaner future more tangible.

From Organic to Synthetic

The roots of this development stem for the natural process of photosynthesis. Instead of the natural byproduct of organic photosynthesis (sugar), these scientists have produced methane.

“We’re good at generating electrons from light efficiently, but chemical synthesis always limited our systems in the past,” said Peidong Yang, head researcher in the study. “One purpose of this experiment was to show we could integrate bacterial catalysts with semiconductor technology. This lets us understand and optimize a truly synthetic photosynthesis system.”

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Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have the potential to revolutionize the transportation system. From aiding the fight against climate change through clean emissions to reducing dependency on fossil fuels, hydrogen could potential help power the future and change mobility. Automakers believe that by 2020, there will be tens of thousands of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on the road. In order to do this, we’re looking towards scientists to make innovation developments leading toward cheaper and more efficient technologies.

Creating a Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle

Shawn Litster, ECS member and associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University, is doing just that. Lister, along with ECS student member William Epting, is focusing his attention on energy technologies that utilize electrochemical devices to further research in the development of the near-perfect fuel cell vehicle.

(Check out a past meeting abstract by the two on fuel cell electrode analysis.)

“We’re looking for ways to minimize the impact of transportation on society and the environment,” said Litster.

Litster and his team have discovered that one of the reasons for the high cost of development for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is the nanoscale polymer films. While these films offer a host of positive qualities, they require expensive platinum to operate properly.

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Batteries are a critical part of our everyday lives. From phones to laptops to cars to grid energy storage—batteries are essential to many devices. Lithium ion batteries have taken the lead in battery technology, with lithium iron phosphate batteries (LFP) performing particularly well. While it was known that LFP batteries could charge quickly and withstand many factors, the reasons for this were unknown until know.

A team of researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institute and Toyota Central R&D Labs has discovered why LFP batteries can be recharged so rapidly. The team is comprised of ECS member Tsuyoshi Sasaki, past members Michael Hess and Petr Novak, and Journal of The Electrochemical Society (JES) published author Claire Villevieille.

(PS: Check out their past paper, “Surface/Interface Study on Full xLi₂MnO₃·(1 − x)LiMO₂ (M = Ni, Mn, Co)/Graphite Cells.”)

This from Paul Scherrer Institute:

The reason: the step-like concentration gradient gives way to a gentle, ramp-like progression of the lithium concentration. This is because, at higher voltages, the lithium ions involved in the charging process are distributed across the volume of the electrode particles for brief moments as opposed to being herded together in a thin layer boundary. As a result, the lithium can be set in motion more easily during charging, without the need for more energy to be added to negotiate the layer boundary.

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A team from Rice University, led by assistant professor and ECS member Isabell Thomann, has demonstrate a highly efficient way to harness energy from the sun though the splitting of water molecules.

Through the configuration of light-activated gold nanoparticles, the team was able to successfully harvest and transfer energy to what the scientists refer to as “hot electrons.”

“Hot electrons have the potential to drive very useful chemical reactions, but they decay very rapidly, and people have struggled to harness their energy,” said Thomann. “For example, most of the energy losses in today’s best photovoltaic solar panels are the result of hot electrons that cool within a few trillionths of a second and release their energy as wasted heat.”

If the hot electrons could be capture before they have the opportunity to cool, society could be seeing a significant increase to energy conversion efficiencies.

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Do your old, damp coffee grounds have the potential to save the world? New research from the journal Nanotechnology states that the same coffee grounds you toss in the trash every day actually have the ability to store methane.

ECS Fellow Meyya Meyyappan and a team of researchers found that by combining the used coffee grounds with potassium hydroxide, a material with the ability to store substantial amounts of methane was created.

Coffee Grounds Fight Climate Change

In light of global warming and the damaging effects rising temperatures and increased greenhouse gas emissions have on the planet, the ability to store harmful methane is critical.

Methane is a preventable greenhouse gas that accounts for about 10 percent of all harmful emissions derived from human activity. While methane doesn’t stay in the atmosphere as long as the more commonly talked about carbon dioxide, it is far more devastating to the climate due to its extreme efficiency in absorbing heat. In fact, methane is about 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

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