Energy

I've watched a kettle send my energy monitor soaring, waited through winter mornings for my solar panels to wake up, and wished for a bigger battery in summer. BLUETTI's expandable Apex 200 looks tempting, but is more storage really the answer?

Thor, the Norse god of thunder, is famous for conjuring electricity from thin air. It turns out you don't need a magical hammer to do this, as scientists have created a device that harvests electricity from radiation in its environment.

The small intestine has several functions, including chemical digestion, immune defense, and now, apparently, inspiring better battery designs. Researchers have copied the shape and material of villi to create more productive microbial fuel cells.

Hydrogen production from electrolysis is typically a relatively complex, energy-intensive process. So is wastewater treatment. Yet, scientists have developed an artificial “leaf” that can do both using only solar power.

Germany is taking wind power to new heights. The world’s tallest turbine now stands 365 m (1,198 ft) in Schipkau, where it aims to tap stronger, steadier winds and test whether existing wind farms could grow upward with a second story.

In the near future, a building's emergency lighting, fire alarms, sensors and other items could be powered not by generators or batteries, but by the actual structural material. That's because scientists have developed a cement-based supercapacitor.

Cars spend most of their time parked, just sitting around and taking up space in parking lots. But a parking lot full of EVs could potentially become a powerful energy source, supplying electricity to the grid.

For centuries, humans have obtained fuel from the remains of organisms that lived millions of years ago, seawater, decaying biomass and now, from cow's milk ... or more accurately, salty whey, a by-product produced during the manufacture of cheese.

You can’t brighten a room with darkness, you can’t dry a towel by soaking it, and you surely can’t cool things with heat. Right? Well, maybe. Scientists have just built a solid-state cooling device that can use heat to generate cold.

Some companies build a desalination plant and call it a day; others build a data center, while others, still, build power generation facilities. One project wants to build all three …into one facility …offshore …on a movable ship.

If anyone could defeat the “man of steel,” it would be a “man of stainless steel.” However, even stainless steel has its electrochemical limits. Scientists have created a version that can withstand conditions only a “man of titanium” typically does.

Hot-air drying is important in pretty much all the modern industries you can think of. It’s used to dry fruits and vegetables, preserve grains and spices, and make everything from powdered milk and instant coffee to fertilizers, fabrics, and medicines. Evaporating all that moisture with hot air takes a lot of energy. Most of that energy still comes from burning natural gas, and there are a few serious issues with that.

The United States has about 94,000 tonnes of nuclear waste in storage, though that's a bit like calling all that gold in Fort Knox "waste." A new technique is being developed to recover its trapped value, unlocking billions of dollars in reusable fuel and high-value isotopes.

“Under the sea, Darling it’s better, Take it from me!” sang the crab in The Little Mermaid, and he may be right. Scientists say 0.1% of the world’s seawater has enough critical elements to last 50,000 years, and are now exploring their extraction.

General Atomics has received tax-credit funding from the state of California to design and develop a new facility in San Diego to test a key fusion reactor component that will allow the reactor to create its own fuel while generating power.