Renewable Energy

July 2017
Maximum Efficiency for Inverters

Galvanic isolation between the high-voltage and low-voltage sides.

TDK has joined forces with Infineon Technologies to develop a design for xEV inverters that achieves a very high efficiency of over 98 percent over a power range of 10 kW to 150 kW. This success has been achieved by matching of the Infineon IGBT module and the EPCOS and TDK passive components. The new Infin
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Date:
07/25/2017
Wuerth Elektronik and FELA collaborating on research into new technology
Despite current stability and positive sales growth in the circuit board indus-try, it must be presumed that consolidation has not yet come to an end. Circuit board manufacturers are facing enormous price erosion caused by Asian circuit boards, as well as rising manufacturing costs in Europe and generally intense g
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Date:
07/21/2017
How Enzymes Produce Hydrogen

Martin Winkler (right) and Thomas Happe (left) have captured an enzyme's transient intermediate state.

Researchers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and the Freie Universität Berlin have clarified the crucial catalytic step in the production of hydrogen by enzymes. The enzymes, called [FeFe]-hydrogenases, efficiently turn electrons and protons into hydrogen. They are thus a candidate for the biotechnological production of
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Date:
07/21/2017
New Hydrocarbon Fuel Cells With High Efficiency and Low Cost

This is the exsolution of a B-site cation with oxygen from layered perovskite in a reducing atmosphere.

The commercialization of the 'natural gas fuel cell' has finally come to the fore, thanks to the recent development of electrode materials that maintain long-term stability in hydrocarbon fuels. Advantage of using this material includes that it uses internal transition metal as a further catalyst in a fuel cell oper
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Date:
07/18/2017
New Biofuel Technology Significantly Cuts Production Time

Cigdem Eskicioglu is a professor of engineering at UBC's Okanagan Campus.

New research from a professor of engineering at UBC's Okanagan Campus might hold the key to biofuels that are cheaper, safer and much faster to produce. "Methane is a biofuel commonly used in electricity generation and is produced by fermenting organic material," says Cigdem Eskicioglu, an associa
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Date:
07/13/2017
Meniscus-Assisted Technique Produces High-Efficiency Perovskite PV Films

This is an optical micrograph of perovskite crystal grains crafted by meniscus-assisted solution printing.

A new low-temperature solution printing technique allows fabrication of high-efficiency perovskite solar cells with large crystals intended to minimize current-robbing grain boundaries. The meniscus-assisted solution printing (MASP) technique boosts power conversion efficiencies to nearly 20 percent by controlling cr
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Date:
07/10/2017
New Material may Help Cut Battery Costs for Electric Cars, Cellphones

Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas and Seoul National University have designed a novel battery cathode material that offers a potentially lower-cost, more eco-friendly option to lithium-ion batteries. Their sodium-ion design, which retains the high energy density of a lithium-ion cathode, replaces the most of the lithium atoms (green) with sodium (yellow). The layered structure of the new material also incorporates manganese (purple) and oxygen (red). The research is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

In the battle of the batteries, lithium-ion technology is the reigning champion, powering that cellphone in your pocket as well as an increasing number of electric vehicles on the road. But a novel manganese and sodium-ion-based material developed at The University of Texas at Dallas, in collaboration with Seou
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Date:
07/07/2017
Cutting the Cost of Ethanol, Other Biofuels and Gasoline

Enzymes, genetically engineered to avoid sticking to the surfaces of biomass such as corn stalks, may lower costs in the production of cellulose-based biofuels like ethanol.

Biofuels like the ethanol in U.S. gasoline could get cheaper thanks to experts at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and Michigan State University. They've demonstrated how to design and genetically engineer enzyme surfaces so they bind less to corn stalks and other cellulosic biomass, reducing enzyme costs in b
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Date:
07/06/2017
A Whole-Genome Sequenced Rice Mutant Resource for the Study of Biofuel Feedstocks

Genome-wide distribution of fast-neutron-induced mutations in the Kitaake rice mutant population (green). The genome-wide distribution of mutations indicates a non-biased saturation of the genome. Colored lines (center) represent translocations of DNA fragments from one chromosome to another.

Rice is a staple food for over half of the world's population and a model for studies of candidate bioenergy grasses such as sorghum, switchgrass, and Miscanthus. To optimize crops for biofuel production, scientists are seeking to identify genes that control key traits such as yield, resistance to disease, and wat
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Date:
07/05/2017
International Team Develops New Way to Produce Pure Hydrogen Efficiently

Christopher J. Kiely is Harold B. Chambers Senior Professor, Materials Science and Engineering at Lehigh University.

Christopher J. Kiely, Harold B. Chambers Senior Professor, Materials Science and Engineering at Lehigh University, and an international team have developed a new low-temperature catalyst for producing high-purity hydrogen gas while simultaneously using up carbon monoxide (CO). The discovery, described in a pap
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Date:
07/05/2017
CAS researchers develop selective electrocatalysts to boost direct methanol fuel cell performance

These are DMFC assemblies. Schematic illustration showing a DMFC fabricated with selective electrocatalysts at the anode and cathode chambers. Inlet is the photograph of the assembled cell.

A research group from the Institute of Process Engineering (IPE), Chinese Academy of Sciences recently reported the development of a new technology to boost performance of direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) using high-concentration methanol as fuel, shedding some light on the design of clean and affordable alternative en
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Date:
07/03/2017
A member of the Faculty of Biology of the Lomonosov Moscow State University in cooperation with his colleagues has optimized and characterized TiO₂-based solar cell design using diverse plant pigments. Two types of solar cells with two photosensitizers: thylakoid membrane preparations and anthocyanin-enriched ra
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Date:
07/03/2017
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