Solar Energy

Tech’s green wave hits choppy waters

Published

2 weeks ago

November 20, 2024

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Tech’s green wave hits choppy waters

By Joseph BOYLE

Lisbon (AFP) Nov 13, 2024

Tech entrepreneurs have spent years selling the dream that we can save the planet without changing our ways, but the current focus of innovation is dividing experts and investors.

The tech industry loves splashy world-saving ideas and spends billions on the hunt for new energy sources, often clashing with calls from activists and experts simply to use less energy.

The Web Summit in Lisbon this week, one of Europe’s biggest tech events, gave top billing to a Californian firm called Twelve that claims to be able to make sustainable jet fuel out of the carbon dioxide in the air.

“In a lot of ways we’re mimicking trees and plants,” Twelve cofounder Etosha Cave told the audience, describing a process that takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and converts it into fuel.

Cave painted a picture of a future where her company’s tech could power long-haul flights and even help exploit mineral wealth on Mars — a utopian vision that has helped her firm raise some $650 million.

The interviewer on stage with Cave told her it “sounds like magic”.

Climate expert Mike Berners-Lee, a professor at the University of Lancaster in the UK, told AFP that world-changing claims about sustainable fuel or new energy sources needed to be viewed sceptically.

“Everyone’s looking for a silver bullet that would mean we wouldn’t have to do anything difficult,” he said.

More broadly, the green wave in tech is entering a tricky period.

While Twelve and other major startups are attracting massive investment, Bloomberg recently reported that funding for climate tech was on track to fall 50 percent this year compared with last year.

– Big losses –

And climate tech has long been subject to the whims of politics and global economic trends.

The current green wave is the second this century.

The first — now called Clean Tech 1.0 — was fostered by US politician Al Gore, whose calls for funding were met with an estimated $25 billion of investments.

The period ended in 2011 after the global financial crisis ended cheap loans and China ramped up its solar panel output, wiping out most US startups and roughly half of investors’ cash.

But those investments were not wasted.

They led to an era of inexpensive solar and wind power and laid the foundations for the electric vehicle revolution.

Clean Tech 2.0 began around 2018 as companies and governments committed to net-zero carbon targets laid out by the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

However, the US has re-elected Donald Trump as president with support from many leaders in the tech industry.

Trump — an avowed climate-change denier whose campaigning slogan on fossil fuels was “dig baby dig” — withdrew the US from the agreement in his first term and analysts believe he will do the same again.

And the global fight against climate change is still fraught, with national leaders meeting for the UN’s COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan this week divided on the idea of phasing out fossil fuels, the main driver of global warming.

– ‘Severe reservations’ –

All this leaves climate tech in a precarious moment, and startups without world-saving narratives are scrambling to get funding from a smaller pot.

Web Summit hosted dozens of them, hawking everything from blockchain-backed “virtual power plants” to smart widgets for stopping household leaks.

While some experts are cynical about the utility of these “shark tank” style events, Elisabeth Gilmore, a professor of environmental engineering at Carleton University in Canada, said she had no problem with young entrepreneurs making big claims.

“These innovations should be eyebrow-raising,” she told AFP.

She said events like the Web Summit could focus minds, but cautioned that entrepreneurs must look beyond the profit motive and make products that help communities.

Berners-Lee questioned whether some of the most eye-catching ideas could be as good as they sounded.

“If these are real solutions that are ready to go, if they’re as good as they look, they would be scaling up like crazy,” he said.

Sustainable jet fuel, he said, was one of the toughest nuts to crack and would need major breakthroughs in storage and power usage.

Cave conceded on stage that Twelve needed “utility-level” renewables as well as power from the grid for her firm’s plants, though she said it used far less land and energy than biofuels.

More broadly, Berners-Lee questioned whether the search for new power sources should even be an aim for humanity.

“I would have severe reservations about giving humanity an unlimited energy supply beyond carbon — we’re causing enough damage with the energy we’ve already got,” he said.

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Solar Energy

Bolivia announces $1 bn deal with China to build lithium plants

Published

6 days ago

November 27, 2024

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Bolivia announces bn deal with China to build lithium plants

Bolivia announces $1 bn deal with China to build lithium plants

by AFP Staff Writers

La Paz (AFP) Nov 27, 2024

Bolivia said Tuesday it had signed a $1 billion deal with China’s CBC, a subsidiary of the world’s largest lithium battery producer CATL, to build two lithium carbonate production plants in the country’s southwest.

Bolivia’s state-owned Bolivia Lithium Deposits (YLB) said the plants — one with an annual capacity of 10,000 tons of lithium carbonate and the other of 25,000 – would be situated in the vast Uyuni salt flats.

Lithium, nicknamed “white gold,” is a key component in the production of batteries for electric vehicles and mobile phones.

Bolivia claims to have the world’s largest lithium deposits.

President Luis Arce, who presided over Tuesday’s signing ceremony, said it paved the way for Bolivia to become “a very important player in determining the international price of lithium.”

The deal follows an earlier agreement reached last year between Russia’s Uranium One Group and YLB to build a $970 million lithium extraction facility, also in Uyuni.

Both deals have yet to be approved by Bolivia’s parliament.

Arce announced that negotiations were underway with China’s Citic Guoan Group for a third contract.

“We hope to close that deal as soon as possible,” he said.

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Solar Energy

The future of AI with solar-powered synaptic devices

Published

6 days ago

November 27, 2024

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The future of AI with solar-powered synaptic devices

by Riko Seibo

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Nov 26, 2024

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly relied upon for predicting critical events such as heart attacks, natural disasters, and infrastructure failures. These applications demand technologies capable of rapidly processing data. One such promising approach is reservoir computing, particularly physical reservoir computing (PRC), known for its efficiency in handling time-series data with minimal power consumption. Optoelectronic artificial synapses in PRC, mimicking human neural synaptic structures, are poised to enable advanced real-time data processing and recognition akin to the human visual system.

Existing self-powered optoelectronic synaptic devices, however, struggle to process time-series data across diverse timescales, which is essential for applications in environmental monitoring, infrastructure maintenance, and healthcare.

Addressing this challenge, researchers at Tokyo University of Science (TUS), led by Associate Professor Takashi Ikuno and including Hiroaki Komatsu and Norika Hosoda, have developed an innovative self-powered dye-sensitized solar cell-based optoelectronic photopolymeric human synapse. This groundbreaking device, featuring a controllable time constant based on input light intensity, represents a major advancement in the field. The study, published on October 28, 2024, in ‘ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces’, highlights the potential of this technology.

Dr. Ikuno explained, “To process time-series input optical data with various time scales, it is essential to fabricate devices according to the desired time scale. Inspired by the afterimage phenomenon of the eye, we came up with a novel optoelectronic human synaptic device that can serve as a computational framework for power-saving edge AI optical sensors.”

The new device integrates squarylium derivative-based dyes, incorporating optical input, AI computation, analog output, and power supply at the material level. It demonstrates synaptic plasticity, exhibiting features such as paired-pulse facilitation and depression in response to light intensity. The device achieves high computational performance in time-series data processing tasks while maintaining low power consumption, regardless of the input light pulse width.

Remarkably, the device achieved over 90% accuracy in classifying human movements, including bending, jumping, running, and walking, when used as the reservoir layer of PRC. Its power consumption is only 1% of that required by traditional systems, significantly reducing carbon emissions. Dr. Ikuno emphasized, “We have demonstrated for the first time in the world that the developed device can operate with very low power consumption and yet identify human motion with a high accuracy rate.”

This innovation holds significant promise for edge AI applications, including surveillance cameras, automotive sensors, and health monitoring systems. “This invention can be used as a massively popular edge AI optical sensor that can be attached to any object or person,” noted Dr. Ikuno. He further highlighted its potential to improve vehicle energy efficiency and reduce costs in standalone smartwatches and medical devices.

The novel solar cell-based device could redefine energy-efficient edge AI sensors across various applications, marking a significant leap forward in both technology and sustainability.

Research Report:Self-Powered Dye-Sensitized Solar-Cell-Based Synaptic Devices for Multi-Scale Time-Series Data Processing in Physical Reservoir Computing

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Solar Energy

Decarbonizing heavy industry with thermal batteries

Published

6 days ago

November 27, 2024

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Decarbonizing heavy industry with thermal batteries

by Zach Winn | MIT News

Boston MA (SPX) Nov 27, 2024

Whether you’re manufacturing cement, steel, chemicals, or paper, you need a large amount of heat. Almost without exception, manufacturers around the world create that heat by burning fossil fuels.

In an effort to clean up the industrial sector, some startups are changing manufacturing processes for specific materials. Some are even changing the materials themselves. Daniel Stack SM ’17, PhD ’21 is trying to address industrial emissions across the board by replacing the heat source.

Since coming to MIT in 2014, Stack has worked to develop thermal batteries that use electricity to heat up a conductive version of ceramic firebricks, which have been used as heat stores and insulators for centuries. In 2021, Stack co-founded Electrified Thermal Solutions, which has since demonstrated that its firebricks can store heat efficiently for hours and discharge it by heating air or gas up to 3,272 degrees Fahrenheit – hot enough to power the most demanding industrial applications.

Achieving temperatures north of 3,000 F represents a breakthrough for the electric heating industry, as it enables some of the world’s hardest-to-decarbonize sectors to utilize renewable energy for the first time. It also unlocks a new, low-cost model for using electricity when it’s at its cheapest and cleanest.

“We have a global perspective at Electrified Thermal, but in the U.S. over the last five years, we’ve seen an incredible opportunity emerge in energy prices that favors flexible offtake of electricity,” Stack says. “Throughout the middle of the country, especially in the wind belt, electricity prices in many places are negative for more than 20 percent of the year, and the trend toward decreasing electricity pricing during off-peak hours is a nationwide phenomenon. Technologies like our Joule Hive Thermal Battery will enable us to access this inexpensive, clean electricity and compete head to head with fossil fuels on price for industrial heating needs, without even factoring in the positive climate impact.”

A new approach to an old technology

Stack’s research plans changed quickly when he joined MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering as a master’s student in 2014.

“I went to MIT excited to work on the next generation of nuclear reactors, but what I focused on almost from day one was how to heat up bricks,” Stack says. “It wasn’t what I expected, but when I talked to my advisor, [Principal Research Scientist] Charles Forsberg, about energy storage and why it was valuable to not just nuclear power but the entire energy transition, I realized there was no project I would rather work on.”

Firebricks are ubiquitous, inexpensive clay bricks that have been used for millennia in fireplaces and ovens. In 2017, Forsberg and Stack co-authored a paper showing firebricks’ potential to store heat from renewable resources, but the system still used electric resistance heaters – like the metal coils in toasters and space heaters – which limited its temperature output.

For his doctoral work, Stack worked with Forsberg to make firebricks that were electrically conductive, replacing the resistance heaters so the bricks produced the heat directly.

“Electric heaters are your biggest limiter: They burn out too fast, they break down, they don’t get hot enough,” Stack explains. “The idea was to skip the heaters because firebricks themselves are really cheap, abundant materials that can go to flame-like temperatures and hang out there for days.”

Forsberg and Stacks were able to create conductive firebricks by tweaking the chemical composition of traditional firebricks. Electrified Thermal’s bricks are 98 percent similar to existing firebricks and are produced using the same processes, allowing existing manufacturers to make them inexpensively.

Toward the end of his PhD program, Stack realized the invention could be commercialized. He started taking classes at the MIT Sloan School of Management and spending time at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship. He also entered the StartMIT program and the I-Corps program, and received support from the U.S. Department of Energy and MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service (VMS).

“Through the Boston ecosystem, the MIT ecosystem, and with help from the Department of Energy, we were able to launch this from the lab at MIT,” Stack says. “What we spun out was an electrically conductive firebrick, or what we refer to as an e-Brick.”

Electrified Thermal contains its firebrick arrays in insulated, off-the-shelf metal boxes. Although the system is highly configurable depending on the end use, the company’s standard system can collect and release about 5 megawatts of energy and store about 25 megawatt-hours.

The company has demonstrated its system’s ability to produce high temperatures and has been cycling its system at its headquarters in Medford, Massachusetts. That work has collectively earned Electrified Thermal $40 million from various the Department of Energy offices to scale the technology and work with manufacturers.

“Compared to other electric heating, we can run hotter and last longer than any other solution on the market,” Stack says. “That means replacing fossil fuels at a lot of industrial sites that couldn’t otherwise decarbonize.”

Scaling to solve a global problem

Electrified Thermal is engaging with hundreds of industrial companies, including manufacturers of cement, steel, glass, basic and specialty chemicals, food and beverage, and pulp and paper.

“The industrial heating challenge affects everyone under the sun,” Stack says. “They all have fundamentally the same problem, which is getting their heat in a way that is affordable and zero carbon for the energy transition.”

The company is currently building a megawatt-scale commercial version of its system, which it expects to be operational in the next seven months.

“Next year will be a huge proof point to the industry,” Stack says. “We’ll be using the commercial system to showcase a variety of operating points that customers need to see, and we’re hoping to be running systems on customer sites by the end of the year. It’ll be a huge achievement and a first for electric heating because no other solution in the market can put out the kind of temperatures that we can put out.”

By working with manufacturers to produce its firebricks and casings, Electrified Thermal hopes to be able to deploy its systems rapidly and at low cost across a massive industry.

“From the very beginning, we engineered these e-bricks to be rapidly scalable and rapidly producible within existing supply chains and manufacturing processes,” Stack says. “If you want to decarbonize heavy industry, there will be no cheaper way than turning electricity into heat from zero-carbon electricity assets. We’re seeking to be the premier technology that unlocks those capabilities, with double digit percentages of global energy flowing through our system as we accomplish the energy transition.”

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