The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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Gamblin Artists Colors introduces oil paints pigmented with waste from acidic water draining from old coal mine. Paints throughout the ages have been uniquely colored by crushed gemstones, rare shellfish, and even powdered Egyptian mummies. With that same pioneering spirit, the Portland, Oregon-based Gamblin Artists Colors began recycling dry pigment dust collected by their Torit air filtration system during the 1990s and mixing it into a paint color they called Torrit Grey....
A startup launched by students out of Curtin University's Accelerate program creates graphite from waste carbon. High-purity graphite is substantially sought-after for graphene production and is in heavy demand for the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries. A new technology developed through Curtin University's Accelerate program in Australia, coined RapidGraphite, transforms waste carbon into battery-grade graphite within seconds. The Accelerate program supports early-stage...
The Biden administration's Investing in America Agenda will fund three projects to scale enhanced geothermal systems to power the equivalent of 65 million U.S. homes. The U.S. Department of Energy has high hopes for enhanced geothermal, a process by which manmade hydrothermal power is produced by using hydraulic fracturing techniques to split rock at depths much greater than naturally occurring geothermal wells and injecting water to generate steam, subsequently driving...
Massive geothermal lithium reserves give U.S. leverage while superpowers employ protectionist measures around supply chains. There's a new international race, not into space or to establish military superiority, but to secure critical minerals in a worldwide resource grab for the feedstocks that will fuel a global green energy transition. While we're all on the same side – or, in this case, the same planet – the superpowers have been at odds with how to achieve net-zero car...
Initial studies test graphene as an emerging biological contaminant – where microplastics and pharmaceuticals have fallen. Graphene, a truly revolutionizing nanomaterial with potential that is hard to overstate, may continue to be developed without acute risk to human health, research suggests. Science has discovered an emergence of contaminants as unanticipated drawbacks to technological development – notably microplastics and pharmaceuticals that have made their way int...
Aims to curb industrial heat's CO2 footprint, which is more than cars and planes combined. Climate tech company DexMat and Rice University have received $1.5 million in U.S. Department of Energy funding on a project to replace aluminum or copper fins in heat exchangers with a thermal conductivity-enhanced version of DexMat's flagship product, Galvorn – a high-performance, carbon nanomaterial that is stronger than steel, lighter than aluminum, and as conductive as copper. T...
Indium for lithium battery anode makes fast charging a reality; Cornell researchers look for lighter alternatives. Engineers at Cornell University have developed a lithium battery capable of charging in less than five minutes, with stable performance over extended cycles of charging and discharging. The secret ingredient? Indium. "Range anxiety is a greater barrier to electrification in transportation than any of the other barriers, like cost and capability of batteries, and...
Polymer tape's sticky properties change when irradiated with UV light. The discovery of graphene – a material with an ever-increasing number of uses – came from the humblest of beginnings: a hunk of graphite, and Scotch tape. Now, tape is once again taking center stage as an unlikely hero of science and technology as researchers from Japan have developed an adhesive with stickiness properties that can be programmed by UV light. Nanomaterials like graphene, which are mere ato...
The Kapolei Energy Storage (KES) facility run by Plus Power has begun operations in Oahu, Hawaii, touted as the most advanced grid-scale standalone battery energy storage system in the world. The facility replaces a defunct coal power plant and will support roughly one-fifth of the population's energy needs, including moderating renewables, reducing electricity bills, and protecting against blackouts. Hawaii's infamous island prices for imported goods were never so alarmingly...
In the next move toward zero-emissions solutions beyond battery-electric vehicles, General Motors and Honda Motor Co. announced their switch to a co-developed system producing hydrogen fuel cells commercially. Both manufacturers announced their intention to shift away from diesel and focus on hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs), marking this as the first time they have been produced at scale. Honda and GM engineers focused on lowering costs by advancing the cell...
H2 infrastructure - Nikola builds out, Shell pulls back, and passenger cars lag heavy vehicles. Shell's withdrawal from passenger-vehicle hydrogen refueling operations has ignited debates on the developing industry's overall timing and viability. However, automakers and governments are still backing hydrogen fuel cells due to growing concerns about the slow pace and environmental expense of new critical mineral mines needed for lithium-ion batteries currently powering most...
A new room-temperature liquid-metal battery of the University of Texas may provide more power than lithium-ion batteries while competing with solid-state batteries for their chance under the hood of the electric vehicle of the future. A report published in the journal Advanced Materials, describes a design which combines the strengths of both solid-state and liquid-state batteries while circumventing several of their disadvantages. This new battery has increased energy...
This week, Norway's parliament, with cross-party support, voted 80 to 20 in favor of opening roughly 108,000 square miles of Arctic seabed to mineral exploration and potential mining between Norway and Greenland near the Svalbard archipelago. Energy transition minerals cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, and manganese can all be found in greater quantities than in our terrestrial mines as potato-sized nodules scattered across the abyssal depths of the seafloor. These accretions are...
Researchers at MIT have demonstrated a lithium-ion battery cathode made with organic materials, offering a more sustainable way to power electric vehicles, and Lamborghini is all-in. "I think this material could have a big impact because it works really well," said Mircea Dincă, W.M. Keck Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper on the findings published in the journal ACS Central Science. "It is already competitive with incumbent technologies, and it can save...
In what may be a watershed moment for U.S. state laws regarding critical mineral mining, South Dakota Rep. Kirk Chaffee has taken a second swing at taxing lithium, and this time it may stick. Last year, a similar effort to classify lithium as an energy mineral passed the state House but was rejected in the Senate. The current bill, for which Chaffee is the main sponsor, classifies South Dakota's future lithium as a precious metal and imposes a 10% tax on mining profits, with...
"At the time, physicists were just starting to talk about the potential of quantum technologies and quantum computers," 36-year-old Mickael Perrin recalled of his career beginnings 12 years ago. "Today there are dozens of start-ups in this area, and governments and companies are investing billions in developing the technology further. We are now seeing the first applications in computer science, cryptography, communications and sensors." Perrin's research has married...
Global industry ramps up as VRFB appeals to grid renewables Solar and wind renewables can generate very cheap electricity, but like good weather, they're intermittent. To achieve a green-energy future of grids running off renewables, enormous amounts of battery storage will be needed to avoid blackouts. The first redox-flow batteries were developed by Lawrence Thaller and his group at NASA in the 1970s as potential energy storage for solar-powered deep-space missions. They...
Canada Nickel Company is well on its way to developing zero-carbon production of nickel, cobalt and iron in what they've coined the emerging Timmins Zero Carbon Nickel District. Founded by CEO Mark Selby in 2019, Canada Nickel's flagship development is Crawford, a nickel project timed perfectly to bolster the shrinking global supply after losing problematic Russian and Chinese resources to a rising need for stable supply with measurable environmental, social, and corporate gov...
Metal Tech News Q&A with Oliver Gunasekara, CEO Impossible Metals. As an entrepreneur and business development executive, Oliver Gunasekara has left his mark on the tech world over the past 30-plus years. His latest project, Impossible Metals, is poised to be a real game-changer in the quest of deep sea mining for minerals critical to clean energy – which can and should maintain equal ESG standards to land-based mining. Rather than dredging the seafloor for precious p...
In December, China implemented new export controls on graphite, further compounding trade tensions with the United States and other Western nations. This decision reinforces concerns over the fragility of the West's over-reliance on import monopolies and serves to intensify the ongoing search for alternative sources that would otherwise have been considered economically unattractive. Outside of its use in electric vehicle batteries, an application that is rocketing its...
Naturally occurring hydrothermal systems have always been a limited, localized energy source, offering steady production that doesn't vary with the weather or time of day – as long as there are very specific conditions of heat, water, and permeable rock. These specific conditions do not always occur where energy is needed, which is a primary reason why geothermal power provides less than 1% of global renewable energy capacity. Recent advances in the emerging technology of e...
As 2024 gets underway, the direction of rechargeable battery design continues to have major implications for the mining industry. A range of renewable power technologies are under development and expansion across the globe to replace fossil fuels. These advancements and the continued electric vehicle push driving the need for increased energy storage capacity, continue to add to the world's energy transition minerals shopping list. The numbers are already in – the new mines n...
The current industry standard for electric vehicle batteries targets a 20% capacity loss over 700 charging cycles, which means an EV that rolls off the lot with a 250-mile range could end its life with a range of 50 fewer miles per charge by the time the odometer clicks to around 150,000 miles. (For some vehicles like the Tesla Model S, the pricier 100-kilowatt-hour batteries degrade faster than 85- and 70-kWh options.) Meanwhile, U.S. company QuantumScape's solid-state cell...
HydroGraph Clean Power Inc. is a commercial manufacturer of high-quality nanomaterials whose graphene product has been selected and successfully trialed in Hawkeye Bio's biomedical sensor designed for the early detection of lung cancer. Only the third company to be certified globally by the Graphene Council, HydroGraph is headquartered in Toronto, with a manufacturing facility in Kansas where the company has exclusive license from Kansas State University to produce both...
More than 20 countries gathered for the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, better known as COP28, agree that nuclear energy has a major role to play in achieving the global goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The Declaration to Triple Nuclear Energy endorsed by these nations gathered in Dubai for COP28 includes global resolutions to work together to advance a goal of tripling nuclear energy capacity by 2050 and encourages international financial...
