Renewable energy sources are crucial to react to the continuous increase of energy consumption and pollution by carbon dioxide emissions worldwide. Biofuels, where the energy content is derived from a biological source, are one of the alternatives to oil and natural gas. Still, some biofuels are controversial, like biodiesel, because they imply cultivating certain crops […]
Tides are more predictable than winds or sunshine. Then, why are not they already widely used as a source of renewable energy? The simple answer is that designing and building an ocean energy array is quite complex. This complexity has an associated variability in the cost of energy that makes projects difficult to evaluate from […]
Chemistry • Condensed matter • Energy • Materials • Mathematics
From electric vehicles to storing wind and solar energy produced during off-peak hours, rechargeable lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are the best option that we currently have tu support our technological future. But if we want them to be truly environmentally-friendly and safe devices, they do need some changes. The Li-ion battery is a rechargeable cell. Typically […]
Nature is a source of inspiration for scientists. If the efficiency of natural processes efficiency has been honed by billions of years of evolution, it seems reasonable that the best way to achieve some process is to try and mimic what nature has already come up with. This is the case with photosynthesis, a process […]
Planes, ships, trucks and (most) cars run on different fractions of crude oil, composed of carbon chains of different length: Diesel (C 10 -C 22 ), kerosene (C 8 -C 16 ) and gasoline (C 5 -C 12 ). Despite their current supremacy, it is well known that fossil fuels will not be the energy […]
A tax on carbon emissions is an efficient way to make firms and consumers internalize the environmental costs due to climate change. However, there are many other aspects to consider in a transition from a fossil-fueled economy to a cleaner one. In a past article we presented the case for subsidies on research to develop […]
Both the depletion of fossil fuels and the environmental concerns are a powerful drive for the development of sustainable routes to commodity chemicals. Lignocellulose, comprised of lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose, is the ideal candidate, but its inherent complexity hampers its transformation to value-added chemicals. The group of Katalin Barta at the University of Groningen has […]
Chemistry • Condensed matter • Energy • Materials • Physics • Quantum physics
Following the need for new and renewable sources of energy worldwide, fuel cells using electrocatalysts can be thought of as viable options. Catalyst materials modify and increase the rate of chemical reactions without itself undergoing any permanent change. An electrocatalyst is a catalyst that participates in electrochemical reactions and that functions at electrode surfaces or […]
Author: Carles Martí is a Ph.D. student (ITN-EJD-TCCM) at University of Perugia Nowadays, mostly everybody has heard about global warming, a problem that humanity faces and that can drastically change our climate in the upcoming years. This is caused by the, also well known, greenhouse effect, produced by the gases our modern society generates, to […]
In nature, light harvesting organisms make extensive use of energy and electron transfer between adjacent molecules. Thus, in the photosynthetic cell of an algae, bacterium, or plant, there are light-sensitive molecules called chromophores, which contain a π-conjugated system (a system with alternate single and double bonds), arranged in an antenna-shaped structure named a photocomplex. When […]