Credit: (Photo: EnBW/Uli Deck)
Worldwide demand for lithium is increasing. The raw material is much sought-after in particular for e-mobility. To meet this increasing demand, production of lithium by deep geothermal energy plants has been discussed for some years now. Some pilot projects are being carried out at the moment, among others in the Upper Rhine valley. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy has now decided to fund the UnLimited project for the setup of a pilot facility at the geothermal power plant in Bruchsal by EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG as consortium leader in cooperation with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), BESTEC, HYDROSION, and the University of Göttingen.
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IMAGE: View through a window of the interior of an ultra-high vacuum reactor where TiO2 nanotubes are decorated with CoO nanoparticles. We see the flame (plasma produced by laser ablation) that. view more
Credit: Christian Fleury (INRS)
A research team from the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) has joined forces with French researchers from the Institute of Chemistry and Processes for Energy, Environment and Health (ICPEES), a CNRS-University of Strasbourg joint research lab, to pave the way towards the production of green hydrogen. This international team has developed new sunlight-photosensitive-nanostructured electrodes. The results of their research were published in the November 2020 issue of the journal of
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IMAGE: Dr. Helmar Görls studies single crystals of novel compounds using a X-ray diffractometer at the Institute of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany.. view more
Credit: Jens Meyer/University of Jena Such reactions are usually carried out using transition metals, such as nickel or iridium, explains Prof. Robert Kretschmer, Junior Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Jena, whose work has been published in the prestigious
Journal of the American Chemical Society. However, transition metals are expensive and harmful to the environment, both when they are mined and when they are used. Therefore, we are trying to find better alternatives. That two metals can do more than one is already known in the case of transition metals. However, there has been hardly any research on the more sustainable main-group metals of the periodic table, Kretschmer adds.
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Skoltech researchers and their collaborators from France, the US, Switzerland, and Australia were able to create and describe a mixed oxide Na(Li1/3Mn2/3)O2 that holds promise as a cathode material for sodium-ion batteries, which can take one day complement or even replace lithium-ion batteries. The paper was published in the journal
Nature Materials.
Lithium-ion batteries are powering the modern world of consumer devices and driving a revolution in electric transportation. But since lithium is rather rare and challenging to extract from an environmental standpoint, researchers and engineers have been looking for more sustainable and cost-effective alternatives for quite some time now.