There is a fair amount of “gloom and doom” stories these days associated with the environment. However, if your attention focuses on the technological advancements coming, designed to help clean our environment and save energy resources, there’s a lot of good news.
Here are a couple of advancements on the green horizon.
Researchers at Kogakuin University in Japan have developed a thin, translucent lithium-ion battery that recharges itself when not exposed to direct sunlight. Instead of plugging into a separate solar panel, the translucent battery functions both as a rechargeable battery and is a photovoltaic cell. It fuses battery storage with renewable energy generation. The researchers envision the battery-solar panel as the material used to create smart windows, which will generate and store electricity.
From a core team member of LiquidGlide – a U.S. company that created permanently super slippery surfaces that makes sticky liquids like ketchup and mayo slide easily out of a bottle – comes a new company called Drop Wise. The new company is developing similar technology to clean up the atmosphere by cutting emissions from power plants and save water. By enhancing the efficiency of a thermal power plant’s condensers with this coating it allows a power plant to generate the same amount of electricity with considerably less coolant water.
