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co2 capture from vehicles, solar power from dark side etc


sman

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Capturing carbon dioxide from trucks and reducing their emissions by 90%

"https://techxplore.com/news/2019-12-capturing-carbon-dioxide-trucks-emissions.html"


Researchers at EPFL have patented a new concept that could cut trucks' CO2 emissions by almost 90%. It involves capturing CO2 within the exhaust system, converting it into a liquid and storing it on the vehicle. The liquid CO2 would then be delivered to a service station and where it will be turned back into fuel using renewable energy. Credit: EPFL / François Maréchal
In Europe, transport is responsible for nearly 30% of the total CO2 emissions, of which 72% comes from road transportation. While the use of electric vehicles for personal transportation could help lower that number, reducing emissions from commercial transport—such as trucks or buses—is a much greater challenge.


Researchers at EPFL have now come up with a novel solution: capturing CO2 directly in the trucks' exhaust system and liquefying it in a box on the vehicle's roof. The liquid CO2 is then delivered to a service station, where it is turned into conventional fuel using renewable energy. The project is being coordinated by the Industrial Process and Energy Systems Engineering group, led by François Maréchal, at EPFL's School of Engineering. The patented concept is the subject of a paper published in Frontiers in Energy Research.

A complex process onboard the vehicle

Scientists propose to combine several technologies developed at EPFL to capture CO2 and convert it from a gas to a liquid in a process that recovers most of energy available onboard, such as heat from the engine. In their study, the scientists used the example of a delivery truck.

Solar power from 'the dark side' unlocked by a new formula

"https://techxplore.com/news/2019-12-solar-power-dark-side-formula.html"

Most of today's solar panels capture sunlight and convert it to electricity only from the side facing the sky. If the dark underside of a solar panel could also convert sunlight reflected off the ground, even more electricity might be generated.


Double-sided solar cells are already enabling panels to sit vertically on land or rooftops and even horizontally as the canopy of a gas station, but it hasn't been known exactly how much electricity these panels could ultimately generate or the money they could save.

A new thermodynamic formula reveals that the bifacial cells making up double-sided panels generate on average 15% to 20% more sunlight to electricity than the monofacial cells of today's one-sided solar panels, taking into consideration different terrain such as grass, sand, concrete and dirt.

The formula, developed by two Purdue University physicists, can be used for calculating in minutes the most electricity that bifacial solar cells could generate in a variety of environments, as defined by a thermodynamic limit.

"The formula involves just a simple triangle, but distilling the extremely complicated physics problem to this elegantly simple formulation required years of modeling and research. This triangle will help companies make better decisions on investments in next-generation solar cells and figure out how to design them to be more efficient," said Muhammad "Ashraf" Alam, Purdue's Jai N. Gupta Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Edited by sman
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