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energy storage -

Chinese giant CATL launches a commercial salt-based battery for EVs

Chinese giant CATL launches a commercial salt-based battery for EVs

A cheap and abundant material like salt might have plenty to offer the world of science, and one field where it could have game-changing effects is battery chemistry. Leveraging salt could help us avoid much of the cost and difficulty in sourcing scarcer lithium, and Chinese giant CATL is looking to lead the charge by launching its first commercial sodium-ion battery. Like lithium batteries that power smartphones, laptops and much of the modern world, sodium batteries also shuttle ions between two electrodes as the device is charged and discharged. But sodium ions present a few problems that lithium ions don't....

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energy storage -

This New Molten Salt Battery Design Operates At Much Lower Temperatures

This New Molten Salt Battery Design Operates At Much Lower Temperatures

Sandia National Laboratories' new molten sodium battery for grid-scale storage is cheaper and operates at lower temperatures. There is a growing need for creative solutions for storing excess renewable power from sources that are intermittent by nature, like wind and solar. Molten salt batteries (commercially known as sodium-sulfur batteries) are one potential solution already in use. They offer advantages that lithium-ion batteries don’t, albeit having a few cons of their own. For one, they typically operate at a high 520 to 660°F (270 to 350°C). But now, scientists at Sandia National Laboratories made a new design, rethinking the battery’s chemistry altogether to get...

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cobots -

Metallic glass gears up for 'cobots,' coatings, and more

Metallic glass gears up for 'cobots,' coatings, and more

Where are the robot assistants we were promised? For all the space that robots have occupied in the popular imagination for the last hundred years—and although the number of real-world automatons has been growing for decades—most people's interactions with them remain limited to a hands-free vacuum or a child's smart toy.   A strain wave gear converts the fast, low-torque rotation of an engine into slow, precise, forceful motion. As the oblong wave generator at the center spins, it deforms the flexspline around it, shown in red, which engages with the teeth of a fixed outer spline. The interaction causes...

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lunar landers -

U.S. agency denies Blue Origin protest over NASA lunar lander contract

U.S. agency denies Blue Origin protest over NASA lunar lander contract

A U.S. agency on Friday rejected a protest by Blue Origin and defense contractor Dynetics Inc over NASA's decision to pick a single lunar lander provider. The companies challenged the $2.9 billion award to SpaceX for the lander, arguing NASA was required to make multiple awards. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) said it "denied the protest arguments that NASA acted improperly in making a single award to SpaceX." Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, did not immediately comment. It had contended NASA gave SpaceX an unfair advantage by letting it revise its pricing. Dynetics, a...

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climate change -

Surface temperatures in Siberia heat up to a mind-boggling 50 C

Surface temperatures in Siberia heat up to a mind-boggling 50 C

Temperature-tracking satellites are monitoring sweltering heat above the Arctic Circle . t's not just the Western region of the US that's sweltering right now. Siberia in Russia is baking, and satellites are bearing witness to a brutal heat wave above the Arctic Circle. Copernicus Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-3B satellites captured a snapshot of land surface temperatures on June 20, and it was hot. According to NASA, "Land surface temperature is how hot the 'surface' of the Earth would feel to the touch in a particular location." The Sentinel image shows a peak ground temperature of 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius) near Verkhojansk,...

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