Scientists Create Super-Dense Energy Storage
Researchers from the Washington State University said they have found the most condensed form of energy storage outside of nuclear energy, which could lead to much more capable batteries than we know today.chemical
Using super-high pressures similar to those found deep in the Earth or on a giant planet, Washington State University researchers have created a compact, never-before-seen material capable of storing vast amounts of energy.
[ ]…The researchers eventually increased the pressure to more than a million atmospheres, comparable to what would be found halfway to the center of the earth. All this “squeezing,” as Yoo calls it, forced the molecules to make tightly bound three-dimensional metallic “network structures.” In the process, the huge amount of mechanical energy of compression was stored as chemical energy in the molecules’ bonds.
The researchers used xenon difluoride (XeF2). As everyone probably knows, xenon is a noble gas and very rare. Fine for research purposes and proof of concept, but it does mean any materials that might be used for super dense compression and the storage of energy would have to be via more abundant elements.
Antimony: It might have killed Mozart.
Despite its obscurity, probably no element on the periodic table has as colorful a history as antimony. Money, madness, poison, linguistics, charlatanism, sex—pretty much every theme that runs through the periodic table can be found in Element 51.
Mr. Kean is doing a series of articles on every element in the periodic table. Yes, chemistry can be interesting. To some degree the articles fellow the current trend to give early alchemists some credit for founding the science of chemistry. Some, like 17th century merchant and alchemists Johann Thölde were not very nice.
Mostly about the technical difficulties of deep sea drilling – Hitting a Tiny Bull’s-Eye Miles Under the Gulf – but this was an interesting snip,
The relief well will be used to pump heavy drilling mud, followed by cement, into the damaged well to stop the gusher permanently. But first it, or a second relief well being drilled nearby as a backup, must hit the target — the existing well’s steel casing pipe, only seven inches in diameter, more than 3 miles below the surface of the gulf.
The first relief well is currently about 20 feet horizontally and less than 1,000 feet vertically from the interception point. “We feel very good about the progress we’ve made,” Kent Wells, a BP vice president overseeing the relief well effort, said at a recent news conference, but did not revise an estimated completion date of early August.
Baker Hughes and other companies are helping BP reach the target, providing specialized techniques and tools for measuring and surveying the relief wells as they are drilled, and steering them in the right direction.
A Random Hawaiian Photo Diary– Some pretty photos of plants, critters, and landscapes.
BP used oil industry tax break to write off its rent for Deepwater rig
So, essentially, the U.S. taxpayer paid BP to lease a rig that was incorporated in a foreign country for the purpose of avoiding the U.S. corporate tax. And the U.S. tax code is actually riddled with breaks for the oil industry, despite that industry’s record profits in recent years. Center for American Progress Senior Policy Analyst Sima Gandhi has counted nine different subsidies that the U.S. government gives to the oil industry, including refunds for drilling costs and refunds to cover the cost of searching for oil. If this corporate welfare were cut, it would save $45 billion per year, and according to the Office of Economic Policy at the Department of Treasury, “affect domestic production by less than one-half of 1 percent.”
It is not that tax breaks and subsidies are inherently bad, they can be used to get millions of students through college or encourage alternative energy research. On the other hand they can be used to the point where tax payers are picking up part of the cost of doing business for companies such as BP that make about $66 million a day in profits. Ironically or tragically BP cut corners on safety measures to save a few million.
tangledwing 