Solar-Powered Direct Air Capture: Techno-Economic and Environmental Assessment.

Direct air capture (DAC) of CO has gained attention as a sustainable carbon source. One of the most promising technologies currently available is liquid solvent DAC (L-DAC), but the significant fraction of fossil CO in the output stream hinders its utilization in carbon-neutral fuels and chemicals. Fossil CO is generated and captured during the combustion of fuels to calcine carbonates, which is difficult to decarbonize due to the high temperatures required.

Thermochemical process and compact apparatus for concentrating oxygen in extraterrestrial atmospheres: a feasibility study.

The Martian atmosphere contains 0.16% oxygen, which is an example of an in-situ resource that can be used as precursor or oxidant for propellants, for life support systems and potentially for scientific experiments. Thus, the present work is related to the invention of a process to concentrate oxygen in the oxygen-deficient extraterrestrial atmosphere by means of a thermochemical process and the determination of a suitable best-case apparatus design to carry out the process.

Impact of the Sr content on the redox thermodynamics and kinetics of CaSrMnO for tailored properties.

CaMnO-based perovskites find application in a variety of thermochemical cycles, oxygen partial pressure adjustment, chemical looping processes, and thermochemical energy storage. The applicability of these materials is governed by their thermodynamic and kinetic properties. Therefore, tunability of these properties is desirable to adapt the material to the required conditions.

Effective matrix designs for COVID-19 group testing.

Background: Grouping samples with low prevalence of positives into pools and testing these pools can achieve considerable savings in testing resources compared with individual testing in the context of COVID-19. We review published pooling matrices, which encode the assignment of samples into pools and describe decoding algorithms, which decode individual samples from pools. Based on the findings we propose new one-round pooling designs with high compression that can efficiently be decoded by combinatorial algorithms.

Technological Pathways to Produce Compressed and Highly Pure Hydrogen from Solar Power.

Hydrogen (H ) produced from renewables will have a growing impact on the global energy dynamics towards sustainable and carbon-neutral standards. The share of green H is still too low to meet the net-zero target, while the demand for high-quality hydrogen continues to rise. These factors amplify the need for economically viable H generation technologies.

Controlling thermal expansion and phase transitions in CaSrMnO by Sr-content.

Perovskite oxides of the general formula ABO, with A and B being metal cations, present themselves in various crystal structures that originate from a distorted ideal cubic perovskite. Understanding how composition, temperature, atmosphere and reduction extent of these non-stoichiometric redox materials induce structural changes on an atomic, as well as macroscopic, level is crucial to transfer newly developed materials to industrial scale applications in the redox-based energy conversion sector. Herein, CaSrMnO ( ∈ [0,0.

A solar tower fuel plant for the thermochemical production of kerosene from HO and CO.

Developing solar technologies for producing carbon-neutral aviation fuels has become a global energy challenge, but their readiness level has largely been limited to laboratory-scale studies. Here, we report on the experimental demonstration of a fully integrated thermochemical production chain from HO and CO to kerosene using concentrated solar energy in a solar tower configuration. The co-splitting of HO and CO was performed via a ceria-based thermochemical redox cycle to produce a tailored mixture of H and CO (syngas) with full selectivity, which was further processed to kerosene.

Limited Utility of Self-made Oxygen Generators Assembled From Everyday Commodities During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The current COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated pre-existing oxygen supply gaps all over the world. In fact, oxygen shortages occurred in affluent areas with highly developed healthcare systems. The state-of-affairs created much suffering and resulted in potentially preventable deaths.