harvester

Turning tellurite glass into a ‘transparent’ light-energy harvester by etching semiconducting patterns using femtosecond laser light. Credit: EPFL / Lisa AckermannResearchers found that exposing tellurite glass to femtosecond laser light creates semiconducting nanocrystals, opening the possibility of turning glass into electricity-generating surfaces using only light.What happens when you expose tellurite glass to femtosecond laser light? That’s the question that Gözden Torun at the Galatea Lab, in a collaboration with…

Caterpillar announced plans to further electrify America’s farms by demonstrating a new, first-of-its-kind, 600V battery powered electric field elevator at a nut harvesting operation in California. The prototype field elevator is being co-developed by Holt of California, a California Cat dealer, and Flory Industries, a manufacturer of nut-harvesting equipment. Holt of California will apply its specific knowledge of Flory’s equipment needs to provide day-to-day engineering, integration, and testing…

While wind energy systems can come in some pretty big forms, scientists at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore have been working on a low-cost solution at the other end of the spectrum. The team has developed an inexpensive device sensitive enough to capture energy from a light breeze and turn it into electricity, generating enough to run a small commercial sensor.The harvester is small, low-cost and measures around 15 x 20 cm (6 x 8 in). It consists of a cantilevered beam attached to a middle plate made of…

As the number of electronic devices grows, we’re going to have to get creative with our energy sources. Cambridge researchers have now demonstrated how an algae energy harvester can use sunlight to power a microprocessor for over a year without any human help.Algae features heavily in green technologies of the future, in many different ways. It shows promise in producing hydrogen, purifying wastewater, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, forming the basis of biofuels, and generating electricity through…