Researchers harness renewable energy

BOFFINS AT the University of Nottingham have just received a 'huge' grant to help sponsor research into better storage of energy from renewable sources. You know... to save the planet and all that?

The money, a whopping £1.1 million, was found down the back of the cutlery drawer, under the serving spoons with the suspicious stains, and donated by power and gas giant Eon. The generous grant will supposedly go some way towards developing innovative super batteries and deep sea energy storage bags.

Major strides in renewable energy mean that under favourable conditions, vast amounts of energy can be produced by the wind, sun and sea. The problem is harnessing and storing it properly, to be used when needed.

In one method being funded, Dr George Chen of the University's School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering and Dr Christian Klumpner of the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering are using nanotech to build new superbatteries dubbed supercapattery. The device, as the name suggests, is something of an amalgamation between a supercapacitor and a battery, and is aimed at solving the problems of wasting precious electricity garnered from renewable sources. In Dr Chen’s words, “if you don't use it, you lose it”.

Supercapatteries are thought to be perfect portable battery sources for things like laptops, but if built up into massive huge stacks, something which would, admittedly, be somewhat expensive, boffins reckon they could offer vital stability to the national grid in the event of a power surge.

Another boffin now on the Eon payroll is one Professor Seamus Garvey of the University's School of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering. Garvey is researching ways of harnessing wind, wave, tidal and solar power by compressing it as air and pumping it into bags weighed down to the seabed. The way the system works is by releasing air through a turbine which would then convert it to electricity. Sounds like a load of hot air. µ

L’Inq
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