Opinion

Will lithium-ion remain the dominant battery technology in the automotive sector and other industries, or will other chemistries take over?

Paul Shipley is a patient man. The kind who spends 15 years conquering nearly 300 mountain peaks across Scotland. Or 25 years working for the Ministry of Defence, a big chunk of which he devoted to Dreadnought nuclear submarines.

Aimed at halving fuel consumption and carbon emissions without massive investment in new rail infrastructure, the ‘Blues Train’ was revealed this week at InnoTrans in Berlin, the world’s largest rail transport fair.

The train will be the first tri-mode to enter passenger service in Europe when it starts operating in Italy later this year.

A new type of nuclear reactor that uses molten salt fuel and coolant could offer cheap and low-footprint power, its developers have claimed.

With no moving parts and a ‘simple’ design, MoltexFlex said its Flex reactor could “protect generations of consumers from rising energy bills, without resorting to fossil fuels”.

E-scooter riders risk serious injuries in even low-speed collisions, crash tests and simulations have revealed.

The tests, which used a crash test dummy and finite element simulations, also revealed the need for new protective materials, according to the project team at the Fraunhofer Institute in Freiburg, Germany.

On-site reactors at factories and power plants could turn carbon dioxide (CO2) into valuable chemicals on an "industrial scale", according to the developers of a new technology.

Natural fibres and waste products can replace synthetic reinforcement materials to make a more sustainable type of concrete, researchers have said.

The new map is part of UK-wide project to celebrate history of the BBC as it marks its centenary.

A breakthrough battery technology has enabled a 10-minute charge time for typical electric vehicle (EV) batteries, its developers have claimed.

Three underwater robots are monitoring the environmental impact of the gas leaks from the Nord Stream pipelines.

Deployed by the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, the ‘glider’ robots from the Voice of the Ocean foundation (VOTO) are helping analyse chemical changes and the effect of the leaking methane gas on marine life.

A €19.6m project aims to design and test the ‘world’s largest capacity floating wave energy device’. 

Using waves to drive trapped air through a turbine, the OE35 device was developed by Irish company OceanEnergy. The firm will now work with 13 other partners from industry and academia across the UK, Ireland, France, Germany and Spain to design a 1MW-rated OE35, up from the 500kW current version.

A new class of material can learn behaviours over time and develop a ‘muscle memory’ that allows real-time adaptation to changing external forces, its developers have said.