Sustainable Human Powered Laptops
This Issue :
 New Generation of Solar
Cells : Thinner and Lighter
P2
 Water Splitting for Green
Energy Storage
P2
 Nanotubes from Nature
Inspired Polymer
P3
 Fluorescent light : Removal of
air pollution and stinky odor P3
 Comic sense
P4
 Infograph
P4
 Quiz
P4
Trending
 Bhutan is one of the few countries to have negative carbon
emissions.
 The M. Chinnaswamy cricket
stadium in Bengaluru has become the first cricket venue in
the country to have rooftop
solar power plant.
 Tesla Motors unveils Model 3
Sedan—cost-effective and
100% eco-friendly, thus helping
the owners to reduce their carbon footprint.
 Jairampur in Arunachal Pradesh
becomes the first town in the
North East region to have its
own Mini Thermal Waste
Treatment Plant .
Source : Internet
O
ne Laptop Per Child, an organization aimed to provide students in
impoverished schools all over the world,
with "rugged, low-cost, low-power,
connected laptops." .
While there are solar powered laptops
which run on freely available solar energy, not everyone may be able to afford
them. There was always the hope that
there would be an affordable way for
people to poorer and very remote areas to
be able to benefit from the uses of a computer and there finally is because of the
pedal powered laptop in Afghanistan.
The Pedal powered laptop is unfolding an
educational revolution in remote rural
areas of Afghanistan by connecting school
children via a common server & giving
them access to computer aided education.
The system is set up so that anyone with
two legs would be able to power the
laptop. The computer model is called the
XO and uses a hand crank to power the
system. This laptop needs no additional
power sources at all. The prototype is
hooked up so that the hand crank genera-
tor is underneath the desk for the children
to use while they sit at their desk. In addition, they are using software that would
enable the students to study on a common
server.
The system that is being used is the
OpenWRT Freifunk router firmware. This
system provides a connection throughout
the classroom with no cable connections
and will also enable them to expand the
net-work to other classrooms as well. It
may even go past the school walls, which
would enable any child with this system in
their home to be able to connect as well.
Imagine a child that missed a day of
school because of being ill, still able to
attend class remotely.
The whole model is currently under observation and there are about 2,500 of the
prototype computers in circulation in
different parts of Kabul, Heart and
Jalalabad to create a successful learning
environment.
Source: www.olpcnews.com
New Generation of Solar Cells : Thinner and Lighter
T
he researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has
unveiled the lightest, thinnest and
flexible solar cells that can even be
placed on top of a soap bubble without popping it. The breakthrough
came about when researchers realized
they could create the solar cell, the
substrate that protects it, and a protective overcoating in a single process,
rather than creating them separately
and joining them together later.
During the process, the team used a
flexible polymer called parylene as
the substrate and overcoating. Parylene is the trade name for a variety of
chemical vapour deposited p-xylene
polymers used as moisture and dielectric barriers. The primary lightabsorbing layer was made of an
organic material called Dibutyl Phthalate (DBP). It is produced by the
reaction of n-butanol with phthalic
anhydride. Parylene has been widely
R
that is about a thousand times thinner
than an equivalent solar cell on a
glass substrate. The resultant flexible
film is just one-fiftieth of the thickness of a human hair, about two
micrometers thick. During the generation of electricity, the efficiency of
the ultra-thin cells is comparable to
the older one.
While it’s possible to drape the new
solar cell over a bubble without
popping it, that might not be very
practical for most applications due to
the light weight of the material which
makes it easy to simply blow away.
However, thicker parylene films can
also be made using the same
technique, and these might be
possible to manufacture and directly
apply to variety of household items
and surfaces without adding extra
weight or bulk.
used as a plastic coating to protect
biomedical devices and circuit boards
from the elements, making it perfect
for the task of protecting the solar
cells. The entire process was carried
out in a vacuum chamber at room
temperature without any harsh chemicals unlike conventional solar-cell
manufacturing, which involves high
temperature and strong solvents.
This process could easily be repeated
using different substrate and protective layers, and even different types of
solar film which results in a solar cell Source: www.inhabitat.com
Water Splitting for Green Energy Storage
esearchers at the University of
Toronto finds an efficient way
to store energy from alternative
sources. They have designed the most
efficient catalyst for storing energy in
chemical form, by splitting water into
hydrogen and oxygen, just like plants
do during photosynthesis. Oxygen is
released into the atmosphere, and
hydrogen can be converted back into
energy using hydrogen fuel cells.
Today on a solar farm or a wind farm,
energy is typically stored in batteries.
But batteries are expensive, and can
only store a fixed amount of energy.
Therefore, discovering a more efficient and highly scalable means of
storing energy generated by renewables is one of the great challenges.
This new catalyst facilitates the oxygen-evolution portion of the chemical
reaction, making the conversion from
continuous activity, unlike other efficient but short-lived catalysts.
Thus, it led to the discovery of oxyhydroxide materials that exhibit
electrochemically induced oxygen
evolution at the lowest overpotential
and show no degradation.
Initially, Tungsten, together with active metals like iron and cobalt was
thought to be a better oxygenevolving catalyst, but it was difficult
to mix them all homogenously. This
research utilises a new way to distribute the catalyst homogenously in a
gel, and as a result, built a device that
works incredibly efficiently and
robustly. This work demonstrates the
development of improved wateroxidation catalysts in the field of solar
fuels.
H2O into O2 and H2 more energyefficient than ever before.
This new catalyst has three major factors in its favour in splitting hydrogen
from water- low cost, long life and
three times more efficient than stateof-the-art catalyst . The new catalyst
is made of abundant and low-cost
metals such as tungsten, iron and cobalt, which are much less expensive
than the catalysts based on precious
metals. It showed no signs of degradation over more than 500 hours of Source : www.eurekalert.org
T
Nanotubes from Nature Inspired Polymers
he researchers at the Berkeley
National Laboratory have found
a special kind of precision manufacturing technique to create nanotubes
from nature inspired polymer.
Nanotubes are hollow tubes that
have diameters of only a few
billionths of a meter and have the
potential to be incredibly useful, from
delivering cancer-fighting drugs
inside cells to desalinating seawater.
They have discovered a family of
nature-inspired polymers, called
diblock copolypeptoids that, when
placed in water, spontaneously
assemble into hollow crystalline
nanotubes of almost same diameter.
The polymers are composed of two
peptoid blocks, one that’s hydrophobic one that’s hydrophilic. The two
blocks crystallize when they meet in
water, and form rings consisting of
two to three individual peptoids. The
rings then form hollow nanotubes.
These polymers have two chemically
distinct blocks that are of the same
size and shape which stack together
to form nanotubes up to 100 nanometers long, all with the same diameter.
Cryo-electron microscopy images of
the nanotubes formed were captured
which showed that the diameter of
each tube is highly uniform along its
length, as well as from tube to tube.
Scientists find difficulty in creating a
lot of nanostructures with the same
trait, such as millions of nanotubes
with identical diameters. But, this
technique formed nanotubes of
almost same diameter ranging from 5
to 10 nanometers, depending on the
length of the polymer chain. If the
diameter of nanotubes and the chemical groups exposed in their interior
can be controlled, then the materials
crossing the nano-tubes can be
controlled leading to a new filtration
and desalination technologies.
Remarkably, the nanotube assemble
themselves without the usual nanoconstruction aids, such as electrostatic interactions or hydrogen bond
networks. Hence, this work suggests
that flexible, low–molecular-weight
sequence-defined diblock copolymers
can serve as molecular tile units that
can assembl e into precision
supramolecular architectures.
Source : www.tek-think.com
Fluorescent Light: Removal of air pollution & stinky odor
T
he World Health Organization
recently accounted 7 million
deaths a year worldwide due to
declining air quality. There is always
a possibility to make the world a
better place by using chemistry.
The Scientist at the University of
Copenhagen have developed a seamless way to improve poor indoor air
quality. The breakthrough invention
utilizes fluorescent lightbulbs to remove pollution that escapes other air
purification methods. The fluorescent
system is unique because it can clean
air without producing hazardous
fumes or ozone-damaging emissions.
The Gas Phase Advanced Oxidation
(GPAO) system was invented by
Matthew Johnson, a professor of Environmental Chemistry at the University. The system turns gaseous forms
of pollution into a solid state using
ozone and fluorescent lightbulbs.
Not only does the GPAO’s ozonefluorescent partnership remove toxic
chemicals from the air, but it also
works on unpleasant odours—even
the toughest stinks associated with
wastewater treatment. The GPAO
system can tackle many different
types of pollution, resulting in air
quality that can make people healthier
and
happier.
We know the natural ability of the
atmosphere to clean itself. Nature
cleans the air in a process involving
ozone, sunlight, and rain. Except for
the rain, GPAO did the very same
thing but sped up by a factor of a
hundred thousand. This development
is seen as an example of technology
mimicking natural processes, and
giving them a boost in efficiency.
Free radicals form and attack the pollution, making it clump together like
bits of dust. Once the gaseous pollution becomes dust, it’s just as easy to
remove from the air as any other type
of dust particle—with electrostatic
charges.
This new method of filter-free air
purification has been tested and found
effective in removing emissions from
fiber glass production and from an
iron foundry, which emitted benzene,
toluene, ethyl benzene and xylene. Source : www.inhabitat.com
COMIC SENSE
You came as strangers , you leave as friends!
We bid farewell to our beloved seniors
Dherya Mehta
Amit Kumar Aman
Rupesh Kumar
Kundan Kumar Gupta
Mayank Singhvi
Bhupendra Singh
Words are inadequate to express our
gratefulness and appreciation for your
commendable effort and support towards
Energy Club. Wishing you all a great
success in all the future ventures of your life.
QUIZ
1. Name the polymer used by MIT researchers
recently in making thinnest and lightest solar
cells.
2. Which catalysts are used by researchers of
Toronto University for converting H2O into H2
and O2 efficiently ?
3. Which system is developed by the scientist of
University of Copenhagen for removing toxic
chemicals from air as well as unpleasant odor?
Send your entries to [email protected]
Winning entries to get exciting prizes.
CREDITS





Abhishek Maddheshiya (II Year, Civil Engg.)
Abhishek Ranjan
(II Year, Electrical Engg.)
Amit Kumar
(II Year, Mechanical Engg.)
Shubham Kumar
(II Year, Mechanical Engg.)
Vikalp
(II Year, Civil Engg.)
 Dr. Ing. Jyotirmay Mathur
 Dr. Kapil Pareek
(Faculty Co-ordinators)
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