{"id":11854,"date":"2020-12-29T11:19:50","date_gmt":"2020-12-29T08:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=11854"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:31:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:31:22","slug":"this-material-stores-solar-energy-the-process-works-without-electronic-components","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2020\/12\/29\/this-material-stores-solar-energy-the-process-works-without-electronic-components\/","title":{"rendered":"This material stores solar energy. The process works without electronic components"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The world\u2019s transition from&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.intelligentliving.co\/wind-solar-more-affordable-than-fossil-fuels-worldwide-by-2025\/\">fossil fuels to renewables<\/a>&nbsp;to tackle&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.intelligentliving.co\/soil-could-fight-climate-change\/\">climate change<\/a>&nbsp;will require energy storage techniques because the sun isn\u2019t always shining, and the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.intelligentliving.co\/8m-deal-greenlights-worlds-largest-offshore-wind-farm\/\">wind<\/a>&nbsp;isn\u2019t always blowing. It\u2019s a hot topic among research teams nowadays \u2013 from studying energy-storing materials to developing batteries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the latest discoveries comes from scientists at Lancaster University. While studying a crystalline material commonly used for filtering or desalinating water, they found it could&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/doi\/10.1021\/acs.chemmater.0c02708\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">capture solar energy and store it at room temperature<\/a>&nbsp;for at least four months. When needed, the power could be released on demand in the form of heat. The process works without electronic components.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The team suggests the material could be used as a building coating to store summer energy and release it in the winter as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.intelligentliving.co\/the-advantages-of-using-heat-to-store-renewable-energy\/\">heat<\/a>\u00a0or car windshields to de-ice the glass in freezing winter mornings. It would be especially useful for heating systems in remote locations or off-grid systems. It\u2019s also an environmentally-friendly supplement to conventional heating in houses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The material is based on a kind of\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/news\/study-shows-promising-material-can-store-solar-energy-for-months-or-years\" target=\"_blank\">\u2018metal-organic framework\u2019 (MOF)<\/a>\u00a0known as \u2018DMOF1,\u2019 previously prepared by a separate research team at Japan\u2019s Kyoto University. MOFs consist of a 3D network of metal ions linked by carbon-based molecules.\u00a0MOFs are porous, so they can host other small molecules within their structure. In this case, they were loaded with azobenzene molecules \u2013 a compound that strongly absorbs light. Azobenzene also acts as photoswitches \u2013 a type of \u2018molecular machine\u2019 that can shape-shift when an external stimulus is applied, such as light or heat. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.intelligentliving.co\/material-stores-solar-energy\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.intelligentliving.co\/material-stores-solar-energy\/\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The world\u2019s transition from&nbsp;fossil fuels to renewables&nbsp;to tackle&nbsp;climate change&nbsp;will require energy storage techniques because the sun isn\u2019t always shining, and the&nbsp;wind&nbsp;isn\u2019t always blowing. It\u2019s a hot topic among research teams&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}