Search Results for: clean AND energy
How does The Clean Energy Project benefit humanity?
The Clean Energy Project is focused on understanding the fundamental science of how flexible solar cells work, so scientists can design more efficient energy-related technologies. The results of the project will eventually help us reduce our dependence on fossil fuels to lower our carbon emissions, keep our air cleaner, and contribute to the fight against global warming. Our research will facilitate the development of cheap, flexible solar cell materials that we hope will be used worldwide.
Why is solar energy important?
It is expected that by the year 2050 the world's energy requirements will be twice today’s demand. Energy is without doubt a prerequisite for economic stability in both the developed and developing world; however, despite its importance, the actual energy system is far from being self-sustainable. Achieving a completely sustainable energy system will require technological breakthroughs that radically change our paradigms on how we produce and use energy. A possible solution to this problem is solar energy. Every hour, enough solar energy reaches Earth to supply our energy need for an entire year. Finding the means to convert the incident solar energy into usable forms to maintain current ways of life represents a main objective of The Clean Energy Project.
Why is solar energy important?
It is expected that by the year 2050 the world's energy requirements will double today’s demand. Energy is without doubt a prerequisite for economic stability in both the developed and developing world; despite its current importance, the actual energy system is far from being self-sustainable. Achieving a completely sustainable energy system will require technological breakthroughs that radically change our paradigms on how we produce and use energy. A possible solution to this problem is to use solar energy. Every hour, our sun produces enough solar energy to supply the whole world’s annual energy requirements. Finding the means to convert the incident solar energy into usable forms to maintain the current way of life represents a main objective of The Clean Energy Project team.
Why is Phase 2 of the Clean Energy Project an opt-in project?
These calculations require work units that may run longer, have higher memory, disk space and data transfer requirements. Therefore, we are providing the users the option to opt-in to the project.
In addition, The Clean Energy Project is the first World Community Grid project to use an external server. That is, your result data is directly uploaded to the Harvard research server. Security checks are in place to make certain that uploaded data is transferred correctly and validated by the Harvard research server that is receiving the data. World Community Grid controls which servers the data is sent to and the Harvard servers will not send data files to the member machines.
Therefore, if you're interested in advancing the science of solar cells, please help us out in this great effort!
How will The Clean Energy Project help find solar cell materials?
Understanding the properties of new materials that are the basis of alternative sources of renewable energy represents one of today’s major scientific challenges. Many of these materials are composed of large organic molecules that contain hundreds of atoms. These atoms can be rearranged in multiple ways to fine-tune the properties of the desired material. With the aid of World Community Grid, researchers will evaluate the conductive properties of at least 1,000,000 molecular structures (created by combinatorial methods) that are suitable for organic solar cells applications. The results of such an enormous number of computations will be used to create a public database of molecular properties for data mining.
What other technological applications will be relevant to this project?
Another technological application that will spawn from this project is the study of molecular electronics, where molecules are used for building electronic components. A good organic semiconductor for solar cells would also be good for potential applications in molecular electronics such as transistors. This means that The Clean Energy Project (CEP) has a potential to extend Moore's Law.
The CEP also plans to host a range of other calculations for cleaner energy capture and storage such as solar concentrator and polymer fuel cell. It is only with your help that researchers will be able to pursue these pure and applied directions of research.
How will The Clean Energy Project help find solar cell materials?
Understanding the properties of new materials that are the basis of alternative sources of renewable energy represents one of today’s major scientific challenges. Many of these materials are composed of large organic molecules that contain hundreds of atoms. These atoms can be rearranged in multiple ways to fine-tune the properties of the desired material. With the aid of World Community Grid, researchers will evaluate the conductive properties of at least 100,000 molecular structures (created by combinatorial methods) that are suitable for organic solar cells applications. The results of such an enormous number of computations will be used to create a database of molecular properties for data mining, which will be publicly available.
What is the expected practical outcome of this project?
The research is primarily driven by a desire to understand, at a fundamental level, why experimental results show that water can flow through some nanotube filters far more easily than expected according to the classical laws of hydrodynamics. By getting a better understanding of these fundamentals, the research aims to shed light on ways in which such filters could be improved even further, and lead to more affordable and more energy efficient types of water filters for cleaning and desalinating water.
How does ultrafiltration work?
Ultrafiltration refers to the process of reducing or eliminating very small particles from water by passing water under very high pressure through a membrane containing very fine pores. The unwanted particles have a harder time getting through the membrane than the water molecules, so fewer of them appear on the other side. The high pressure needed for ultrafiltration requires expensive equipment and much energy.
Any way to reduce the pressure needed in ultrafiltration can make water purification a cheaper and more accessible process. This is precisely what the Computing for Clean Water Project is ultimately aiming to achieve, by first studying in detail how the water molecules flow through filters.