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Categories: Energy: Fossil Fuels, Environmental: Wildfires

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Researchers have uncovered the chemical inner-workings of an electrolyte they developed for a new generation of solid oxide fuel cells. To uncover the location of the proton-introduction reaction, the team studied extensively the hydration reaction of their scandium-substituted barium zirconate perovskite through a combination of synchrotron radiation analysis, large-scale simulations, machine learning, and thermogravimetric analysis. The new data has the potential to accelerate the development of more efficient fuel cells.

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People might be more positive to the removal of fuel subsidies if told where the money would be spent instead. This has been shown in a study which investigated attitudes towards removing fossil fuel subsidies in five developing countries.

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Researchers have built and tested a bushfire safe room that exceeds current Australian standards and could keep people alive or protect valuables when evacuation is no longer an option.

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There is currently a large dependence on coal for power generation. As coal-fired plants cause environmental and health hazards, technologies such as swirl flow and air staging have been proposed to mitigate the pollutants in their emissions. However, it is unclear how effective these technologies are in reducing the environmental costs of these plants. Now, researchers have provided insights on this front in a new study, delineating their efficacies with experiments and simulations.

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Globally, wildfires are becoming more frequent and destructive, generating a significant amount of smoke that can be transported thousands of miles, driving the need for more accurate air pollution forecasts. Researchers have now developed a deep learning model that provides improved predictions of air quality in wildfire-prone areas and can differentiate between wildfires and non-wildfires.

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In the event of dry weather and high winds, power system-ignited incidents are more likely to develop into wildfires. The risk is greater if vegetation is nearby. A new study provides the methodology for predicting at what point during a high wind storm, powerline ignition is likely.

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Hydrogen is often heralded as the clean fuel of the future, but new research suggests that leaky hydrogen infrastructure could end up increasing atmospheric methane levels, which would cause decades-long climate consequences.

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A new study finds that smoke particles in the stratosphere can trigger chemical reactions that erode the ozone layer -- and that smoke particles from Australian wildfires widened the ozone hole by 10 percent in 2020.

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Research into the ability of a wildfire to improve the health of a forest uncovered a Goldilocks effect -- unless a blaze falls in a narrow severity range, neither too hot nor too cold, it isn't very good at helping forest landscapes return to their historical, more fire-tolerant conditions.

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Carbon dioxide emissions from wildfires, which have been gradually increasing since 2000, spiked drastically to a record high in 2021, according to an international team of researchers.

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Leading environmental health experts have called for a comprehensive review of the UK's fire safety regulations, with a focus on the environmental and health risks of current chemical flame retardants.

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A new method to convert waste plastic to fuel and raw materials promises to help close the carbon cycle at mild temperature and with high yield.

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Given the growing importance of graphite in energy storage technologies, a team of esearchers has conducted a study exploring ways to reduce reliance on imports of the in high-demand mineral, which powers everything from electric vehicles (EVs) to cell phones.

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Researchers created maps showing where warmer weather has left trees in conditions that don't suit them, making them more prone to being replaced by other species. The findings could help inform long-term wildfire and ecosystem management in these 'zombie forests.'

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Researchers have developed a machine learning-based ensemble approach to quantify fire-induced thaw settlement across the entire Tanana Flats in Alaska, which encompasses more than 3 million acres. They linked airborne repeat lidar data to time-series Landsat products (satellite images) to delineate thaw settlement patterns across six large fires that have occurred since 2000. The six fires resulted in a loss of nearly 99,000 acres of evergreen forest from 2000 to 2014 among nearly 155,000 acres of fire-influenced forests with varying degrees of burn severity. This novel approach helped to explain about 65 percent of the variance in lidar-detected elevation change.

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Hydrogen fuel could be a more viable alternative to traditional fossil fuels, according to University of Surrey researchers who have found that a type of metal-free catalysts could contribute to the development of cost-effective and sustainable hydrogen production technologies.

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A research team examined what happens to mountain snowpacks when sunny, midwinter dry spells occur in forests impacted by severe wildfire.

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Between 2010 and 2020, human ignitions started 76% of the Western wildfires that destroyed structures, and those fires tended to be in flammable areas where buildings are increasingly common. Three times as many homes and other structures burned in these ten years than in the previous decade.

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A new conceptual framework for incorporating the way plants use carbon and water, or plant dynamics, into fine-scale computer models of wildland fire provides a critical first step toward improved global fire forecasting.

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While communities and governments nationwide have been facing the impact of wildfires on drinking water systems, no national synthesis of scientific and policy needs has been conducted. Now, a study has outlined the scientific and policy needs specific to drinking water systems' resilience to wildfires.