a valid ok. ok. ok. the does it energy automatically means searchable? change? not necessarily. there is another option. concentrated a futuristic thomas that's been neglected to get this technology can do something that 1st it'll change tomorrow to today. the next dw, the

sometimes to show our gratitude to the highlights of every week. not the, not the since time immemorial. humans have been using fire for cooking and heating, and more recently to power heavy machinery. the funding would colon oil emits toxic pollutants, and i love to c o 2 watts if we've been iron instead. but hang on a minute can ion then the come, the melted, of course, cast into all sorts of shapes and sizes, which is it also combustible, as if you would check it out along with other fascinating ideas to the energy at the future on this edition of tomorrow today, the science show on dw what's burning here is

iron walls. if you decide this isn't something you see every day. everyone isn't doing stomach walk in the island. we don't expect to see a burning does this, but it can burn as long as the surface area is big it the physical skills. when the iron is in powdered form, the surface area is even larger. gonna deliver to benson burner, deliver essentially the energy and we need that energy tonight, the iron powder and making her to, to stomach when iron combust. the left over product is iron oxide or red. it's a chemical reaction that can soon revolutionize how energy is stored. in the clean circles project scientist at the technical university of thompson, i have teamed up with other partners to study how are in special properties could be put to use these pure iron particles for

a lot of energy. when iron reacts with oxygen in the air, it forms an iron oxide. we know is run the this combustion reaction is excess 30, meaning it releases heat and that he can be put to use the seen this quick to the goal of the product. we will just use iron as a storage medium for renewable energy rising on iron can also be stored and transported. so the energy it contains can be put to you at a later point, how much we spend on site. and then what's this kind of energy storage technology could spark a green revolution? but if we make the switch to renewables, what will happen when there's no wind and the sun isn't shining? where will our energy come from? then? standard energy storage systems like batteries can't meet that needs, but iron powder could be just the ticket. iron is

a cheap and abundant metal. and when iron powder combust, it releases energy without releasing harmful a particular. and without c o 2 emissions. what's more, the entire process also works in reverse, or when iron oxide is put into an aqueous solution. and an electric current flows through a process called electrolysis takes place. the iron and oxygen are split in a process called reduction. that leaves behind the elemental iron. it looks the electricity is stored is chemical energy, the this process of converting iron to iron oxide and back to higher and again can be repeated almost indefinitely. and iron powder also has other advantages as an energy carrier shows are you going to need to flush it for to say you have a one liter bottle of compressed hydrogen of to another and

a one liter bottle of iron powder. the food is that bottle of hydrogen can supply a 3 person household with 2 hours of energy, no modeling, but the iron water could supply almost 2 days of energy, which the miser stop can up to one target. researchers from the clean circles project or studying the underlying processes that take place when iron powder is combusted. for now, a gas blame is used to make the iron in the future. the goal is to make the process of sustaining exhaust gas is reminiscent of a racket engine. the research here is focused on the fundamentals like how large the particle should be and how against the iron powder should be to ensure uniform and complete combustion. together with the students because again has to is using a flow simulator to model the processes that take place in the span of just micro seconds when because i as in particular unenrolled iron particles flowing from

below and they come best at the current gun. the heat up and transmit that you've got the gas. so was that red shell, or you can see right there still supposed to be a hygiene for the energy originally stored and the iron particles is transmitted to the gases heat and can now be honest in a power plant. for example, this hits somebody should be caustic with these complex calculations and flow simulations can only be done on very powerful computers. the university's mainframe is up to the top. it's one of the 10 most powerful computers in germany. and the large facilities power plant unimed to achieve the best possible efficiency, implementation, and utilization of the storage renewable energy. a list of tests that shows us the university's model power plant. this one megawatt plant could supply about 100 households with energy right now. other energy carriers are being invested here for research purposes,

but soon they plan to start testing iron powder design. yeah. yeah. i'm here. you can see a flame that's burning and a setup similar to a coal fired plant. and what if we feed iron into it? those particles are similar and they would also burn and release heat, which we use to generate this team. in a steam turbine, that team would be converted to electricity. it's the same principle as using coal . so coal fired power plants could also be operated with iron powder and retrofitting cold fire plants would be relatively easy. and siri, whole power plants around the world can be converted to iron combustion plants and generate power without emitting any c o 2. that's what's inside of the folders for them to physically potentially comfort level carpet questions by up to 30 percent. of course, that can't happen overnight, but finding a renewable energy carrier that could replace cool without emitting c o 2 could be massively slash global carpet emissions mostly. so that sounds amazing. but where

with the huge amounts of renewable energy needed to keep the cycle going come from . that's one of the issues michelle cannot co spokesperson at the clean circles project is investigating. the thing we're set to roughly double our energy consumption delta by installing heat panels, i'm driving electric current. that's called a con. luckily generated renewables can't meet that need. so we have to store renewable energy, where i produced, obviously for this a lot of fun and wind and then transported to europe and germany, calling us about something. this is where international energy partnerships could come in. countries that have plenty of wind and sun and that are politically and economically stable and like canada and australia, a good prospect. other possibilities including the media in southern africa and she lives in south america. the green renewable energy would be produced in large amounts locally and stored in iron as an energy carrier that would then be shipped

to germany and transported, for example, by real to where it's needed. as the whole top us for the tiny little process isn't the main channel, the leaving. the main challenge will be garnering political support for this new technology we've come. so that can be launched on the market and often side to then we'll meet enough real best in energy partnerships oxy. to provide us with the renewable energy. we need all the and low bond and again, so for from replacing our coal fired plants with iron carrier technology would require more higher. and of course, but the research has done that. and the extra amount is less than one right. thanks to convert to iron carrier technology on a global scale. we need to mind just 5 percent more iron or over the next 2 decades . so all goes well the 1st coal fire plants can be converted to green iron by 2030

instead of relying on combustion, we can also harness energy from the sun. think to of all, take solar panels already generated about 5 percent of the world's electricity. but there's another way to turn the suns energy into electricity which mirror has a lot of mirrors and it's not as new as you might think. check out this documentary from the late seventy's. the light is converted directly into electricity. no moving parts. it's the perfect solar machine. people were fascinated by photo voltaic solar cells. it's just, they were outrages, lee expensive. this is the biggest collection of photo sales ever assembled. it cost a quarter of a $1000000.00. it only produces enough electricity. 4th are for families. and that's what arrival technology came into play. large mirror us that's can also to

in some beams, into electricity by focusing the light from the sun and using its heat. what you're seeing is the world's 1st commercial solar and electric power plant. it's called solar one. concentrated solar power seems like the most promising solar technology, big event, but skipped to today. and it's been almost completely forgot. but maybe that was a mistake, because concentrated solar can do one very crucial thing that solar sales cause you might have seen the concentrated, sold a pallet, or c is p plants that looks like this before. especially if you're into your hollywood, sy fi the csb ponds can also look a bit less futuristic like this. but it's fundamentally they work the same way. but use a mirror us to reflects and concentrate some lights. it's cheap. they could, i mean, did, they, shouldn't that, that is coming from this. i need to show the consenting ability of

the 1000 times to send united lucky by point. and this type of csp plans for that particular point is would be the top of the tower inside it. there's a fluid, purely molten salt. so salt and it's liquid form that gets heated up by the sun's energy. molten sold has been come down to it generates up that boils water to produce sleep, which in turn can be used to spend a turbine that generates electricity the same time that you can cost, you know, not a small, uh, let's say the function by what club but we solve the problem, even any function uh flow. after that, the salt has cooled down, so it gets pumped up the toilet and the cycle stops again. and for this process to work properly, do you need a lot of direct sunlight, which is why you find some plants and countries like chile, morocco, the united arab emirates, or india. but most of them on the hot pots of spain in the us. so why is it that when we hear solar energy, most of us immediately think of photovoltaics solar cells and not mira's,

but concentrated sunlight? i'm old enough to remember in 2010. no say we will soup up domestic route so that the industry's to generation bigger than that. well, for example, big dreams to set up huge, concentrated solar plants and it's a high rise and cynthia electricity to europe via cable for a long time. so this type of was the main utility scale. so technology, however, what happened then was that makes it up to 10 numbers. you've got pretty cheap and sociable types, go super cheap. in a little over a decade, the price for electricity from solar photovoltaics dropped by almost 90 percent. there were a bunch of reasons for this, mainly policy support which kicks down to the growing solar industry. concentrate that sold up how it also became cheaper to in 2011. it started costing more than foldable takes today. it's more than twice as expensive. this meant people begin to turn away from it and put up the cheapest solar panels instead. it wasn't so much the solar panels last. it was one of the full size one. that is also because we've

sold a family or concentrated solar. every single mirror needs to individually check the sense of movement. so they always direct the race to exactly the right points. and depending on the size of the plants, this could be thousands of mirrors. and then you have to account for clouts, which may block one part of the mirror of fields, but not all of it. that makes it hard to control the temperature at the top of the tower, which needs to stay within the fixed range compared to all of this solar panels are just pretty easy to handle. when you put it on your roof or when you put it on the field or when you put another lake or wherever you put it, it's just very simple. it's have to clean and maybe from time to time, but it's not operationally complex as csp where you have mirrors and you need to adjust to, you know, under real environmental conditions. these plans are generally also custom built, which makes them expensive. so in order to make them what that they need to be big, which means more challenging to engineer and handle a case of points. this make a project. welcome to the future of power generation,

crescent dunes in the us state of nevada and was suppose to revolutionize clean electricity. because that will things $1000000000.00 to build. and when it started to run in 2015 expectations were high. and then the problems began. never reached, it's expected everetts outputs, which was supposed to power $75000.00 homes also because there were lots and lots of outages due to technical problems often to do with the molten. so the plot used to most of so is a paid to work with because if something does go wrong and it drops below it, some, it's melting point, then you didn't have both. and so anymore you have started salt, and then your pipes are full of solid sold. and this is a big pain to sort out of a mega projects like the idea to build big plants and the so how about the power of europe also fell flat today? and all of the world's plants taking together have a generating capacity of 7 gigawatts, for comparison, the $1700.00 gigawatts of photovoltaics solar panels out there. so sees p is never

made it big, and it seen its fast share of setbacks. but there's one reason why we shouldn't give up on the ideas. and that's the same reason why china has been building many of these in the past years. because that's one thing that fordable takes come to think about. federal tips is it really does not generate that died, but concentrates of solar can. new of plants don't just heat hot, multiple salt to use straight away. they also have big tanks to store it once it's helped. is it only close by one degree celsius per day? in that and can be used to run the turbine, it's a lights up point like after the sun has gone down. cool, and lots of people are using lots of electricity all at once. it's important to have these clean sources of energy. we can dispatch around the clock as we plaque, more renewables into upgrades because they only work when the sun shines with the wind blows. having this flexible supply might also justify paying a little more. for the future of csp move to a different nice right side. it used to be a power technology like wind, mtv,

and now it's really very much a storage technology. is it ralph? cause other ways to store electricity like lithium ion battery is that now often get billed right next to solar farms. but they're typically used to shift up to 4 hours worth of energy. you can build big a batteries to cover the night, for example, but that will be very expensive. since volt, the salt is quite cheap, it's more economical to use this for longer periods. it's also possible to use electricity from solar panels to heat up the molten salts, but that's less efficient than directly using csp to capture the sun seats, at least in places with lots of sunshine, good reasons to rediscover, concentrated solar power in china. the around 30 plants and developments way more than anywhere else. that's because every renewable pack with one gigawatts capacity now must include 10 percent of storage. and the government issued this notice saying it will support the large scale and industrialized development of solar thermal power. the idea is simple. during the day you use solar p,

v to produce cheap electricity and concentrate that sold out. so he topped your storage tanks. then at nights when the solar panels lie idle, you use the stored heat to run your turbine. either way, see, is people likely never get as big as people one store templates. solar cells have one of the technology rates and catch at the mass market. puts speed might have fountain unique and it will be exciting to see whether it can fill it. or if i want to know more about solar power, we'll have another science question, send it to us as a video, text or voice mail. if we owns, we don't, the show will send you a little surprises. so thank you. so go on just task this weeks, you a question came from alex and id and be used for real good. you got some fascinating questions including correct . that's in the feels real kits can lift off from

a launch pad because the rocket fuel burns that releases a huge amount of energy. the whole gas expelled down which generates thrust unless the rock it off the ground. it takes about 8 minutes to reach out to space foot satellite in space permissions take a lot longer than that and they need to use as little fuel as possible. that's where i adding comes in as a possible propellant for electric motors. since 1998 space probes have also had this kind of propulsion system, an ion engine on board. in these systems, the fuel isn't fund like a real kids, but electrically charged the propeller and ask them to split into electrically charged particles. and then exhilarated in an electrostatic field, the then they're rejected from the thrust to propel the space croft. electric propulsion systems are very

efficient and becoming increasingly popular. they don't produce a lot of thrust, but they operate for a long time. that makes them ideal for long distance space travel. so maneuvering spacecraft with high precision. the systems are generally powered with noble gases like send on a crypt on which are expensive and very rare. that's why scientists looking for alternatives. a few years ago, a french company tested to propulsion system based on solid iodine. iodine is cheaper and even more efficient than rad noble gases. norwegian, many such a light launched in april 2023 as an id electric propulsion system on board. so it's entirely possible that one day space cross my user id and propulsion systems to make the journey to mines and to asteroids. the european and us

space agencies are also investigating input to propulsion systems, fuel biology. let's head back to, to this aisha region that struggles the border between germany and poland. for more than 150 years mcknight to brown coal was mine to now the landscape is being returned to nature. solar and wind farms are moving in with new ideas about how to hon is power from the sky. the welcome to what's probably the world's tallest measurement tower. it's 300 meters high. it's part of a plan to transform the potential of wind energy, the wisdom and the light in the ordinary wind turbine operates at about 25 percent full load hours. and what if you make all that so be so for megawatt wind turbine will generate roughly the same amount of energy as a one,

megawatt cole or gas power plant for the spring. so i'm good with we knew that we could get more out of it in there, but we didn't know how much of it must must. that's where the wind measurement tower comes in. you know, there can. now we know that the same rotor diameter at 300 meters to generate about twice as much energy on that. and we realize that these towers are so time that we could install them and existing wind farms. as a kind of 2nd story, we will proceed to of income and not on the same turbine, of course, but in between them muscle. and while that's original doesn't cost 9 and his team began working on their dream of a high altitude a wind turbine in 2010. this wind, thank you. meant tower, which was built about a year ago, is the 4 runner of what to expect to become a gigantic project. the data it's been supplying shows how strong and steady the wind is. twice the height of a conventional wind turbine. in the future, high altitude wind turbines could accelerate the expansion of wind energy cost. i

thought hadn't one of the biggest hurdles a space at the moment is finding a net sites for wind farms. if you fall off in the approval and regional planning processes, the suitability studies, but can we understand that this allows us to use existing wind farms which have already been found suitable for generating wind direction. and this trend or something that could give a huge boost to the expansion of wind power in the next years nation. we also because we wouldn't be spending $35.00 or 7 years going through the approval process for the honest. but i think translation to beat them didn't, couldn't identify new locations is one side of the equation. the other is that the newest and tallest wind turbines are starting to bump. it gets their physical limits in terms of transporting the enormous rotor plates. and in terms of the height of the structure but was especially develop construction method. wind turbines could reach a height of 300 meters, a listen to this group phone. so it's

a telescoping tower. i've always been told we 1st build the outer tower and then the inside temperature unit we attached to rotor and turbine itself at the regular height, say 150 meters of the inventory. and then we push the enter tower up and tell us got the confession, doesn't we don't we decided to use a regular lot of for trust construction, which you also see and electrical towers that's done with this new state of the art . easy to build a new and has left wind resistance been foster. we also use commercially available blades and turbines from us as to so we joined together several state of the art technology is to arrive at a new technology. and this to 9 to get took on the entrepreneur as passionate about the future of high altitude wind turbines. they'll operate at more than 50 percent full load hours and combined with conventional wind turbines and solar installations, they'll make optimum use the space. the idea is definitely appealing, combining 3 renewable energy sources into

a single hybrid power plant to deliver enough green energy to meet demand. and you'll have normal, nice to see when they so, so we hope that next year or the year after that we'll build the 1st pilot plant and environmentally friendly hybrid power plants coordinate. unlike this also, if i can produce locally generated green energy, which would attract jobs and businesses of the area like a ben, how much acceptance with for construction is set to begin on the world's 1st high altitude wind turbine. and it will say she region in eastern germany, people have already been won over to the idea of setting up wind farms and former open catholic night mines. the mayor of the local community is convinced green wind energy will soon replace dirty like night or brown coal. the non public acceptance remain strong. and if local citizens also profit from the wind park, the next ty altitude, wind turbine will only be a matter of time until noon to find a time to the local community of chicago is already reaping the benefits from

a nearby energy park every 2 years. each resident receives 80 years as part of the profit sharing scheme and half of the business tax revenue flows back into the community. and you find that for a ticket that i own, we already started seeing returns 3 years ago when we built the preschool in the ship county district for more than a 1000000 euro. let's lie on the student. 2 years ago we extended the school with 6 new classroom life. also for over a 1000000 your s felt the last year we built the school cafeteria for another 1000000 bits, and we also renovated all the playgrounds in the area. and today we're opening the new state park here, which cost about 300000 years. some of those old ship cal will soon be home to record breaking wind turbine. and the mayor is convinced another will find them as for us and costs money. he plans to build 1000 high altitude wind turbines and existing wind farms across germany by 2030

and the reps things up for this edition of tomorrow today. thanks for watching and see you again next time the, the shift your guides to life and it digital you know, the latest online trend to navigate your way through the digital jungle global perspective. we'll be your guide and show you what's possible. you decide what really message to you shift in 15 minutes on the w respect. it's all about. what can we have on the texting nature?

that's right, sandra, respecting they just studying aids. i mean it's about being up to date with coming tardy is technologies. i'm trying to eat co way of life, the environment magazine, the co africa in d w the, she's the head of a country, breaks it down. i know it's homeland of 2 beds has been occupied by china for almost 75 years. the deadline, norma, when it's time to see for his country for this he received the nobel peace to this business, china, september 27th on p

w. so you don't think you the same way you expect and more and different things from life when your parents do i just want to pursue was that's my thought desired or you think your kid is 2 different, risky, irresponsible, reasonable port is not i want my son to become a doctor to in the cloud. it's time to, to get in your generation with a sleep asked and then when generations flash watch now on youtube. b, w, don't, you mentioned this kind of fun. it feels like therapy, the, the,

the, this is the w news coming to line from berlin. the api i says it's investigating what appears to be another attempt to assassinate donald trump. the former us present is safe and fun harmed after the incident at his golf club in florida. a suspect is in custody. also coming up at least 8 people are dead as storm forest lashes central in eastern europe, several 1000 are forced to flee as the storm dumps a months worth of rain in just 24 hours. shell gun sugarland makes history. this.