a wind generation slash watch now on youtube. b, w w mentioned this kind of fun. it feels like therapy, 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 i? and then the come, the melted, of course, cast into all sorts of shapes and sizes. but is it also combustible? as if you would check it out along with other fascinating ideas to the energy of the future on this edition of tomorrow. today, the science show on dw,

what's burning here is hiring well to be precise. this isn't something we see every day. everyone isn't doing stomach walk in byron. we don't expect to see a burning does this, but it can burn as long as the surface area is big enough. when the iron is and powdered form, the surface area is even larger. did you put the dimension burner, deliver essentially the energy pieces and we need that energy tonight, the iron powder and making or to turn them into when iron combats the left over product is iron oxide or that it's a chemical reaction that could soon revolutionize how energy is stored in the clean circles project scientist at the technical university of time, should not have teamed up with other partners to study how are in special properties could be put to you the these pure iron particles

store a lot of energy. when iron reacts with oxygen in the air, it forms an iron oxide. we know is right. the this combustion reaction is excess, meaning it releases heat and that he can be put to use the scene display. the goal of the product is to use iron as a storage medium for renewable energy rise, and iron can also be stored and transported. so the energy it can talk and can be put to use, you know, at a later point how much you 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? the standard energy storage systems like batteries can't make that need. but iron powder could be just the chicken. 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 and reverse. 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 close 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 that you only need to flush it for, to say you have a one liter bottle of compressed hydrogen of ton of

a and a one liter bottle of iron powder facilities. that bottle of hydrogen could supply as a 3 person household with 2 hours of energy, no model. but the iron matter could supply almost 2 days of energy, which the miser stop can up to a 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 rocket engine. the research here is focused on the fundamentals, like how large the particle should be and how against that iron powder should be to ensure uniform and complete combustion. together with the students, again, it is using a flow simulator to model the processes that take place in the span of just micro seconds different because i as in particular unenrolled iron particles flowing from

below and they come best at the con, done the heat up and transmit that you've got the gas, so was that red shelley, you can see right there does stuff. mostly a high symbol. the energy originally stored in the iron particles is transmitted to the gases heat damage and can now be honest in a power plant. for example, this hits somebody 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. i'm in the large facilities power plant and include cheap, the best possible efficiency, implementation, and utilization of the storage, renewable energy, and of the cost of the test that shows us the universities 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, i'm can see a flame that's burning and is 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 steam. 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 coal fired 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 for difficult potentially cover low carpet questions by up to 30 percent. and of course, that can't happen over night. it's a big finding, a renewable energy carrier that could replace cool without emitting c o 2. couldn't massively flash global carpet emission 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, north coast, spokes person of the clean circles project is investigating the thing we're set to roughly double our energy consumption. by installing heat panels, i'm driving electric car, and that's called a con. luckily generated renewables can't meet that need oil. so we have to store renewable energy, where i produced, obviously, where there's a lot of fun and wind and then transport it to europe and germany cannot buy something. this is where international energy partnerships could come in. countries that has 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 rail to where it's needed. as the hotels for the technical process isn't the main challenge. so that the, the main challenge will be garnering political support for this new technology in touch with them. so that can be launched on the market and often side to then we'll meet enough robust energy partnerships oxy. to provide us with the renewable energy . we need all the bond and again, so for, from replacing a coal fired plants with iron carrier technology would require more higher. and of course, but the researches have done the math 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 qualifier plants can be converted to green iron by 2030 instead

of relying on combustion. we can also calling this 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, to in the sense 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 are fascinated by photovoltaic solar cells. it's just, they were outrages lea expensive. this is the biggest collection of photo sales ever assembled. it cost a quarter of a $1000000.00. it only produces enough electricity for us 3 or 4 families. and that's what a rival 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 back then. let's skip 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 sold a sales con. you might have seen the concentrated, sold a pallet. oh 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 fundamentally they work the same way. they use a mirror as to reflects and concentrate some lights. it's simply they get, i mean, did the sheet that is coming from this. i need to show the consenting

ability of the 1000 times to send united lucky, bubbling. and this type of csp plans for that particular point is would be the top of the tower inside that as a fluid, purely molten salt, salt salt, and it's a liquid form that gets heated up by the sun's energy molten sold to spend compounds with generates 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, i'm not a small, uh, let's say the function by what club. but we solve the problem even any function. uh, flip. after that, the salt has crews down, so it gets pumped up the tower 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 photovoltaic solar cells and not myra's,

but concentrated sunlight. i'm old enough to remember in 2010, 0, so we will soup up domestic route sold at the end, the trees to generation bigger than that. well, for example, big dreams to set up huge, concentrated solar plans in this a higher um and send the 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 got pretty cheap. and 1st of all 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 solar power 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 that you need to adjust to, you know, under real environmental conditions. csb plants 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 and points this make a project welcome to the future of power generation crescent students in the us

state of nevada was supposed to revolutionize clean electricity, the cost of all 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 any of all you have started south, 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 gigabytes 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 idea. yes. and that's the same reason why china has been building many of these in the past years. because that's one thing that affordable takes come to think about. federal tax is it really does not generate that night, but concentrates of sola can new of plants don't just heat hot, molten salt, or you straight away. they also have big tanks to store it. once it stops, 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 round the clock as we plaque, more renewables into upgrades because they only work when the sun shines. so the wind blows. having this flexible supply might also justify paying a little more a future csp move to a different nice right side and used to be

a power technology like wind, mtv. and now it's really very much a storage technology. is it ralph cools, other ways to store electricity, like lithium ion battery is that now often to build right next to solar farms. but they are 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 and 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 development way more than anywhere else. that's because every renewable park 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 concentrated, sold out. so he talked to storage times. been at nights when the solar panels lie idle, you use the stored heat to run your turbine. either way csp will likely never get as big as people one still templates. solar cells have one of the technology rates and catch at the mass market. but speed might've fountain unique and it will be exciting to see whether it can fill it. it's all good to know more about so low power. we'll have another science question, send it to us as a video, text or voice mail, if we own. so we're going to show, we'll send you a little surprised. so thank you. so go on just task this week. so you a question came from alex in kind of id and be used for rock if you got some fascinating question, including correct spots in the fields. 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 prove missions 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 propes, i've 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 the propulsion system based on solid dieting. 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 moss 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 comb with 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 me of wisdom, and the more know you wind turbine operate set about 25 percent full load hours a month. if you make all that. so b, 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 realized that these towers as so tongue that we could install them and existing wind farms as a kind of 2nd story, if it's the end of income and not on the same turbine, of course, but in between them, muscle and well, that's original justin costs man and his team began working on their dream of a high altitude a wind turbine in 2010. this wind, thanks you meant tower, which was built about a year ago is the 4 runner of what look set 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 i 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 or 7 years going through the approval process for the honest, but i think transition reading them didn't, couldn't identify new locations as one side of the equation. the other is that the newest and toughest wind turbines are starting to bump against our physical limit 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 or listen to this group phone. so it's

a telescoping tower. it's been told we 1st build the outer tower. and then the inside temper piano, we attached the 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 fashion just in the we decided to use a regular lot of for trust construction, which you also see and electrical towers that's done. but there's needed for the state of the art easy to build, meaning it has less wind resistance been foster. we also use commercially available blades and turbines from a system. so we joined together several state of the art technology is to arrive at a new technology in this to 9 to get to 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 we'll have enough on they sleep on 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 plant coordinate and like useful. so if i can produce locally generated green energy, which would attract jobs and businesses of the area like i've been public, acceptance with for construction is set to begin on the world's 1st high altitude wind turbine. and then we'll say she region and eastern germany. people have already been won over to the idea of setting up wind farms and former open cast like night mines. the mayor of the local community is convinced green wind energy will soon replace dirty like night or brown. cool. and then you also have like acceptance remain strong and if local citizens also profit from the wind park, the next tie altitude, wind turbine will only be a matter of time until noon to find a type that 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, a and a 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 years. what's why, on the student, 2 years ago we expanded the school with 6 new classroom life, also for over a 1000000 near f public schools. 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 euro. 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 that wraps things up for this edition of tomorrow today. thanks for watching and see you again next time the the,

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