Archive for October, 2007

Making Lithium-Ion Batteries Safer

 Posted by Allan on October 30th, 2007

In recent years battery failures in laptops and cell phones — many overheating, some bursting into flame — have drawn attention to one of the biggest problems posed by lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries: overcharging can lead to battery failure and chemical leakages from the battery pack, and sometimes fire and personal injury.

“Electrolyte material in these batteries is highly energetic,” says EETD’s Guoying Chen. “It consists of lithium salts dissolved in organic solvents, and it’s flammable. Often, overcharging these batteries is what causes the problem. As the battery heats up it swells, and it can burst into flame.”

Read more here:
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/sabl/2007/Oct/batteries.html

Revisiting The New York Times Headquarters Building

 Posted by Allan on October 30th, 2007

Employees of The New York Times Company (The Times) began occupying their new headquarters on the west side of Manhattan in mid-2007. Three years before this milestone, The Times’s facility team had approached building scientists at Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD), looking for help. They were searching for reliable and affordable technologies, not yet available in the marketplace, to regulate daylight in the new building…

Read the rest here:
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/sabl/2007/Oct/nytimes.html

EETD/Berkeley Lab and the Nobel Peace Prize

 Posted by Allan on October 22nd, 2007

A press release about the role of Berkeley Lab scientists who contribute to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the organization that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.

Berkeley Lab Scientists Contribute to Climate Change Studies that win the Nobel Peace Prize

“…William Collins and Inez Fung of the Earth Sciences Division (ESD), and Mark Levine, Surabi Menon, Evan Mills, Lynn Price, Jayant Sathaye, and Ernst Worrell of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD) are among current members of Berkeley Lab who were leading authors of this year’s IPCC working group reports.

Collins and Fung, who are also professors in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of California at Berkeley, were among the authors of the report from IPCC Working Group I, “The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change,” for the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) in 2007. Surabi Menon, a member of the Atmospheric Sciences Department in EETD, was also an author of this report. All three authors participate in Berkeley Lab’s new Climate Science Department, based in ESD and headed by Collins, which is developing a powerful Integrated Earth System Model to deliver detailed climate predictions on the regional scale more than 20 years out, and global models that can forecast worldwide changes to the end of the century.

Levine, Price, Sathaye, and Worrell were among the authors of the AR4 report from Working Group III, “Mitigation of Climate Change.” Mills was an author of AR4’s Working Group II report, “Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability.” Levine, former director of EETD, has long studied problems of climate change and global warming with particular attention to energy use in China. He and Price, Sathaye, Worrell, and Mills are members of EETD’s Energy Analysis Department, which among its other research projects develops models of energy use, assesses technological applications, and develops and evaluates policies and programs to improve energy management.

In addition to those named above, other current Berkeley Lab scientists who have contributed to the 2007 reports, or have been authors of the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report issued in 2001 or other past reports, include Norm Miller, Curt Oldenburg, and Karsten Pruess of ESD, and Phil Haves, Maithili Iyer, and Stephane de la Rue du Can of EETD…”

http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/Nobel-Peace-Prize-2007.html

Sharing the burden of climate change stabilization

 Posted by Allan on October 22nd, 2007

Report Number: LBNL-52911
Title: Sharing the burden of climate change stabilization: An energy
sector perspective
Author: Wagner, Fabian; Sathaye, Jayant
Report Date: 05/01/2006
Division: Environmental Energy Technologies Division
FORMAL REPORT

PDF:
http://www-library.lbl.gov/docs/LBNL/529/11/PDF/LBNL-52911.pdf – (Full text (Size 763K))

Subject(s):
Energy conservation, consumption, and utilization (32)

The Science of Climate Change

 Posted by Allan on October 22nd, 2007

Report Number: LBNL-52790
Title: The Science of Climate Change
Author: Makundi, Willy R.
Report Date: 09/20/2002
Division: Environmental Energy Technologies Division
Conference: Central American Regional Capacity-Building Workshop on
Climate Change, Turialba, Costa Rica, 09/16-20/2002

PDF:
http://www-library.lbl.gov/docs/LBNL/527/90/PDF/LBNL-52790_Preprint.pdf – (Full text PREPRINT (PDF Size 3M))

Subject(s):
Energy planning, policy and economy (29)

Partnerships for Clean Development and Climate

 Posted by Allan on October 22nd, 2007

Report Number: LBNL-61472

Title: Partnerships for Clean Development and Climate: Business and
Technology Cooperation Benefits
Author: Sathaye, Jayant A.; Price, Lynn; Kumar, Satish; de la Rue du
Can, Stephane; Warfield, Corina; Padmanabhan, S.
Report Date: 08/22/2006
Division: Environmental Energy Technologies Division
Conference: Business & Technology Cooperation Opportunities for
Industry, New Delhi, India, 08/26/2006
PDF:
http://www-library.lbl.gov/docs/LBNL/614/72/PDF/LBNL-61472.pdf – (Full text (Size 597K))
Subject(s):
Energy conservation, consumption, and utilization (32)
Energy planning, policy and economy (29)