Columbia Engineers use ice-templating to control electrolyte structure in lithium batteries; solid-state is non-flammable, non-toxic, and flexible with longer battery life Schematic of vertically aligned and connected ceramic channels for enhancing ionic conduction. In the left figure, ceramic particles are randomly dispersed in the polymer matrix, where ion transport is blocked by the polymer matrix… read more

Columbia Engineering Associate Research Scientist Xiaozhou (Sean) Zhou shows visitors from the Baotou Iron and Steel (Group) a prototype processing unit in his lab designed to repurpose manufacturing waste to produce a wide range of useable materials. —Photo by Timothy Lee Photographers   China currently manufactures half of the world’s iron and steel through a… read more

The ability to efficiently and economically store variable solar energy would be a major step towards meeting growing global energy demands. This can be accomplished by converting excess solar energy into chemical energy, or “solar fuels”, a concept which has the potential to compensate for solar energy intermittency and also provide a carbon neutral transportation… read more

Novel technique may lead to longer battery life in portable electronics and electrical vehicles Yuan Yang, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Columbia Engineering, has developed a new method to increase the energy density of lithium (Li-ion) batteries. He has built a trilayer structure that is stable even in ambient air, which makes… read more

Researchers working in Iceland say they have discovered a new way to trap the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) deep underground: by changing it into rock. Results published this week in Science show that injecting CO2 into volcanic rocks triggers a reaction that rapidly forms new carbonate minerals—potentially locking up the gas forever.

ALEXANDRIA, VA, February 5, 2015—The Department of Defense (DoD), through the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP), supports the demonstration of technologies that address priority DoD installation energy requirements.  The demonstrations are intended to generate supporting cost and performance data needed for validation of the technology.  The goal is to accelerate the deployment of innovative… read more

Colin Sullivan from Climate Wire published an article on some of the outcomes, concepts and perspectives discussed at the Research Coordination Network on Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage’s workshop and annual meeting (April 14-16, 2014). “Scientists urge bigger research budgets for pulling CO2 out of the air.” Click this link to read the article.

From Monday, April 14 until Wednesday April 16 the following posters will be on display outside of Davis Auditorium in the CEPSR/Schapiro Center. On Wednesday at 12:30-1:30 there will be a poster session for presenters to talk more about their work. To expand the abstracts, click on the + next to the title. + Capturing… read more

The Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy (LCSE) is pleased to welcome back Doctoral Student Yinghuang Ji, who recently returned from Iceland at the Carbfix geological carbon storage site. Ji’s project, “Tagging Carbon Dioxide to Enable Quantitative Inventories of Geological Carbon Storage” (PI. Klaus Lackner) otherwise known as the C14 project, funded by the US Department… read more

The Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy’s PhD alumnus Eric Dahlgren wrote a paper “Small Modular Infrastructure” with LCSE Director Klaus Lackner, along with Garrett van Ryzin and Caner Göçmen from the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. It was recently selected for the Eugene L. Grant award for best paper in the Engineering Economist for… read more