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It has all the appearances of a breakthrough in battery technology, except that it's not a battery. Researchers at Nanotek Instruments, Inc., and its subsidiary Angstron Materials, Inc., in Dayton, Ohio, have developed a new paradigm for designing energy storage devices that is based on rapidly shuttling large numbers of lithium ions between electrodes with massive graphene surfaces. The energy storage device could prove extremely useful for electric vehicles, where it could reduce the recharge time from hours to less than a minute. Other applications could include renewable energy storage (for example, storing solar and wind energy) and smart grids.

he car of the future could be propelled by a fuel cell powered with hydrogen. But what will the fuel tank look like? Hydrogen gas is not only explosive but also very space-consuming. Storage in the form of very dense solid metal hydrides is a particularly safe alternative that accommodates the gas in a manageable volume. As the storage tank should also not be too heavy and expensive, solid-state chemists worldwide focus on hydrides containing light and abundant metals like magnesium.

Lowering energy consumption associated with computer data storage (specifically, cloud computing) and saving millions of dollars are possible now, thanks to new memory technology, a field that researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have been exploring through a four-year, $1.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded in 2009 titled, "Large: Storage Class Memory Architecture for Energy Efficient Data Centers."

Easy-to-follow recipes for radioactive compounds like those found in nuclear fuel storage pools, liquid waste containment areas and other contaminated aqueous environments have been developed by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories.

Magnets made of just three to five atoms will allow for computer storage to shrink millionfold. Now a chemist from University of Copenhagen has discovered a route to workable nano-magnets. The solution? Heavy non-iron metals.

The United States should plan to store spent nuclear fuel in cooling pools and concrete-and-steel casks for 100 years as it sorts out what should be done with it in the long term, according to a new study from MIT. Storing spent fuel temporarily, the study argues, is in some ways better than immediately transferring it into permanent underground storage at facilities like the proposed one at Yucca Mountain.

Vegetation in towns and cities can make a significant contribution to carbon storage and, ecologists say, could lock away even more carbon if local authorities and gardeners planted and maintained more trees. The study, published this week in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology, is the first to quantify how much carbon is stored in vegetation within an urban area of Europe.

Large increases in urbanization can lead to more concrete and asphalt reducing an area's flood mitigation services. Low density housing, however, has little effect on flood mitigation services but does cut down losses in the amount of land available for food and carbon storage, the study showed. Researchers investigated how a projected 16 per cent increase in the human population in Britain by 2031 would affect key ecosystem services depending on how cities expanded to meet the growing demand.

Scientists at the NRL Materials Science and Technology Division are providing solid evidence that there is a new route towards developing novel, lightweight energy storage devices. By moving away from centuries of caustic, hazardous aqueous-based battery cells and instead using non-volatile, thermally-stable ionic liquids, scientists predict multiple new types of batteries. Rather than depend on highly acidic electrolytes, ionic liquids are used to create a solid polymer electrolyte composed of an ionic liquid and polyvinyl alcohol, developing novel types of solid state batteries with discharge voltages ranging up to 1.8 volts.

Fast, low-energy memory for MP3s, smartphones and cameras could become a reality thanks to University of Edinburgh scientists.

A novel application of carbon nanotubes, developed by MIT researchers, shows promise as an innovative approach to storing solar energy for use whenever it's needed.