The rapid electrification of transport and the increasing demand for grid storage urge us to find alternatives to lithium-ion batteries, which rely on critical materials like lithium, nickel, and cobalt, raising significant supply and environmental concerns. Dr Svetlana Menkin, from the Department of Chemistry, has been working on zinc-based batteries as a promising alternative for
Over the last few decades, several marine-terminating glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica have retreated. Submarine melting of the calving glacier fronts is thought to be one of the dominant drivers of this retreat. In fact, for ice floating on seawater, the volume loss below the surface can be several times larger than the loss due
Green hydrogen is generated by splitting water molecules through electrolysis and producing it using electricity from renewable sources is crucial for transitioning to a net-zero economy. Proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysers are leading technologies for this process. Central to these systems is the oxygen-forming reaction, which demands strongly acidic conditions. This step, where water molecules
The ocean plays a central role in the global carbon cycle. Ocean water can absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it at depth for hundreds or thousands of years. In fact, it is estimated that the deep ocean contains a massive reservoir of carbon, which dwarfs all other reservoirs combined (including vegetation, soil
Deep ocean water contains a very large reservoir of carbon, and so understanding how this water moves and mixes over time is essential for all climate models. Over the last few decades, observations have shown that passive tracers initially located in the deep ocean have gradually resurfaced, suggesting that there are pathways through which deep
Numerical modelling is a key tool for understanding deep ocean dynamics, where observations remain sparse, particularly at submesoscales (1–30 km). Jonathan Gula, from the Laboratoire d’Océanographie Physique et Spatiale, Université de Bretagne Occidentale, uses high-resolution basin-scale and regional simulations to investigate how interactions between currents, topography, and mixing shape abyssal circulation and tracer transport. During
To ensure that the carbon dioxide captured during industrial processes is safely stored underground, it is essential to have a detailed understanding of the different mechanisms by which CO2 is trapped in geological aquifers. PhD student Ross Shepherd has been studying the long-term, post-injection fate of carbon dioxide in deep aquifers. During today’s seminar,
During the second part of today’s seminar, PhD student Ruiyang Wang discussed the results of his recent laboratory experiments on the dissolution of capillary-trapped CO2 in the subsurface. As CO2 is captured and injected into an aquifer, some of it migrates towards topographic highs within the aquifer, while some is trapped in the pore spaces
During the first part of today’s seminar, PhD student Haihan Li presented some of the most recent results of his work on bubble plumes in electrolysis. In electrolysis cells, hydrogen and oxygen bubbles are nucleated and grow on the surface of the electrodes, until they detach from the surface and rise through the surrounding fluid,
Lake Kivu is located on the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, along the western branch of the East African Rift, a region of active volcanism and high seismicity. The lake deep waters contain nearly 60 cubic km of methane and over 300 cubic km of carbon dioxide. The methane can be extracted