Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolyzers have received increasing attention for renewable hydrogen production through water splitting. In order to develop such electrolyzers, it is necessary to understand and model the flow of liquids, gases, and ions through the PEM. An advancedmulti-dimensional multi-physics model is established for PEM electrolyzer to describe the two-phase flow, electron/proton transfer, mass transport, and water electrolysis kinetics.

Invention of a new platform for creating active supramolecular materials using electrical energy as the fuel.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have developed an improved redox flow battery (RFB) for intermittent renewable energy applications such as wind, solar, and tidal. The device provides high-density energy storage and transfer without losing capacity over time and frequent replacement as with traditional lithium batteries.

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The present invention describes a novel method for acid-free pyrolytic synthesis of metal-nitrogen-carbon (M-N-C) catalysts for use in fuel cell/energy conversion applications. This method allows for rapid production of M-N-C catalysts that exhibit high activity and selectivity for CO2 electroreduction without needing harsh acids or bases.

Determining the properties that control fluid flow and pressure migration through rocks is essential for understanding groundwater, energy reservoirs and fault zones. Hydraulic diffusivity is the key parameter that controls pressure migration in reservoirs. There is a need to determine it in situ for energy, groundwater and earthquake applications. Direct measurements of these properties underground generally require expensive and invasive processes such as pumping large volumes of water in or out of the ground. Most current methods rely on either active pumping between wells or proxies such as seismic velocity or the migration time of microseismicity. These conventional methods may change the structure that they are trying to measure and do not resolve variations in space without complex, multiple experiments. Moreover, active pumping is expensive, invasive and sensitive to a limited set of scales, while proxies are difficult to calibrate.

Plastics are essential for the modern world but are also non-sustainable products of the petrochemical industry that negatively impact our health, environment, and food chain. Natural biogenic plastics, such as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), are readily biodegradable, can be produced more sustainably, and offer an attractive alternative. The global demand for bioplastics is increasing with the 2019 market value of $8.3B expected to reach a compound annual growth rate of 16.1% from 2020-2027 (https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/bioplastics-industry). However, current PHA production is constrained by the underlying physiology of the microorganisms which produce them, meaning bioplastic production is currently limited to inefficient, batch fermentation processes that are difficult to scale.To address this problem, UC Berkeley researchers have developed a new system for PHA production wherein the PHA are generated continuously throughout microorganism growth lifecycles. The invention allows these sustainable bioplastics to be produced via precision continuous fermentation technology, a scalable and efficient approach.

For decades, researchers have been developing “cool roof” materials to cool buildings and save on energy usage from air conditioning. Cool roof materials are engineered to maximize infrared thermal emission, allowing heat to be effectively radiated into outer space and the building to cool down. Conventional cool roof materials emit heat even when it is cold outside, which exacerbates space heating costs and can outweigh energy-saving benefits. A temperature adaptive radiative coating (TARC) material was developed in 2021 that adapts its thermal emittance to ambient temperatures using metal-insulator transitions in vanadium oxide. TARC is projected to outperform existing roof materials in most climate areas, but the complicated structure required high-cost fabrication techniques such as photolithography, pulsed laser deposition, and XeF2 etching, which are not scalable.To address this problem, UC Berkeley researchers have developed a new scalable temperature-adaptive radiative coating (STARC). STARC has the same thermal emittance switching capability as TARC, allowing the thermal emittance to be switched between high- and low- emittance states at a preset temperature. However, STARC can be produced using high-throughput, roll-to-roll methods and low-cost materials. The STARC material also has an improved lifetime. As an added benefit, while cool roof materials are often engineered with uniformly low solar-absorption, the color and solar absorption of STARC can be tuned for aesthetic purposes or to meet local climate-specific needs.

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Oil and natural gas extraction techniques commonly rely on hydraulic fracturing to induce and/or improve fluid flow in low permeability rocks. Hydraulic fracturing can be environmentally costly though as it uses a variety of materials, including chemicals and solids, injected into the ground to mechanically fracture and artificially maintain cracks in the subsurface. A UC Santa Cruz researcher has developed a method that uses site-specific reservoir properties to determine the best frequency of forcing to clear fractures and increase fluid flow with pressure oscillations. 

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Researchers at the University of California, Davis have developed a heat exchanger produced by additive manufacturing that operates with high efficiency under high pressure and temperature conditions.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis have developed a highly efficient microchannel polymer heat exchanger in a compact and lightweight design.

In developed countries, buildings demand a large percentage of a region's energy-generating requirements. This has led to an urgent need for efficient buildings with reduced energy requirements. In office buildings, lighting takes up 20% to 45% of the total energy consumption. Furthermore, the adoption of smart lighting control strategies such as daylight harvesting is shown to reduce lighting energy use by 30% to 50%.For most closed-loop lighting control systems, the real-time data of the daylight level at areas of interest (e.g., the office workbench) are the most important inputs. Current state-of-the-art solutions use dense arrays of luxmeters (photosensors) to monitor the daylight environment inside buildings. The luxmeters are placed on either workbenches, or ceilings and walls near working areas. Digital cameras are used in controlled laboratory environments and occasionally in common buildings to evaluate glare resulting from excessive daylight. The disadvantage of these sensor-based approaches is that they're expensive to install and commission. Additionally, the sample area of these sensors is limited to either the area of the luxmeters or the view of the cameras. Consequently, many sensors are needed to measure the daylight in a large office space.To address this situation, researchers at UC Berkeley developed a portable cyber-physical system for real time, daylight evaluation in buildings, agriculture facilities, and solar farms (collectively referred to as "structures").

Researchers at the University of California, Davis have produced continuous, sheath-core, coaxial fibers with highly porous, nanocellulose, aerogel cores for use as high-performance insulators.

Researchers at UC Berkeley have developed techniques for optical voltage sensing of power grids as well voltage sensing within a human or animal subject. The safe, accurate and economical measurement of time-varying voltages in electric power systems poses a significant challenge. Current systems for measuring power grid voltages typically involve instrument transformers. Although these systems are accurate and robust to environmental conditions, they are bulky, heavy, and expensive, thus limiting their use in microgrids and sensing applications. An additional drawback is that some designs explode when they fail. Optical methods for direct measurement of high voltages have gained attention in recent years, mainly due to the high available bandwidth, intrinsic electrical isolation, and the potential for low cost and remote monitoring. Stage of Research The inventors have developed a low-Q resonant optical cavity-based voltage sensor based on a piezoelectric AIN thin film that transduces a voltage applied across the piezo terminals into a change in the resonant frequency of the cavity. This sensor can be fabricated with high yield and low cost (<$1), which makes it uniquely well-suited to reduce the cost of grid voltage measurement.

The inventors have developed a highly scalable multiplexed approach to increase the density of graphene nanoribbon- (GNR) based transistors. The technology forms a single device/chip (scale to 16,000 to >1,000,000 parallel transistors) on a single integrated circuit for single molecule biomolecular sensing, electrical switching, magnetic switching, and logic operations. This work relates to the synthesis and the manufacture of molecular electronic devices, more particularly sensors, switches, and complimentary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) chip-based integrated circuits.Bottom-up synthesized graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) have emerged as one of the most promising materials for post-silicon integrated circuit architectures and have already demonstrated the ability to overcome many of the challenges encountered by devices based on carbon nanotubes or photolithographically patterned graphene. The new field of synthetic electronics borne out of GNRs electronic devices could enable the next generation of electronic circuits and sensors.  

Researchers at UCI have modified current commercial membranes to enhance efficiency of water dissociation at varying conditions for electrochemical technologies geared towards renewable fuel generation.