The process industry is targeting net-zero carbon emissions, and renewable energy is a key component in achieving this goal. Renewable energy adoption is facing challenges, such as the intermittent nature of natural sources and differences between supply and demand times. Energy storage technologies have been identified as a solution to enhance the reliability and sustainability of renewable energy sources. Liquid Air Energy Storage System (LAES), with several advantages, such as higher energy density, geographical independence, and small plant size, makes it a better choice than other energy storage systems. Despite reported thermodynamic efficiencies of 45-60% in the literature, practical efficiencies are less than 10%. The focus of this work is to design and study a more efficient Liquid Air Energy Storage (LAES) process that can compete against battery-based backups at the grid level. Full Article Available here

Dust aerosols affect the hydrological cycle in several ways. First, dust redistributes energy by scattering and absorbing both solar and terrestrial radiation. Second, dust aerosols serve as nuclei for the condensation of water in both liquid (as cloud condensation nuclei) and solid (as ice nuclei) forms. Third, the deposition of dust on glaciers and snow-packs decreases these features' albedo (reflectivity). Therefore, it is essential to understand the behavior of particles under the application of wind. Experiments are conducted to characterize the detachment fraction as a function of time and particle size.