Best of the week — the five most popular stories among readers, March 18 – 22, 2024

What were the five biggest stories of the week? Here’s what visitors to this site were reading. 5) Australian Vanadium produces first battery electrolyte Australian Vanadium has successfully produced its first high purity vanadium electrolyte, ready for use in vanadium redox flow batteries. Production follows the commissioning of the company’s vanadium electrolyte manufacturing facility in Perth in December.…

If you can’t tow a caravan with an EV, then excavate iron ore

The ability of electric powered machines to do the job – even towing a caravan – has been demonstrated with Fortescue’s first operational electric excavator reaching one million tonnes of ore moved. Over the past three months, the excavator had been running at partial capacity while the Cloudbreak mine site team familiarised themselves with the…

$25.7 million awarded through Mid-Career Industry Fellowships

A total of $25.7 million in support for 25 Mid-Career Industry Fellowships through the Australian Research Council (ARC) has been announced, backing research with industry partners in projects including green hydrogen production, methane pyrolysis, quantum sensors and extracting rare earths from waste. According to ARC’s website, the fellowships support academic researchers “in establishing careers in…

Sparc Hydrogen explains solar catalytic water splitting

Green hydrogen technology developer Sparc Hydrogen has released a video (below) detailing their work with CSIRO demonstrating the company’s novel process of concentrated solar photocatalytic water splitting (PWS) as an alternative method for producing green hydrogen at industrial scale. Lead researcher at the company Professor Greg Metha said: “Photocatalysis uses the Sun’s energy incident on…

Australian governments must respond to US IRA, attract investment needed for energy shift: Weld Australia

A guaranteed pipeline of work and local content provisions are needed to build the capacity needed for the energy transition, industry body Weld Australia has said. In a statement on Tuesday, the group urged the federal government to deliver a policy framework guaranteeing enough work “for manufacturers to attract the required investment”, and strongly recommending…