West Virginia’s presence on the world energy stage jumped significantly Thursday (Nov. 9) as China Energy Investment Corp. Ltd., one of the world’s largest energy companies and a long-time research and development partner of West Virginia University, announced an agreement that will bring $83.7 billion to the state.
With a national reputation as a leader in rare earth extraction research, West Virginia University is poised to take another step in developing a domestic supply of rare earth minerals that are critical to national defense and U.S. economic security.
While the future of vehicles may be driverless, West Virginia University
is steering the technology in the right direction.
Since the early 1900s scientists have known that the Universe is expanding but recent studies have shown that the rate of expansion is accelerating. The reason for this is currently unknown, however Kevin Bandura, an assistant professor in the Lane Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering at West Virginia University, has been working on the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, or CHIME, for the past several years to find out why.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory has selected West Virginia University to move forward with its program to extract valuable rare earth elements, vital to the technology industry, from coal mining by-products.
A
new study published today (August 23, 2017) in the
Journal of Air and Waste Management Association builds upon recent heavy-duty
natural gas vehicle methane emission measurements to model methane emissions from
a future, much larger vehicle fleet. The predicted methane emissions rates from a
2035 natural gas fleet cover a wide range depending on technologies adopted and best
management practices employed.
An award from the National Science Foundation will allow a researcher from West Virginia University to better predict greenhouse gases and carbon storage under rising temperatures and changing environments.
One of the biggest factors hampering the growth of renewable energy is storage. Sun and wind are intermittent and dependent on geography, requiring energy storage and transportation. Batteries are a means of addressing the storage problem, but they have a low-energy density, and are relatively expensive and difficult to transport. A researcher at West Virginia University will be investigating one possible alternative that could potentially create a route to “green” hydrocarbons.
The technology developed by researchers at West Virginia University that helped them win the NASA Sample Return Robot Challenge may be headed to Mars.