Luminescent Solar Power-PV/Thermal Hybrid Electricity Generation for Cost-Effective Dispatchable Solar Energy.

The challenge in solar energy today is not the cost of photovoltaic (PV) electricity generation, already competing with fossil fuel prices, but rather utility-scale energy storage and flexibility in supply. Low-cost thermal energy storage (TES) exists but relies on expensive heat engines. Here, we introduce the concept of luminescent solar power (LSP), where sunlight is absorbed in a photoluminescent (PL) absorber, followed by red-shifted PL emission matched to an adjacent PV cell's band edge. This way the PV cell operates nearly as efficiently as under direct illumination but with minimal excessive heat. The PL absorber temperature rises because of thermalization, allowing it to store the excessive heat, which can later be converted into electricity. Tailored luminescent materials that support an additional 1.5 kW h PV electricity for every 1 kW h of (virtual) heat engine electricity with a dynamic shift between the two sources are experimentally demonstrated. Such an ideal hybrid system may lead to a potential reduction in the cost of electricity for a base-load solution.

Implementation of a Regional Training Program on African Swine Fever As Part of the Cooperative Biological Engagement Program across the Caucasus Region.

A training and outreach program to increase public awareness of African swine fever (ASF) was implemented by Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the Ministries of Agriculture in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. The implementing agency was the company SAFOSO (Switzerland). Integration of this regional effort was administered by subject matter experts for each country. The main teaching effort of this project was to develop a comprehensive regional public outreach campaign through a network of expertise and knowledge for the control and prevention of ASF in four neighboring countries that experience similar issues with this disease. Gaps in disease knowledge, legislation, and outbreak preparedness in each country were all addressed. Because ASF is a pathogen with bioterrorism potential and of great veterinary health importance that is responsible for major economic instability, the project team developed public outreach programs to train veterinarians in the partner countries to accurately and rapidly identify ASF activity and report it to international veterinary health agencies. The project implementers facilitated four regional meetings to develop this outreach program, which was later disseminated in each partner country. Partner country participants were trained as trainers to implement the outreach program in their respective countries. In this paper, we describe the development, execution, and evaluation of the ASF training and outreach program that reached more than 13,000 veterinarians, farmers, and hunters in the partner countries. Additionally, more than 120,000 booklets, flyers, leaflets, guidelines, and posters were distributed during the outreach campaign. Pre- and post-ASF knowledge exams were developed. The overall success of the project was demonstrated in that the principles of developing and conducting a public outreach program were established, and these foundational teachings can be applied within a single country or expanded regionally to disseminate disease information across borders; overall, this method can be modified to raise awareness about many other diseases.

Short-lived charge-transfer excitons in organic photovoltaic cells studied by high-field magneto-photocurrent.

The main route of charge photogeneration in efficient organic photovoltaic cells based on bulk hetero-junction donor-acceptor blends involves short-lived charge-transfer excitons at the donor-acceptor interfaces. The cell efficiency is critically affected by the charge-transfer exciton recombination and dissociation processes. By measuring the magneto-photocurrent under ambient conditions at room temperature, we show here that magnetic field-induced spin-mixing among the charge-transfer exciton spin sublevels occurs in fields up to at least 8.5 Tesla. The resulting magneto-photocurrent increases at high fields showing non-saturating behaviour up to the highest applied field. We attribute the observed high-field spin-mixing mechanism to the difference in the donor-acceptor g-factors. The non-saturating magneto-photocurrent response at high field indicates that there exist charge-transfer excitons with lifetime in the sub-nanosecond time domain. The non-Lorentzian high-field magneto-photocurrent response indicates a dispersive decay mechanism that originates due to a broad distribution of charge-transfer exciton lifetimes.