Please activate JavaScript!
Please install Adobe Flash Player, click here for download

discovered_02_2013

discovered 02 .13 Editorial WWW.Hzdr.DE DEAR READER, which resource is most important to you? Is it spare time, personal skills, money? For some, it’s natural resources – like a landscape that hasn’t been tampered with or the sea with its plethora of living things – that hold great value. As soon as resources become an object of research, scientists begin to focus intensively on them, often over many years. They search for new approaches to improving availability of these resources or optimizing efficiency during their use. Take renewable energies, for instance: today, sunlight, wind, and water are all wonderful suppliers of vast amounts of electricity, yet we are still a far cry from having created suitable means of temporarily storing this electricity and from the desired yield. In addition, many industrial processes hold tremendous hidden potential. Here, research can help optimize and thereby save important resources like time, energy, and cost. Over the last few years, the HZDR has substantially increased research in the areas of energy and resources, for example, through its new Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology (HIF). We will introduce you to one of the HIF’s projects on helicopter based remote sensing and the project’s coordinator, Richard Gloaguen, in this issue of discovered. No fewer than three stories are dealing with applied research on solar facilities. However, without long-term basic research, the topics we’re presenting to you in this issue, would have been all but impossible. This also goes for projects involving optimization of industrial processes and products. Materials researcher Sibylle Gemming draws on the ion beam center’s repertoire and long-standing know-how to modify materials for use in combustion engines so as to minimize friction while optimizing energy efficiency. To take another example: In the chemical industry, large containers are often used, inside of which certain chemical reactions take place. These cannot simply be scaled from test tube to chemical reactor and they don’t readily lend themselves to direct observation or measurement. Process engineer Markus Schubert is eager to better understand these complex reaction sequences and contribute to saving resources on an industrial scale. To allow them to chart ever new territory using highly sophisticated experimental protocols, researchers themselves are often times using up costly and scarce resources. As such, the Dresden High Magnetic Field Laboratory at the HZDR recently faced a drastic shortage when the noble gas helium was running low. In an interview, physicist Thomas Herrmannsdörfer talks about the steps his institute took in response to this shortage. Expert knowledge has become a vital resource in many areas, from research to industry, even politics and society. Our scientists are using their own energies for the generation and dissemination of knowledge. Each new research finding thus becomes a building block in the construction of a most immense knowledge and resource library our prosperity is based on in no small part. Wishing you an enlightening read, Christine Bohnet HZDR Department of Communications and Media Relations COVER IMAGE: Solar thermal power plants like this one with 3,200 parabolic trough collectors, owned and operated by Spanish global leader Abengoa Solar and located near Gila Bend, USA, take the heat energy from sunlight and convert it to electricity using relatively simple technical means. On pages 4 through 8 of this issue, you’ll read about different research projects HZDR scientists are currently working on in an effort to optimize solar thermal facility efficiency. Photo: Abengoa Solar, S.A.

Seitenübersicht