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Solar powered boats

The boat is an important mode of transportation on water. Nonetheless, We also use it for tourism purposes to explore beautiful places, rivers, and beaches. The project, we are going to discuss today is about 2-stroke engine boats we usually see on popular tourist destinations.2-stroke engines are the most common form of engines used in boats but they are far more polluting than engines used in cars. With toxic fumes they spew, they are destroying our climate gradually. Moreover, this engine emits Sulfur dioxide gas which later reacts with oxygen found in water to produce sulfuric acid. Sulphuric Acid is harmful to the species inside the water as well as for the surroundings.
In this post, we will see, how we can use solar energy in the boat to replace these traditional fuel engines. Converting these engines to electric engine helps our environment and also help us to protect our resources.
Solar powered boats
Before we discuss any further, first we should look for other renewable energy sources we can use:
Wind Power: Though, It is a good option and has been used for a long time back but we have two basic problems with a wind-powered small boat, First it requires a lot of space inside the boat and second it is not very efficient.

Nanowires new innovation in Solar Energy

In the last post, we discussed "carbon solar cell" which is manufactured using 100 % carbon(widely available and cheaper to use). In that post, we discussed nanotechnology and how carbon changes its behavior on the nanoscale . Today, we will see how we can use nanotechnology with gallium arsenide(a better alternative to silicon in the solar cells).

Gallium Arsenide:
Nanowires new innovation in Solar Energy
Gallium arsenide (GaAs) is a compound of the elements gallium and arsenic. It is a III/V semiconductor and is used in the manufacturing of solar cells since 1970 when it was first introduced by Zhores Alferov in the USSR. In the early 1980s, the efficiency of the best GaAs solar cells surpassed that of silicon solar cells. These cells have also been used in the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which are exploring Mars' surface.

Carbon Solar Cells

Carbon Solar Cells
Though we have discussed a lot about solar energy projects, solar energy is not economically viable for our daily use because of increasingly expensive materials used in traditional solar cells made up of silicon, which is not available in abundance and hence very costly. Today, we will discuss carbon solar cells and how to use them to built complete carbon solar cells?