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Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India and regulators in the UK have made significant headway in crafting a new agreement to govern the treatment of the Clearing Corporation of India (CCIL), with both sides moving closer to swiftly removing a hurdle that had threatened to stall British banks’ activity in Indian government bonds and derivatives.People aware of the developments said the new Memorandum…

Like any home interior, materials and finishes are the core of commercial design that can influence the environment and even the occupants. In any workplace interior, materials are the promoters of design that give meaning to the work culture and organisation, presenting the brand values, attitude, and vision. However, while useability, flexibility, design, light, and colour become the forefront of office design, the materials that make up our workplaces often go unnoticed. With advancements in material technologies, engineered materials are taking up the trend in commercial interiors, ranging from laminate wooden flooring to plastic gypsum boards. From soft furnishings to flooring, and desks to decorations, engineered materials greatly impact the functionality, durability, and overall aesthetics of commercial interiors. CCIL offers a range of engineered materials to spruce up your office spaces. Here is how engineered materials are transfiguring commercial spaces with their recent boom in the AEC industry. Engineered wooden flooring is a great choice for the office to look elegant and natural. It emulates hardwood flooring with several benefits that surpass natural wood. This type of flooring is comfortable for a more professional and sophisticated environment. Unlike wooden flooring, these floors can be more resistant to moisture and tend to be more stable. If a corporate office focus on its brand being a sustainable champion, it might go for engineered wooden flooring, which reflects the goal of sustainability in the interior grammar. Durable and easy to maintain, this flooring adds a subtle opulence to the office space with its natural splendour. Carpets are becoming inevitable flooring options for office spaces, considering the benefits of flexibility and acoustics. Office carpets are a useful option in flooring because you can clean them easily, alter them at any time, and fit them with great flexibility. They are also known for their acoustic properties, which are synonymous with office spaces. Apart from office carpets, nowadays carpet tiles are also gaining more traction in office fit-outs. These tiles come in versatile designs and add unmatchable aesthetic appeal to your office floor. The flexibility of use is an added asset when opting for carpet tiles. Laminates are another option when it comes to engineered materials for commercial interiors. When attempting to get inviting and comforting interior elements to play along with the rising resimerical design trend in contemporary workplaces, laminate wooden flooring is an option to consider. It gives the look of hardwood flooring and tiles but with additional benefits. It gets done in the form of layering, and a special includes thick surface lamination which prevents scratches and other damages. Offering the authentic look and feel of wood, a warm and inviting office atmosphere can be established with laminates. Vinyl flooring is the most sought-after engineered material for office flooring. Durable, affordable, and easy to maintain and install, vinyl flooring is one of the resilient types of eco flooring available in the market. Suitable for high-traffic areas, such as corridors, this flooring offers design versatility as it is available in an extensive range of designs and colours. Able to mimic the look of natural wood or stone, vinyl flooring is one of the engineered materials that will fit well with most design schemes. Other engineered materials such as decorative stones, and gypsum boards are also extensively used in finishes and furnishings of commercial interiors. Commercial flooring should be selected based on design style, function, and brand vision. With this guide from CCIL, make sure you choose the right flooring for your offices.

The rainbow-colored soap bubbles under the sun always paint a dreamy, unrealistic, and airy-fairy picture. Yet, the scientists from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia, have used these fragile surfaces to demonstrate their groundbreaking innovation. They have invented an ultrathin solar cell that is so light that it can sit on the soap bubble surface. Yes, for real.

Indium is a toxic and expensive metal, which is a necessary element to produce thin-film solar cells. Thin-film solar cells, or what we call the CIGS (copper indium gallium selenide) solar cells, are the third generation of photovoltaic cells. They have been proven to have high power generation efficiency of up to 20.3% with just a tiny cell. When the cells are put together as a module, the efficiency can still reach 14%. Yet, because of the high costs of the rare materials and complex production processes, scientists have been working hard to find alternatives to make highly-efficient-low-budget thin-film solar cells.

The researchers from KAUST made a breakthrough. They have developed a transparent conductive polymer called PEDOT: PSS. A layer of organic photovoltaic material is in the middle of the polymer. The solar cells can work indium-free and be inkjet-printed, while the structure is thin and light enough to be carried on soap bubble surfaces.

Inkjet printing is a science on its own. The scientists need to formulate functional inks for each layer of the solar cell architectures. They also need to overcome the intermolecular force within the cartridge and the ink to let the tiny nozzle eject the very fine ink droplets one by one before they go for the drying stage and other processes to finish the entire production.

These inkjet-printed ultrathin solar cells are coated with waterproof parylene, which can prevent damage from the weather. In the glass plate tests, the researchers found that the inkjet-printed solar cells’ light-electric power conversion efficiency is 4.73%, which is not high. However, the researchers believe that this new technology has its competitive advantages: with the support from computers, inkjet printing can diversify the design of solar cells because the inks can be printed on specific places. So, the ultrathin solar cells can flexibly be made or applied to various devices, skipping the molding process, which saves materials and costs.

The size of batteries is very important to some devices, such as miniaturized sensors, wearable electronics, electronic skins, sensors for flying devices, and biosensors. The toxic-free inkjet-printed solar cell, with its ultrathin and superlight structure, is the perfect power solution for the mentioned devices. Let’s hope scientists can further advance this technology, especially its power generation efficiency, to broaden its application.

(To read the article at SolarCare Programme’s website HERE)

可貼在肥皂泡上的超薄太陽能電池

在陽光底下泛出七彩炫光的肥皂泡，總會給人一種夢幻、虛浮、不切實際的感覺。但一班來自沙地阿拉伯阿卜杜拉國王科技大學（KAUST）的科學家，卻利用這些浮幻的肥皂泡，向我們確實地展示了他們的研究成果。他們研發了一種超薄的太陽能電池，材質又薄又輕，使其能黏附在肥皂泡的表面上，可謂給太陽能科技帶來了革新。

銦(Indium)是貴金屬，而且有毒，但在現有的薄膜太陽能技術中，卻是不能缺少的元素。銅銦鎵硒型（CIGS）是第三代太陽能電池的代名詞，效能極高，一塊細小面積的電池，光轉電效率已經達到20.3%，而模組的效率也達14%。可是，因原料稀有，再加上複雜的製作過程，這種電池的生產成本非常高。因此科學家們都在積極研發效率高、成本低的薄膜太陽能電池。

KAUST的研究團隊在這一範疇中得到了革命性的突破。他們研發出一種極為透明的導電聚合物PEDOT：PSS，這種聚合物中間夾了一層有機太陽能材料，不含任何銦元素，只需利用噴塗印刷（inkjet printing），就能製造出薄得能黏在肥皂泡表面上的超薄太陽能電池。

噴塗印刷並不是一門簡單的學問。要運用這技術製造超薄膜太陽能電池，科學家須特意為太陽能電池調配出具特殊功能的油墨（functional inks），更要克服墨盒和墨水之間的分子間作用力（intermolecular force），方能從極小的噴嘴中噴射出一滴滴油墨，然後才處理乾燥墨膜、成品等工序。

這種「噴塗式超薄膜太陽能電池」（inkjet-printed ultrathin solar cell）的外層塗有防水的聚對二甲苯（parylene），可避免太陽能電池因風雨而導致的耗損。在玻璃基板實際測試後，研究團隊發現其光轉電效率為 4.73%。雖然效率不高，但研究團隊認為，這種技術另有優勢：噴墨印刷透過電腦輔助，不但使太陽能板的設計更多樣化，更能將墨水準確地噴印於特定位置上，不用模具，就能製作出各式各樣的特殊元件，既節省原料、又能降低成本。

In response to the Paris Agreement, the Hong Kong government published the report of Hong Kong’s Climate Action Plan 2030+ in 2017. The plan proposed that by taking the level in 2005 as the base, Hong Kong would reduce the city’s carbon intensity by 65% to 70% by 2030. In 2021, the government published another two reports, Hong Kong Roadmap on Popularisation of Electric Vehicles and Clean Air Plan for Hong Kong 2035, which asserted more mid-long-term plans for green transport development. For example, the government would form task force groups across departments to work with the transport industry, planning to push forward the progress of the new-energy-driven public transport within three years from 2021.

Generally, the railway is the backbone of the low-carbon public transport system, while the railway infrastructure in Hong Kong is advanced. Yet, its railway system cannot satisfy all the citizens’ travel needs due to the city’s extra dense population. People who are not living along the railway lines still need to depend on travelling by gas vehicles, like buses.

Evolution is the only way to keep surviving in this ever-changing world. KMB (Kowloon Motor Bus) has been doing well as a demonstration of this idea. It has joined hands with 48 business partners to roll out the “Decarbonisation Partnership” programme to answer the government’s green transport policy. In May 2021, KMB got the green light from the government to put the in-house-developed third-generation solar panel bus into service.

The third-generation solar panel installation was developed by KMB’s Engineering Team. The highlight of the enhanced installation is the “ultra-thin solar panel” pasted directly on the bus rooftop. These ultra-thin solar panels are only 2 millimetres thick with a heat insulation layer at the bottom. 14 pieces of these ultra-thin solar panels form a unit which covers 76% of the bus rooftop. These solar panels are so thin that KMB even calls them “solar films” in Chinese. As the nickname implies, the solar films are so light that they don’t need metallic frameworks for support since a unit of the ultra-thin solar “films” is only 70kg.

Currently, the solar films are primarily for cooling down the bus compartments. When a bus is not running its engine, the temperature of its compartment can rise to over 35°C. The solar films pasted on the bus rooftop can effectively cool down the compartments by 8°C to 10°C by powering the air conditioners and ventilation system with solar energy to extract the hot air from the compartments. A unit of solar films can generate 16.2 kilowatt-hours of electricity with an increase of 33% efficiency compared to the second-generation solar panel bus. It helps reduce fuel consumption by 5% to 8%, so every bus can use 11kg of fuel less daily, equaling a reduction of 6 tons of carbon emission per bus annually.

KMB would install ultra-thin solar panels on its 1,000 buses within 2022, making it the largest green bus fleet in Hong Kong. With the other 22 thousand solar panels installed in the bus depots, outdoor bus terminals, bus stop shelters and poles, KMB is generating 10 million kilowatt-hours of solar energy annually. It is equivalent to saving eight-minute of electricity consumption per person for the 7.5 million population of Hong Kong.

The design of solar cells becomes thinner and lighter. In the following article, we will introduce the inkjet-printed ultra-thin solar cells, which are light enough to attach to the soap bubble surface. Stay tuned!

(To read the article at SolarCare Programme’s website HERE)

「巴」不得減碳：「九巴」第三代太陽能巴士

因應《巴黎氣候協議》，香港政府在2017年制訂了《香港氣候行動藍圖2030+》報告，計劃在2030年前，以2005年的水平為基準，將香港的碳強度減低65%至70%。而在2021年公佈的《香港電動車普及化路線圖》和《香港清新空氣藍圖2035》中，政府提出更多綠色運輸的中長期計劃，譬如在2021年起計的三年內，政府將成立多個跨部門小組，與有關業界合力推動各種新能源公共交通工具的發展。

一般而言，鐵路是低碳公共交通工具的骨幹，而香港的鐵路建設也非常先進。可是由於人口稠密，鐵路未必能滿足非沿線居民的出行需求，巴士等燃煤車輛還是香港市民最倚重的公共交通工具。

為了追趕時代變遷，就要轉型求變，「九巴」公司在這方面表現積極。九巴與48家企業合作展開「減碳伙伴計劃」，研發出第三代太陽能裝置巴士，並已獲政府審批，於2021年5月正式投入服務。

由九巴旗下的工程隊伍研發的第三代太陽能裝置巴士，主角是置於車頂的薄膜太陽能電池。這些薄膜僅厚2毫米，底部設有隔熱層，以14塊為一組，覆蓋車頂表面達76%。由於結構是膜而不是板，這些太陽能薄膜不用支架支撐，而且一組只重70kg，設計極為輕巧。

現時太陽能薄膜主要用於為巴士車廂降溫。巴士在停車熄匙後，車廂溫度可上升至攝氏35度以上。安裝在車頂的太陽能薄膜利用太陽能，驅動冷氣風扇系統以抽走熱氣，能為車廂降溫8至10度。它的供電效能達16.2千瓦·時，比第二代太陽能巴士的效能上升了33%，有助節省耗油量達5%至8%。每日每部巴士就能節省11公升燃油，即每年每部巴士可減少約6噸碳排放。

九巴將於2022年內為旗下超過1千部巴士安裝太陽能薄膜，使其成為香港規模最大的環保車隊。加上車廠、露天巴士總站、巴士站上蓋和巴士柱，九巴已在全港安裝了2萬2千塊太陽能板，每年可生產1千萬度電，相等於為全港750萬市民每人節省了8分鐘用電量。