The field of geothermal energy is hotting up, to use a pun! And it is interesting to know that there could be new sources of geothermal energy.

Currently, most developed geothermal energy comes from regions of volcanic activity, such as The Geysers in Northern California. A team of geochemists have come up with a tool that can point to geothermal energy clusters that are far removed from the volcanic regions. This could mean that the world could derive far more energy from the geothermal source that it is doing currently.

In a survey of the northern Basin and Range province of the western United States, geochemists Mack Kennedy of the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Matthijs van Soest of Arizona State University have discovered a new tool for identifying potential geothermal energy resources. The potential resources identified arise not from volcanism but from the flow of surface fluids through deep fractures that penetrate the earth's lower crust, in regions far from current or recent volcanic activity.

Kennedy and van Soest made their discovery by comparing the ratios of helium isotopes in samples. Helium-three is made only in stars, and Earth's mantle retains a high proportion of primordial helium-three left over from the formation of the solar system. Earth's crust, on the other hand, is rich in radioactive elements that decay by emitting alpha particles, which are helium-four nuclei. Thus a high ratio of helium-three to helium-four in a fluid sample indicates that much of the fluid came from the mantle.

High helium ratios are common in active volcanic regions. But when Kennedy and van Soest found high ratios in places far from volcanism, they knew that mantle fluids must be penetrating the ductile boundary by other means.

Accessible geothermal energy in the United States, excluding Alaska and Hawaii, has been estimated at 9 x 1016 (90 quadrillion) kilowatt-hours, 3,000 times more than the country's total annual energy consumption! Determining helium ratios from surface measurements is a practical way to locate some of the most promising new resources. The tool developed by the geochemists could help figure out other areas in the United States that could be sources of geothermal energy. Depending on future successes with their tool, this could turn out to be a very important finding indeed.

Source: Physorg

Labels: geothermal

PermaLink - Method to Identify New Sources of Geothermal Energy Discovered   0 Comments

Whenever we speak about solar energy, most times we refer to the photovoltaic energy - the light energy from the sun that is converted to electricity. But the sun also provides heat energy. And this where solar thermal makes its appearance.

Unlike photovoltaic solar panels that convert sunlight to electricity, solar thermal focuses sun rays with mirrors to heat oil in glass pipes to about 700 degrees Fahrenheit (370 degrees Celsius). The oil turns water to steam, which spins an electric turbine.

Solar thermal is not exactly new. Nine solar-thermal plants built in the California desert from 1985 to 1991 still operate, with FPL Group running seven. They have combined capacity of 354 megawatts, enough to power 230,000 Southern California homes. But it is getting renewed attention from some biggies from different fields - Oil & Gas (Chevron), Finance (Goldman Sachs) & Technology (Google - by the way, just what else is Google upto?).

Costs for solar thermal may fall as low as 3.5 cents a kilowatt hour by 2020, according to a report commissioned by the U.S. Energy Department. Meanwhile, coal expenses may rise. Google, Chevron and Goldman Sachs are betting this energy will become cheaper than coal.

Many of the bets of Google and Goldman Sachs have worked out rather well. Will this one too?

Source: Seattle Times

Labels: solar

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Trust Google to spring really cool surprises (make that warm surprises in this case).

According to reports, Google is in discussions with Israeli geothermal company Ormat Technologies, a relationship that could lead to an investment. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted an interview this past weekend with Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who praised Ormat and the other Israeli companies working in alternative energy. Google co-founder Larry Page also visited an Ormat geothermal plant in Nevada, the newspaper reported.

Google's philanthropic arm, Google.org, has pledged to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in clean-energy companies.

Via: CNET

Labels: geothermal

PermaLink - Google's Next Investment is in...Geothermal Energy   0 Comments

It's been one of the ironies in the energy equation - we have the energy from the sun all around us, many times more than what all of together on earth require, yet capturing and utilising that energy has been much more difficult and costly than one would like.

This has not stopped the solariphiles from looking forward to the day when the sun will power most of, or all, our energy needs.

Well, while that day might still be far off for most of the world, it already has arrived for a small village in South Korea. This village has achieved what even the most powerful countries in the world are still struggling to accomplish: total energy independence with clean technology.




Donggwang is a village on the western half of the island Jeju-do in South Korea. On the roof of each of the 40 houses in Donggwang lies a large beds of solar panels. And this includes even the small, local elementary school!

A typical house roof in the village has a two kilowatt solar installation. The photovoltaic panels thus fitted produce enough energy to power the entire area.
Now the important question is, how much of this success is translatable to the rest of the world? Are there some specific advantages that this tiny South Korean village has that has facilitated it to become 100% solar? I could not see anything unique about this village, so there is hope that this is replicable. We however have to keep in mind that this is a small village - they are talking about 40 houses in all, certainly small by any standards!

One piece of info gleaned from the articles could provide a hint: "In 2004, the government helped to install solar systems in Donggwang, paying 70% of the installation fees." Now, this could indeed be a great help as it is well known that installation costs for solar could in fact be a major stumbling block to its widespread adoption.

While we spend our time analysing whether this small success could lead to a big leap for solar energy adoption in the rest of the world, hats off to Donggwang for showing us the light at the end of the tunnel, to use a pun!

Sources & Image Credits: Ecoworldly, Metaefficient

Labels: solar

PermaLink - World's First Village that Runs on 100% Solar   4 Comments

Scientists at Newcastle University, UK have pioneered breakthrough technology in the fight to cut greenhouse gases.

The Newcastle University team, led by Professor Michael North, has developed a highly energy-efficient method of converting waste carbon dioxide (CO2) into chemical compounds known as cyclic carbonates. Cyclic carbonates are widely used in the manufacture of products including solvents, paint-strippers, biodegradable packaging, and in the manufacture of a new class of efficient petrol anti-knocking agents that increase fuel efficiency while reducing further CO2 emissions!

The Newcastle University team estimates that the technology has the potential to use up to 48 million tonnes of waste CO2 per year, reducing the UK's emissions by about four per cent.

The conversion technique relies upon the use of a catalyst to force a chemical reaction between CO2 and an epoxide, converting waste CO2 into this cyclic carbonate. While the reaction between CO2 and epoxides is not exactly new. But this reaction until now required a lot of energy. The process used until now also requires the use of ultra-pure CO2, a costly substance.

The Newcastle team has succeeded in developing an exceptionally active catalyst, derived from aluminium, which can drive the reaction necessary to turn waste carbon dioxide into cyclic carbonates at room temperature and atmospheric pressure, vastly reducing the energy input required.

To date, alternative solutions for converting CO2 emissions into a useful product has required a process so energy intensive that they generate more CO2 than they consume.

If the catayst developed by the Newcastle team is used at the source of high-concentration CO2 production (in the exhaust stream of a fossil-fuel power station or the exhaust of a car), it could take out the carbon dioxide, turn it into a commercially-valuable product and at the same time eliminate the need to store waste CO2!

If applied optimally, this technology could be able to cut down CO2 emissions significantly while satisfy the demand of about 50 million tonnes for cyclic carbonates and its derivatives. This will amount to about 4% of the total CO2 emissions in the UK.

Not a bad result at all for an invention that cuts down a pollutant while producing a useful product (anti-knocking agent) that conserves more energy while decreasing pollution even further.

Sources:
Wikipedia

Labels: efficiency, environment

PermaLink - Technology Breakthrough Can Cut Greenhouse Gases   0 Comments

Image credit: IHT

What if you could make fuel for your car in your backyard, and that too for less than what you pay at the pump? Would you take it? Of course you would, or at least most likely would.

Floyd Butterfield could become a legend for people who want to make their own ethanol. With his with the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Thomas Quinn, he has started E-Fuel, which soon will announce its home ethanol system, the E-Fuel 100 MicroFueler. The system will be about as large as a washer-dryer, and sell for $9,995 and ship before year-end. The net cost to consumers could drop by half after government incentives.

Ethanol has been on the alt energy radar long enough now, and has had its share of bouquets and brickbats - more of the latter in the recent past. But the entire blame is not on the product itself, most times it has been owing to the shortsightedness of the politicians who hyped feedstock such as corn without much thought about the ripple effects on other parts of the economy. That is, ethanol itself is not a bad idea - ask Brazil - and it could well be one of the key components of our energy puzzle for quite some time to come.

The MicroFueler from E-Fuel will use sugar as its main fuel source. Depending on the cost of sugar, plus water and electricity, the company says it could cost as little as a dollar a gallon to make ethanol. If you were to left-over alcohol from bars and restaurants to turn them into ethanol, the only cost is for the electricity used in processing. The company's dream is to have millions of people pumping their own fuel out of their homes.

Sounds just too tempting, doesn't it.

Is the MicroFueler going to cause an upheaval? Will this be a game changer in the alternative energy industry? Will the MicroFueler become to the energy industry what the PCs became to the computing industry? Is it even remotely possible that a shift from refinery-based fuel production to home-based production will mirror the shift from mainframe-based computing to personal computing?

One would desperately hope that such parallels exist, but in reality it is a long shot. Here are some of the reasons why:

1. Ethanol has long had home brewers, but there are plenty of reasons to question whether personal fueling systems will become the fuel industry's version of the personal computer. Brewing ethanol in the backyard isn't as easy as one might think. Distillation, refining and quality control are tedious processes and home-brew ethanol might not ever achieve the kind of quality that ethanol from large refineries can.

2. Sugar-based ethanol doesn't look much cheaper than gas, as things stand today. This could be the real problem. Ethanol has become the favorite whipping boy of the industry precisely because of the effects its production had on the prices of corn etc. Will sugar as a feedstock make the situation any better? Until the world finds a feedstock that is sustainable from the environmental and food-chain perspectives, it will be difficult for ethanol to become a favorite of every home that owns a car.

3. While there was a clear need for people to own computing resources for personalized work, it is not clear that people have a need to own their fuel resources. Well, fuel is fuel, whether you get it from your home or from the pump station; given this, many might rather prefer to take it from a wholesale supplier than take the trouble of brewing it themselves, unless the cost difference is REALLY significant. (What could happen however is that a number of small-scale producers might crop up, so rather than home-based refineries, what we could see are micro-refineries. There is a much more specific economic need for such micro-refineries, especially among the farming community worldwide).

Butterfield and Quinn are trying their best to address the above problems, and have some ideas and innovations up their sleeves that could take care of some of these issues.

There are many consumers who want to reduce their carbon footprint, are willing to invest and make compromises in order to achieve this. Given this consumer enthusiasm and the increased worldwide momentum of alternative energy research efforts, Butterfield and Quinn might well be on to something, in spite of the hurdles.

And who knows, if they get a bit lucky (make that a lot lucky), Quinn and Butterfield might indeed become the Steve Jobs and Bill Gates of the energy industry.

Source: International Herald Tribune

Via: Green Auto Update

Labels: ethanol

PermaLink - Now You Can Brew Your Own Fuel   0 Comments

CARS, the humorous abbreviation for a Carbon Algae Recycling System, is being developed by the Alberta Research Council and nine other research corporations.

In CARS, exhaust CO2 from power plants is diverted from the exhaust gases and pumped into the tailing ponds, where micro-algae eat it all up, along with the heavy metals and leftover hydrocarbons. Result? algae that are harvested and turned into biofuels. From the press release:

“In essence, the goal of CARS is to fast-track Mother Nature’s own process of using plants to soak up greenhouse gases that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere,” says John McDougall, vice-chairman for I-CAN from the Alberta Research Council. “Algae growth research isn’t new, but our goal is. Other algae projects are aimed at creating bio-fuels. The goal of CARS is to provide industry with a sustainable, affordable way to deal with their greenhouse gas emissions.”

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http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/05/micro-algae-will-save-world.php

Labels: biodiesel

PermaLink - Micro-Algae In CARS Will Clean Up Tar Sands, Suck CO2, Make Biofuel   0 Comments

The E-Zip 2008 Trailz is an electric bike by Currie Technologies. This electric bike is quite inexpensive -- compared with $700 up to $3000 for other bikes.

Using the electric motor on this bike is simple -- once you've started pedaling, you can turn the throttle, and the motor kicks in, giving you an immediate boost. The range of a fully-charged battery is about 10 miles -- and this could be made to something like 30-40 miles with some modifications or depending on the type of activity you use it for.

If you use this bike for a commute that is 20 miles or less, this could be an ideal alternative transport mechanism for you. It was easy to achieve speeds of 25 mph while pedaling lightly.

So while bike is heavy and lithium-ion batteries would be nice, it's certainly an inexpensive way to enter the world of electric biking.

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Labels: electric-cars, electricity

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While the United States is using corn as the primary feedstock for ethanol and Brazil has been concentrating on sugar cane, the left-half of Canada is considering wheat. The Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association hopes that the creation of fuel from wheat will help Canada's wheat farming community make a bit more profit, as corn-based ethanol has done (for good or for bad) for other farmers. Many farmers in Canada only plan to use low-protein wheat or damaged crops which are not suitable as food for the fuel feedstock. Still, the food-or-fuel debate looms large. There are a few issues with using wheat, but nothing that is insurmountable, or at least so this post thinks.

Labels: biofuels

PermaLink - Low-protein Wheat Used in Western Canada as Ethanol Feestock   0 Comments

Although plants and bacteria get most of the biofuel research dollars and media column inches, fungus, a kingdom of organisms that excels at breaking down fibrous cellulose, could provide some innovation for cheap and easy cellulosic biofuel production. Researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute have sequenced the genetic code of Tricoderma reesei, a fungal strain...

Novozymes, the Danish biotech giant, which controls 47 percent of the global enzyme market, collaborated on this study. Novozymes’ director of research activities in second-generation biofuels, Joel Cherry, called this achievement “a major step towards using renewable feedstocks for the production of fuels and chemicals.”

T. ressei’s enzyme-producing genes are believed to be clustered together, which researchers think could account for the fungus’ efficiency at enzyme production.

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PermaLink - Tricoderma reesei Fungus Breaks Down Cellulose, Could Boost Biofuels   0 Comments

Directory of videos of various types of wind turbine technologies & of wind energy in general

See this page @ Peswiki

Labels: wind

PermaLink - Wind Energy, Wind Turbine Videos @ peswiki   0 Comments

A collection of videos and video links regarding the turning of algae into oil, hydrogen, ethanol and other useful fuels

From this peswiki page here

Labels: biofuels, ethanol, hydrogen

PermaLink - Videos of Algae to Oil, Biodiesel, Hydrogen & Ethanol   0 Comments

Here's a video about the National Ignition Facility, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, employing the largest bank of laser beams in the world, to be used in an experiment designed to create fusion ignition.

Scientists are creating a system to replicate fusion by using lasers to create the high heat and pressure needed for fusion. At the center of the project is a gold cylinder the size of a dime. This gold cylinder, called the hohlraum, houses a capsule containing the hydrogen isotopes. NIF scientists will blast the hohlraum with 192 laser beams simultaneously for a few billionths of a second. The cylinder will produce x-rays that compress and heat the capsule resulting in a nuclear fusion reaction.

This experiment is not a continuous fusion reactor, it is an experimental device designed to determine whether scientists can create a fusion reaction for an instant of time, using this method.

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Offshore wind power is supposed to be the great white hope of renewable energy. So far, though, that’s translated into just under one-half of a regular coal-fired plant.

What’s the holdup? Lots of things. Amongst others, another holdup—building offshore wind platforms means bidding for the same construction materials that are needed for a lot of other things, raising costs and delaying projects.

But there's light on the horizon: concrete instead of steel. At a swoop, that would eliminate the need for pricey steel and all the supporting cast needed to plant it in the seabed. Says New Civil Engineer:

"The project has the dual purpose of reducing industry reliance on steel monopiles for foundations and eliminating the need for the heavy lift ships and jack-up barges typically used during turbine foundation installation. In addition the large hydraulic hammers usually needed for piling are no longer required, further reducing equipment and support vessel hire costs."

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There are a lot of cool gadgets out there, but there’s a fine line between what’s cool and what’s useful. This is a green list of gadgets that are useful, but boast the extra-cool factor of using renewable energy. No batteries required!

Nice list from this Clean Technica post

10. A solar-powered LED mounted on suction cups.

9. A portable solar water heater.

8. Fridge without Power

7. Solar Cookers

6. MP3 player that you can charge by hand.

5. Personal Wind Turbine that you can strap to your house.

4. Sunlit self-sufficient Gadgets

3. Natural sunlight (sans UV and infrared) for your home or office, that comes from fiber optic cables

2. Solar-powered cap for your water bottle.

1. Solar Battery Recharger

Labels: inventions

PermaLink - Renewable Tech Gadgets - Fridge without Electricity, Solar Cookers...   0 Comments

In its first two months, Bicing, a bike-sharing program in Barcelona, Spain, garnered over 30,000 subscribers. This is good news for new bike-sharing programs in Washington D.C. and San Francisco.

Initially, locals were skeptical that Bicing would attract users, but the service has enjoyed phenomenal success and encouraged commuters to stop driving and start pedaling within the city center. One hundred bike rental stations are conveniently located near major transit hubs. Subscribers simply pick up one of Bicing’s 1500 cycles and zip past stalled traffic to pick up groceries and run other quick errands. Bikes are outfitted with a carrier, a bell and light, and are easily adjustable to match your size.

Source: Carectomy

Labels: conservation, human-powered

PermaLink - Bicing, Bike-sharing in Barcelona - Stop Driving, Start Pedalling!   0 Comments

With heating season coming to a close in the Northeast, businesses, homeowners and other utility customers are looking back at their heating bills and thinking about how they might bring them down next year. While conservation is an option for some, many people aren't willing to sacrifice comfort to save money. Bioheat systems may provide some relief.

Bioheat systems come in many forms. They can be as simple as replacing traditional heating oil with a blend of biodiesel or bio-oil, or as complicated has having a pellet boiler installed that can take care or central heat and hot water.

According to Andrew Perchlik, Executive Director of Renewable Energy Vermont, consumers are taking action when it comes to their heating needs.

Much of the growth in Vermont has been in pellet and other biomass markets. Currently, 30 Vermont schools are heated or powered with pellet and wood chip boilers. Renewable Energy Vermont is also looking into other feedstocks including soy beans, sunflowers, algae and hemp, but Perchlik says those sources are still in the very early stages of development.

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Virgin Atlantic and its partners Boeing, GE Aviation and Imperium Renewables Inc. have demonstrated that a commercial airliner using renewable fuel can fly. On Feb. 24, a Boeing 747 jumbo jet flew from London to Amsterdam, burning a mix of 20 percent biofuel containing babassu and coconut oils, and 80 percent standard jet fuel in one of its four engines without any modifications to the aircraft. Technical advisors were on board, collecting and recording flight data for analysis, which will be used in future research and the development of next-generation biofuels. Boeing will also use the findings in another demonstration flight later this year.

Seattle-based biodiesel producers Imperium Renewables prepared the biofuel, which must stay liquid in frigid, high-altitude temperatures.

Prior to the flight, extensive laboratory and static-engine testing was conducted to evaluate the energy and performance properties of the biofuel.

Full story here

Labels: airlines, biofuels

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A newly created microbe produces cellulose that can be turned into ethanol and other biofuels, report scientists from The University of Texas at Austin who say the microbe could provide a significant portion of the nation's transportation fuel if production can be scaled up.

Along with cellulose, the cyanobacteria developed by Professor R. Malcolm Brown Jr. and Dr. David Nobles Jr. secrete glucose and sucrose. These simple sugars are the major sources used to produce ethanol.

Brown and Nobles say their cyanobacteria can be grown in production facilities on non-agricultural lands using salty water unsuitable for human consumption or crops.

Other key findings include:

* The new cyanobacteria use sunlight as an energy source to produce and excrete sugars and cellulose

* Glucose, cellulose and sucrose can be continually harvested without harming or destroying the cyanobacteria (harvesting cellulose and sugars from true algae or crops, like corn and sugarcane, requires killing the organisms and using enzymes and mechanical methods to extract the sugars)

* Cyanobacteria that can fix atmospheric nitrogen can be grown without petroleum-based fertilizer input

Labels: ethanol

PermaLink - Cyanobacteria Produces Cellulose, Sugars For Ethanol   0 Comments

People who visit Joe Van Groll’s ethanol plant in Stratford, Wis., typically look around and say, “This is it? You don’t have much here.” To which he replies, “Exactly, that’s why I can [make ethanol] so cheap.” Van Groll has experimented with a whey-to-ethanol process part time for more than a decade and full time for the past four years. He believes he can produce ethanol for less than $1 per gallon. The feedstock he uses is whey permeate, the waste product of cheese manufacturing. Although it may sound more complicated than producing ethanol from corn, Van Groll’s philosophy is to avoid waste and keep things simple. The energy integration he is targeting, however, is anything but simple. Besides turning the whey permeate into ethanol, he separates and dries the yeast coproduct for feed; utilizes the waste heat from fermentation and distillation for biodiesel production; and is now demonstrating that the waste heat, water and carbon dioxide can be used to raise oil-bearing algae for biodiesel. He can also incorporate an anaerobic digester that turns wastes into methane to power the process.

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Uncertainty about the future of coal power plants could prevent Arizonans from tapping the inexpensive and abundant resource to meet their growing electricity demands, and likely will mean higher energy bills.

But coal releases more carbon dioxide than other energy sources, and with growing agreement that those emissions must be capped, cut or taxed to address global warming, utility companies see coal as a low-hanging yet forbidden fruit. advertisement

Companies such as Arizona Public Service Co. and Salt River Project are wary of committing to new coal projects that might seem inexpensive now. New global-warming laws could make those plants much more expensive to operate down the road.

They predict they either will have to pay more for the emissions or pay more for yet-to-be-invented equipment to catch those emissions. Or they could rely on more expensive sources of electricity.

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As part of its Sustainable Computing Program, Microsoft Corp. recently announced it will support four academic research projects focused on energy efficiency in computing in the areas of datacenter power efficiency, power management and the creation of parallel computing architecture with decreased power demands.

Through this program, Microsoft Research is stimulating research across a broad range of areas with the potential to significantly improve energy efficiency. And considering that a single 100-watt incandescent light bulb left on around the clock for a year costs more than $80 to power and releases 1,350 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere -- roughly the same amount of power that an idle PC uses in that same timeframe -- finding ways to lessen humankind's impact on the environment is critical.

Full news release here

Labels: efficiency

PermaLink - Microsoft Research Into Energy-Efficiency in Data Centers, Parallel Computing, Power   0 Comments

Web 2.0 Goes Green: IBM Pioneers New Server Design for Web-Based Organizations

IBM introduced an entirely new category of server uniquely designed to address the technology needs of companies that operate massive data centers with tens of thousands of servers, like online gaming, social networks and Search and Internet companies.

The IBM "iDataPlex" system leverages IBM's blade server heritage to build a completely new design point that:

-- More than doubles the number of systems that can run in a single rack,
-- Uses 40 percent less power while increasing the amount of computing
that can be done five times(1),
-- Can be outfitted with a liquid cooling wall on the back of the system
that enables it to run at "room temperature" -- no air conditioning
required,
-- Uses all industry standard components as well as open source software
such as Linux to lower costs.

Companies that operate massive scale-out data centers spend 10 to 30 times more on energy costs per square foot than a typical office building. The energy used powers both hundreds of thousands of servers and the air conditioning needed to cool them. IBM iDataPlex is a new rack system featuring design innovations in cooling and efficiency that will help it replace the inefficient "white-box" servers commonly used by such Internet companies.

Way to go, IBM.

Full news release here

Labels: efficiency

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Read a brief but to-the-point article by Marianne Lavelle @ US News on energy efficiency. Her point is simple but absolutely true - energy efficiency simply works, but no one is willing to accept it can make a huge different and hence take the pain of implementing efficiency measures, instead looking forward to silver bullets that have not happened in a long, long time (though she talks only about the US, it is quite valid, in differing degrees for the entire world)

Some interesting quotes:

"National laboratory researchers showed definitively, for example, that if ductwork is constructed so that it's inside the "envelope" of a house—the living space instead of the attic or crawl space—the homeowner can save a quarter to a third on air conditioning or heating costs. And we all could save energy.

Now that's a research breakthrough, in a way, and one we have the technology to implement today. But it isn't being done, except by builders who are devoted to "green" construction. As the home builders association explains in my story, the industry would view any mandate as a burden."

In the words of a scientist who had been working on the energy efficiency domain: " "To me, that's the story," he says. "We've been doing these scenarios and potentials for 35 years. The question is why are we still doing it?" Schipper has come to believe that the battle is ideological: "There is a fundamentally deep and disturbing opposition to the notion that things can change," he says."

Read the full article here

Labels: efficiency

PermaLink - Energy Efficiency - The Unpopular Solution that Simply Works   0 Comments

The 'Lipstick plant' offers to bring new meaning to the term plastic flower.

It looks like a weed, but the Arabidopsis plant could end the need for fossil fuels in the manufacture of household items such as paint and lipstick.

Australian researchers have genetically engineered a specimen of the plant – a member of the mustard family – to produce an unusual fatty acid normally only found in petrochemicals.

Scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CISRO) say the acid can be used to make polymers – the "building blocks" behind plastics and some paints and cosmetics.

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Here's a nice article written by Susan Hockfield, president of MIT, @ Boston.com . She explains some of the projects that MIT is working on currently as well as what the future looks like and the challenges faced...

See the article here

Labels: research

PermaLink - Susan Hockfield - MIT's Growing Role in Green Movement   0 Comments

Xerox Corporation today unveiled the industry’s first Sustainability Calculator designed to help customers pinpoint opportunities to reduce their environmental impact while reducing costs. The new proprietary software tool measures the overall impact a company’s document technologies have on the environment.

The Sustainability Calculator is the newest assessment tool available through Xerox Office Services. It evaluates the current office environment of printers, copiers and multifunction devices and then measures environmental benefits that could be achieved in terms of energy and paper use, solid waste, water, air and greenhouse gas emissions. This tool provides customers the first fact-based measurement of their environmental footprint.

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The Lightning GT, a 700 hp electric sports car can accelerate to sixty mph in four seconds. The news is not so much about the Lightning GT as it is about the batteries being used in the car. The claim is that the battery, a Lithium-ion (Li-ion) type called Nanosafe being developed by a company called Altairnano, is able to provide a useful operating range of 250 miles, a full recharge time of 10 minutes, and a useful life of 12-20 years through 15,000 charge/discharge cycles. If a battery can produce this kind of performance, and if large-scale production can enable the battery pack to be profitably sold at a few thousand dollars, mass adoption of electric vehicles cannot be far behind. That’s a game-changer that could end our addiction to oil.

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PermaLink - Altairnano Lithium Ion Battery Nanosafe a Breakthrough?   1 Comments

A slightly old news item (2006), but interesting still

WindStrand™ Allows Longer, Stiffer, Lighter Blades for up to 20 Percent Less Cost Than Other High-Performance Materials Product is First Application of Company's new Stronger, Lighter High Performance Reinforcement Platform, HiPer-tex™ (CSRwire) Owens Corning (OWENQ.OB) announced at the European Wind Energy Conference and Exhibition in Athens, Greece, a breakthrough single-end roving and knitted fabric, WindStrand™, which will allow the wind energy market to take another step forward in competing successfully against other alternative energy sources by reducing the cost per kilowatt-hour (kwh.) The product will allow turbine manufacturers to increase blade lengths by as much as six percent and deliver up to 12 percent more power -- for up to 20 percent less cost than any competing carbon-glass hybrid solution currently on the market.

In addition to the cost and performance benefits of WindStrand, the product also provides manufacturers with the traditional processability of glass, combined with the stiffness strength and weight of other high-performance materials.

Labels: wind

PermaLink - Owens Corning WindStrand Fabric to Reduce Wind Energy Cost   0 Comments

Advances in floating platforms could take wind farms far from coasts, reducing costs and skirting controversy.

Offshore wind-farm developers would love to build in deep water more than 32 kilometers from shore, where stronger and steadier winds prevail and complaints about marred scenery are less likely. But building foundations to support wind turbines in water deeper than 20 meters is prohibitively expensive. Now, technology developers are stepping up work in floating turbines to make such farms feasible.

Several companies are on their way to demonstrating systems by borrowing heavily from oil and gas offshore platform technology. If these efforts succeed, they could open up a resource of immense scale. For example, according to a 2006 analysis by the U.S. Department of Energy, General Electric, and the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, offshore wind resources on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts exceed the current electricity generation of the entire U.S. power industry.

Source: Technology Review

Labels: wind

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Vitamin B-2 revealed as secret ingredient in process capable of generating usable electricity from common bacteria

Researchers have this week revealed that they have unlocked one of the secrets surrounding certain strains of bacteria that are capable of generating electricity, in a breakthrough that could one day allow power plants to generate renewable energy from pools of bacteria.

Scientists have long known that Shewanella bacteria, which are commonly found in soil and water, are capable of converting simple organic compounds, such as lactic acid, into electricity. However, until now they have been unsure as to what drives the process.

Now researchers at the University of Minnesota's BioTechnology Institute claim to have come up with the answer after observing that by increasing vitamin B-2 levels the bacteria produced more power.

The researchers found that bacteria growing on electrodes naturally produced the vitamin B-2, which was able to carry electrons from the living cells to the electrodes. Consequently, rates of electricity production from the bacteria increased almost fivefold as the vitamin accumulated.

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Scientists have invented a plastic solar cell that can turn the sun's power into electrical energy, even on a cloudy day.

The plastic material uses nanotechnology and contains the first solar cells able to harness the sun's invisible, infrared rays. The breakthrough has led theorists to predict that plastic solar cells could one day become five times more efficient than current solar cell technology.

Like paint, the composite can be sprayed onto other materials and used as portable electricity. A sweater coated in the material could power a cell phone or other wireless devices. A hydrogen-powered car painted with the film could potentially convert enough energy into electricity to continually recharge the car's battery.

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Researchers at McMaster University (coolest name ever) have succeeded in 'growing' light-absorbing nanowires made of high-performance photovoltaic materials on carbon-nanotube fabric. The nanowires are made from exotic materials like gallium arsenide, indium gallium phosphide, etc, and they can absorb more energy from the sun than silicon, allowing the creation of both efficient and flexible solar panels.

The aim is to produce flexible, affordable solar cells composed of Group III-V nanowires that, within five years, will achieve a conversion efficiency of 20 percent. Longer term, it's theoretically possible to achieve 40 percent efficiency, given the superior ability of such materials to absorb energy from sunlight and the light-trapping nature of nanowire structures. By comparison, current thin-film technologies offer efficiencies of between 6 and 9 percent.

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A breakthrough barrier technology from Singapore A*STAR's Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) protects sensitive devices like organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and solar cells from moisture 1000 times more effectively than any other technology available in the market, opening up new opportunities for the up-and-coming plastic electronics sector.


A team of scientists from Singapore's Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) has developed a new patented film that has the highest reported water vapour barrier performance to date, as tested by the UK Centre for Process Innovation.


The tests have shown that the new film is 1,000 times more impervious to moisture than existing technologies. This means a longer lifetime for plastic electronic devices such as solar cells and flexible displays that use these high-end films but whose sensitive organic materials are easily degraded by water vapour and oxygen.

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A new approach is able to create a dramatic improvement in cheap solar cells now being developed in laboratories

By using a popcorn-ball design -- tiny kernels clumped into much larger porous spheres -- researchers at the University of Washington are able to manipulate light and more than double the efficiency of converting solar energy to electricity. The findings were presented in New Orleans at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society April 10.

Dye-sensitized solar cells, first popularized in a scientific article in 1991, are more flexible, easier to manufacture and cheaper than existing solar technologies. Researchers have tried various rough surfaces and achieved higher and higher efficiencies. Current lab prototypes can convert just over one tenth of the incoming sun's energy into electricity. This is about half as efficient as the commercial, silicon-based cells used in rooftop panels and calculators.

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Better wind forecasts could prevent blackouts and reduce pollution.

As wind power becomes more common, its unpredictability becomes more of a problem. Sudden drops in wind speed can send grid operators scrambling to cover the shortfall and even cause blackouts; unexpected surges can leave conventional power plants idling, incurring costs and spewing pollution to no purpose.

To address the problem, power-grid operators are combining hyper-local meteorological data and artificial intelligence to predict when the wind turbines installed on their networks will turn. What makes these modeling systems accurate and affordable is real-time data supplied by the wind farms themselves: wind speed and direction, plus, in many cases, local temperature, barometric pressure, and humidity.

Power-grid operators are using wind-clocking anemometers and weather stations installed at wind farms to predict wind power production hours or days in advance.

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Professor Zhong Lin Wang of Georgia Tech has harnessed the power of nanowires to come up with materials that can convert kinetic energy into electrical current. The professor's main idea is to make clothing woven from these fibres that would allow your body's natural motion to power any electrical device you may be carrying.

His idea is for a shirt but there's no reason why it would have to be the human body's movement. Campers could harness electrical energy by the motion of the wind blowing on their tents or by trailing a kite made of these fibres.

The nanowires work on the piezoelectric effect which describes a property whereby materials create electric potential under physical stress. So far, Zhong Lin Wang has measured four millivolts from a 1cm fibre but he predicts that a metre square of such fabric could generate up to 80 milliwatts of power.

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Breakthrough in battle to curb greenhouse gases

A team of scientists has developed a highly energy-efficient method of converting waste carbon dioxide into chemical compounds, marking a breakthrough in the fight to cut greenhouse gases. The team from Newcastle University estimates that the technology has the potential to use up to 48 million tonnes of waste carbon dioxide per year.

The method developed by the team led by Michael North, a professor of organic chemistry, converts waste carbon dioxide into cyclic carbonates. Cyclic carbonates are widely used in the manufacture of products including solvents, paint-strippers, bio-degradable packaging as well as having applications in the chemical industry. They also have the potential for use in the manufacture of a new class of efficient anti-knocking agents in petrol.

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The SUNRGI solar system uses a special lens to magnify sunlight more than 1,600 times to produce a very bright, powerful, focused spot of light

A new patents pending solar energy system will soon make it possible to produce electricity at a wholesale cost of 5 cents per kWh (kilowatt hour).

This price is competitive with the wholesale cost of producing electricity using fossil fuels and a fraction of the current cost of solar energy.

XCPV (Xtreme Concentrated Photovoltaics), a system that concentrates the equivalent of more than 1,600 times the sun s energy onto the world s most efficient solar cells, was announced today by SUNRGI, a solar energy system designer and developer, at the National Energy Marketers Association s 11th Annual Global Energy Forum in Washington, DC.

The technology will enable power companies, businesses, and residents to produce electricity from solar energy at a lower cost than ever before

Ref: SunRGI, see also this article

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Nanomotors just got ten times faster

Arizona researchers have made a breakthrough development by making a new generation of sub-microscopic nanomotors that are up to 10 times more powerful than existing motors.

The development, say researchers led by Joseph Wang, is a big step forward to a practical energy source for powering tomorrow's nanomachines.

Currently nanomotors, including so-called "catalytic nanomotors," are made with gold and platinum nanowires and use hydrogen peroxide fuel for self-propulsion.


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Japanese adventurer sets out across the Pacific in the world's first wave-powered boat.

The vessel for Kenichi Horie's latest adventure has two wings in front which convert the energy from waves into a movement similar to a dolphin's kicks, making it the world's first boat to be powered by the vertical motion of waves. The trip is meant in part to promote the commercial viability of the invention built by a team at Japan's Tokai University.

See video here

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Although it's clean, plentiful and relatively cheap, there is an inherent problem with wind power. It's not always there when you need it, leaving more conventional, more polluting energy resources to take up the slack.

The wind's variability has been one of the sticking points for wind power growth in the wind energy market.

The prospects for wind power could be greatly enhanced if cost-effective storage could be implemented. Some, like Minnesota based Xcel Energy, are putting their faith in new battery technology. But a UK professor, Seamus Garvey thinks he might have found another solution -- storing energy in flexible containers on the ocean floor.

Professor Garvey's idea of using Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) isn't a new one, but his methods are. Traditionally, CAES stows energy in a vast underground reservoir. During peak energy hours, air is released powering a turbine, which in turn produces electricity. There are currently only two CAES sites in the world -- in Huntorf, Germany and in McIntosh, Alabama. In a moment of inspiration, Garvey realized that air could be compressed using a wind turbine or a wave-powered device.

The prospects for his energy storage idea with tidal power are perhaps even better. Naturally, storing vast amounts of air requires vast amounts of storage. Professor Garvey envisages a cone-like structure stretching 50 meters wide at the top to around 80 meters across at the base.

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After more than a decade of getting the cold shoulder from business and sceptical academics, Melbourne inventor and barrister Paul Kouris, 53, is on the cusp of commercially demonstrating his patented dream of generating green power from water vortices.

The precise physics may be unproven -- and according to some academics, it's impossible -- but Mr Kouris's determination to tap energy from the "Coriolis" force generated by the spin of the earth has now been backed by a $40,000 grant from Sustainability Victoria.

Traditional physical theory suggests that the fall of a body of water can produce only a fixed amount of energy, and the key to maximising that energy is to have a turbine operating as efficiently as possible. But Mr Kouris asserts that by adding a vortex -- the whirlpool we see running down our plugholes -- his turbine can increase energy generation by 5-25 per cent.

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Solar Windows Could Slash Energy Loss from Buildings

Windows have traditionally been seen as a weak link in building design. Although they allow essential light into a building, they are a leading culprit for thermal energy loss.

However, all this could be set to change as a result of an exciting new collaboration aiming to reinvent windows as clear, clean energy providers. A team of academics at Queensland University of Technology has teamed up with Dyesol to develop transparent dye-infused solar cells that would significantly reduce building energy costs, and could even allow windows to generate surplus energy to be either stored or sold.

The development has been hailed by some as the most promising advance in solar cell technology since the invention of the silicon cell.

Dyesol’s solar cells use innovative technology called "artificial photosynthesis," where a dye works in much the same way as chlorophyll to absorb light and produce electricity.

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Think of it as the future of today's paper.

The Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and parent company Xerox are experimenting with a type of paper and a complimentary printer that would produce documents that fade away after 16 to 24 hours. A restaurant, for instance, could print its daily specials on a piece of paper, attach the pieces of paper to menus, and then collect the sheets of then-blank paper in the morning to run through the printer again.

How does it work? The paper is coated with photosensitive chemicals that turn dark when hit with UV light.

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Solar sails were once thought to belong in the realms of science fiction. Huge canopies of lightweight tin foil catching the solar photon breeze, slowly allowing spacecraft to cruise around our solar system propelled by the small but continuous radiation pressure. Recent years however have shown that solar sail spacecraft could be engineered in reality, and a new solar sail invention from the Finnish Meteorological Institute could push this goal one step closer. Rather than using solar radiation pressure, this new concept makes use of the highly charged particles in the solar wind to give the craft its propulsion. Additionally, through radio wave electron excitation, the system may amplify the solar wind acceleration effects, giving the spacecraft a "boost" function…

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Super-efficient lighting technologies provide energy saving ideas, outdoors and in

In Australia, the husband and wife team behind Lumiflux has found a way to make a 50 year old technology seem new and, well, shiny. Electroluminescence, or EL, has been the technology behind your digital watch night-light and a series of small lamps from Sylvania for a long time. Until quite recently, though, EL was not bright enough for more widespread area lighting applications.

Ernest and Gabriella Kabay have developed EL panels that are flexible, easily cut to shape and 2-3 times brighter than previous generations of EL. This makes them ideal for outdoors advertising and signage.

In the US alone there are approximately one hundred million exit signs. Every year, these require thirty to thirty five billion kilowatt-hours, which costs two point eight billion dollars to produce and is the equivalent of four million cars on the road. Lumiflux EL signage would reduce that to 10% of current figures.

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Scientists at the University of Tel Aviv in Israel claim they have found a way to construct efficient photovoltaic cells costing at least a hundred times less than conventional silicon based devices, and with similar or better energy conversion efficiency. The reactive element in the researchers' patent pending device is genetically engineered proteins using photosynthesis for production of electrical energy.

The scientists applied genetic engineering and nanotechnology for the construction of a hybrid nano -- bio, solid state device. According to the researchers, although using photosynthesis for photovoltaic application is not new, their specific technique is the first to enable the production of useful photosynthesis-based photovoltaic cells.

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Solar power, the holy grail of renewable energy, has always faced the problem of how to store the energy captured from the sun’s rays so that demand for electricity can be met at night or whenever the sun is not shining. The difficulty is that electricity is hard to store. Batteries are not up to efficiently storing energy on a large scale.

The idea is to capture the sun’s heat. Heat, unlike electric current, is something that industry knows how to store cost-effectively. Solar thermal systems are built to gather heat from the sun, boil water into steam, spin a turbine and make power, as existing solar thermal power plants do — but not immediately. The heat would be stored for hours or even days, like water behind a dam.

Ausra, of Palo Alto, Calif., is making components for plants to which thermal storage could be added, if the cost were justified by higher prices after sunset or for production that could be realistically promised even if the weather forecast was iffy. Ausra uses Fresnel lenses, which have a short focal length but focus light intensely, to heat miles of black-painted pipe with a fluid inside. A competitor a step behind in signing contracts, but with major corporate backing, plans a slightly different technique in which adding storage seems almost trivial. It is a “power tower,” a little bit like a water tank on stilts surrounded by hundreds of mirrors that tilt on two axes, one to follow the sun across the sky in the course of the day and the other in the course of the year. In the tower and in a tank below are tens of thousands of gallons of molten salt that can be heated to very high temperatures and not reach high pressure.

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Specialised wave energy technology company Ocean Energy recently completed the first successful sea trials for a wave energy converter. The device known as the OE Buoy has been undergoing extensive sea trials for the past eight months at the Marine Institute/SEI Wave Energy Test Site in Galway Bay. The test results, validated by the Hydraulic Marine Research Centre (HMRC) at University College Cork (UCC), represent a major breakthrough for Irish technologists in the search for viable alternative energy sources.

The device has been subjected to a wide range of wave conditions over the last eight months including a severe storm on New Year’s Eve when a wave height of 8.2 metres was experienced. The mooring system had no difficulty coping with these conditions and the whole system did not suffer any ill effects from the extreme waves.

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Electricity is usually made using nuclear power by heating steam to rotate turbines that generate electricity. Now, materials that directly convert radiation into electricity could produce a new era of spacecraft and even Earth-based vehicles powered by high-powered nuclear batteries, say US researchers.

Beginning in the 1960s, the US and Soviet Union used thermoelectric materials that convert heat into electricity to power spacecraft using nuclear fission or decaying radioactive material. Dispensing with the steam and turbines makes those systems smaller and less complicated. But thermoelectric materials have very low efficiency. Now US researchers say they have developed highly efficient materials that can convert the radiation, not heat, from nuclear materials and reactions into electricity.

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Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, have found a way to use ordinary silicon to convert heat to electricity. The technique could mean that some day you will be able to recharge your cell phone with electricity produced by your own body heat, and enormous amounts of energy that is now wasted could be recycled

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Maryborough November 20 - 23 2008

The RACV Energy Breakthrough is an exciting program designed to provide opportunities for students, teachers, parents and local industry to work together to design and construct a vehicle, a machine or innovation in technology that will represent an energy breakthrough.

The program encourages participants to examine and use the latest technology while considering its impact on the environment and the way people live locally and globally.

It's more than an event - it's a new way of thinking, learning, a passport to a sustainable future and a new way of having fun! School groups work throughout the year to design, build and test vehicles or machines within detailed specifications. It requires a team effort and an across-the-curriculum approach. These groups then bring their vehicles and machines to Maryborough in November, for a huge celebration in which they can demonstrate and trial them in action.

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