With the introduction of a single bacterial gene into yeast, researchers from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands achieved three improvements in bioethanol production from agricultural waste material.

The invention is enthusiastically summarized by the principal researcher Jack Pronk: ‘In the laboratory, this simple genetic modification kills three birds with one stone: no glycerol formation, higher ethanol yields and consumption of toxic acetate’. For the potential billion liter ethanol gain to be realized, follow-up research on the transfer of this concept to industrial yeast strains and real-life process conditions is required. The Delft yeast researchers, who applied for a patent on their invention, hope to intensively collaborate with industrial partners to accelerate its industrial implementation.

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A radical new design of electrical generator that solves an engineering quandary and promises to be cheaper, lighter and more reliable than anything currently available has been unveiled by scientists at the University of Edinburgh.The work by Markus Mueller and Alasdair McDonald at the university’s Institute of Energy Systems has solved one of the fundamental engineering problems faced by builders of offshore wind turbines.

A new company, NGenTec, was formed ten days ago to exploit the new design. It is chaired by Derek Shepherd, a former managing director of Aggreko International, a Glasgow-based supplier of mainly diesel-fuelled generators.

The blades of conventional turbines are connected to a generator via a gearbox. In harsh conditions at sea, this is prone to breakdown, leading to costly repairs which themselves are at the mercy of the weather.The alternative is to dispense with the gearbox and connect the blades directly to a generator via an axle.

The institute’s design — through a novel arrangement of the magnets inside the generator and the copper coils that produce electricity as they pass the magnets — has succeeded in cutting the weight of direct-drive generators by up to half and made assembly much easier. A prototype installed on a wind turbine has proved that the design works.

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The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) team led by Ha Jang-ho successfully fabricated the single crystal material made from cadmium, zinc and tellurium (CZT) to a diameter of two inches.The compound has a high energy bandgap that permits sensors to operate without additional cooling systems at room temperatures.

Global demand for the CZT compound is on the rise since it can be used to make radiation sensors to detect cancer growth, space telescopes, and solar energy cells.

The global market related to various sensors using radiation stands at around US$1.1 billion and is expected to grow 10 percent annually in the near future. Of the total, CZT sensors make up US$30 million, although it is growing at a faster pace compared to other arrays.

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Storage is needed to harvest the full yield available from intermittent sources of energy like wind and solar. One of the options is compressed-air storage; till now only possible in underground caverns. But SustainX Energy Solutions; a Dartmouth College start-up that got $4 million in VC funding from Polaris Venture Partners and Rockport Capital this year is working on compressing and storing air in cheap off-the-shelf shipping containers.

The goalis to develop a renewable energy storage system with the portability and scalability of a battery and the economy and capacity of a cave. Make that a portable cave.

Over the next two years SustainX will try to develop a way to cram 4 megawatt-hours worth of stored energy into each 40-foot long container and to reduce the energy that it currently takes to compress and release air by about 70%.

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Daniel Nocera’s Sun Catalytix was one of the 37 ARPA-E awardees last month with a $4.1 million vote of confidence from the Nobel prizewinner-driven Department of Energy. Now Polaris Venture Partners has just added $1 million to its earlier $2 million investment in the MIT spin-off to bring their total investment to $3 million.Nocera’s work first burst on the world in 2007 with his work in figuring out how to ape the process of photosynthesis to create cheap solar energy stored as fuel.

According to MIT, the catalyst consists of an electrode placed in water containing cobalt and phosphate. MIT explains that when electricity from any source enters the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate create a film over the electrode, forming a catalyst that separates oxygen gas from the water and leaves behind hydrogen molecules. Then a platinum catalyst is used to convert the hydrogen molecules into hydrogen gas, which could power fuel cells and further efforts to lower global dependence on petroleum-based fuels. The vision is to use sunlight to enable these chemical reactions, creating a new way to tap solar power for energy.

Ultimately the plan is to integrate the technology with solar panels or wind turbines to store energy in liquid or gas fuels which are more energy-dense than the batteries traditionally used for energy storage.The Sun Catalytix electrolyzer breakthrough is that it is being designed to be made with cheap materials. Much work lies ahead, including finding a metal cheaper than the platinum to convert hydrogen molecules into hydrogen gas.

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University of California, Merced officials are trying a new method of cooling buildings. By concentrating solar collectors, temperatures of 400 degrees are achieved. When this technology,which is developed by professor Roland Winston,is operational,the solar array will heat an environmentally friendly mineral oil that will be circulated through a system of tubes connected to "cooling machine" that will produce cool water and, finally, cool air.

UC Merced was awarded a $2.25 million grant from the University of California Office of Research to be the lead agency in the California Alternative Solar Technologies Institute.A demonstration will take place in a couple of months and the system will be used to cool a 16-by-12-foot trailer, he said.

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Biodiesel Magazine reports that a study of Catilin Inc.’s new T300 solid catalyst process saves biodiesel producers 13 cents a gallon over a traditional catalytic process, and up to 19 cents a gallon if you figure in capital expense savings.

The T300 heterogeneous catalyst is nontoxic and can be a direct replacement for conventional catalysts used in biodiesel production. The drop-in solid catalyst operates at industry standard pressures and temperatures and is removed with filtration. As a result, current producers can retrofit their plants in a matter of days at very low cost. Another key advantage is that the glycerin coproduct has purity greater than 98 percent and qualifies as technical grade, which significantly enhances its overall value.

Catilin is commercializing the research done in developing the new catalyst at Iowa State University in Ames and the U.S. DOE’s Ames Laboratory.

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A shingle that generates solar energy was named one of the 50 Best Innovations of 2009 by Time magazine.

Dow Chemical, the Powerhouse Solar Shingle's inventor, will make the shingles commercially available by the middle of next year. The Powerhouse design includes thin-film cells of copper indium gallium diselenide. Dow notes the cells' low cost relative to other solar technologies.

And, on top of low cost, Dow's new shingle has other advantages. The company reports that the installation process is no different than that of traditional shingles, making Powerhouse shingles attractive to contractors. And in addition to saving money for homeowners by cutting energy use, the shingles are anticipated to make a lot of money for Dow - up to $10 billion a year by 2020.

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A team of Danish nanophysicists has developed a new method for manufacturing nanowires and believes the discovery will have great potential for the development of nanoelectronics and highly efficient solar cells.PhD student Peter Krogstrup, from the Nano-Science Center at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, developed the method during his dissertation.

Different materials capture energy from the sun in different and quite specific absorption areas.They have produced nanowires that contain two different semiconductors – GaInAs and InAs,which each have their own absorption area, they can collectively capture energy from a much wider area. We can therefore use more solar energy if we produce nanowires from the two superconductors and use them for solar cells.

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Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have made a three-dimensional photovoltaic solar cell around an optical fibre, a revolutionary new approach that could pave the way for a new generation of hyper-flexible solar systems.

According to team-leader Professor Zhong Lin Wang, “Using this technology, we can make photovoltaic generators that are foldable, concealed and mobile. Optical fibre could conduct sunlight into a building’s walls where the nanostructures would convert it to electricity. This is truly a three dimensional solar cell.”

The dye-sensitised nano-converter is based on coated zinc oxide structures grown on the optical fibre, from which the cladding has been removed, covered with a conductive layer and seeded with ZnO.

The next step is to grow a series of aligned zinc nanowires around the fibre from solution, resulting in something closely akin to a bottle brush, before coating the wires with dye and immersing them in a liquid electrolyte to complete the circuit. The team claim that the set up achieves a solar efficiency of 3.3%.

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Researchers at the Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) in Austria,have developed a silicon gel that could make batteries used in phones and laptops 10 times more efficient.

According to Stefan Koller, a researcher at TU Graz, the gel was designed for use with lithium-ion batteries and with the silicon gel it's possible to store 10 times more [power] per weight than graphite.

Koller said that to produce the gel his team had taken a hydrated silicon compound, irradiated it with ultraviolet light, and heated it to form an amorphous silicon gel. However, the problem with using silicon gel as a substrate is that it expands and contracts by up to 300 percent during uptake and transfer of lithium ions. Koller said his team had overcome this by using graphite as a buffer material.

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It was a Eureka moment for Rauno Koivusaari, and he started to work on harnessing the powerful motion for generating underwater wave power.Now, fifteen years later, the EU is funding the WaveRoller invented by that former diver, with $4.4 million,for his company AW-Energy to build the first full scale demo of his invention.

Each one at full size weighs 20 tons and produces 300 KW.Each 20 ton WaveRoller “door” can be connected together in threes to make up a nearly 1 MW unit. Obviously you can make a modular farm of any size under the ocean of these three-packed units, so the output can be as much as you can build tons-worth of “doors”.

AW-Energy’s WaveRoller uses the roiling currents under the sea to make energy from the repetitive surge motion at the sea floor in what Koivusaari calls the surge zone. The kinetic energy produced is collected by a piston pump. This energy can be converted to electricity by a closed hydraulic system in combination with a hydraulic motor/generator system.This year the company will get the results of a full scale demo built off the coast of Portugal.

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NatureMill, Inc. today unveiled its new XE Series of automatic home composters. The new models offer the simplicity and durability required for every day composting, with the convenience of indoor or outdoor use, while reducing overall energy consumption. Now ordinary home users, including apartment dwellers, can nearly eliminate landfill waste and related greenhouse gasses by composting their food waste.

Starting at $299, the all-new XE Series can compost over 100 lbs (45 kg) of food waste per month. New features include a stronger motor to grind and compost the toughest food scraps without jamming, a more powerful filter to eliminate trash odors, and a new heavy duty mode for occasional heavy use. Energy consumption is just 5 kwh per month, costing roughly $0.50 per month depending on local utility rates. A diesel trash truck consumes more energy hauling the same trash to a landfill. A new "Energy Save" mode further reduces energy consumption by 75%. The machine's small size allows it to be used inside a standard kitchen cabinet, which is ideal for people living in apartments with small kitchens.