Energy
There’s a band of people in the northwest hills of Italy who are fishing for the big one in the sky.
They’re not a religious sect trawling for a deity. They’re part of a Turin-based startup called Kite Gen Research and, as their name implies, they want to generate electricity by flying kites — really big kites, really high.
The basic idea is simple: Unreel a huge piece of fabric into mile high winds that will haul the thing along at expressway speed. Tether the fast spinning string to earthbound alternators and crank out megawatts of power.
“Imagine you have a fishing rod, but instead of a…
One renewable energy source is easily available as waste from from construction, agriculture, landscaping, logging and sawmills. And it's already used in domestic and district-level heating systems.
It is the main solid biomass fuel source used for combined heat and power production, known as co-generation, a definite advantage as an energy source.
It's wood chips, but you don't hear much about them.
“Woodchips have an important value, first of all, to stimulate the care of a resource like the forest that has often been abandoned”, Stefano Dal Savio, an environmental engineer and…
Hank |
Like people who approach geopolitics with the attitude of "If people would just talk to each other, we would all along", there are a lot of naïve assumptions about just dumping gasoline.
We know it causes emissions, and emissions are bad, we know a lot of the money paid for oil goes to fund Middle Eastern terrorism, and that is bad - those things should cause both the left and the right in America to want gasoline gone. And yet it is not gone. The reason is simple: gasoline is a lot more efficient than alternative energy proponents want to believe.
Take solar power as a comparison.…
Most methane comes from natural gas - natural gas used to be loved but once it got popular it got lumped in with mean old fossil fuels so the search is on to find a new, green approach to methane, using microbes that can convert renewable electricity into carbon-neutral methane.
Researchers are raising colonies of microorganisms, called methanogens, which have the ability to turn electrical energy into pure methane, the key ingredient in natural gas. The scientists' goal is to create large microbial factories that will transform clean electricity from solar, wind or nuclear power into…
Hank |
No one is asking the Department of Energy to play venture capitalist with taxpayer money again, but basic research in dye-sensitized solar cells may bring the cost of solar down enough to allow for mainstream acceptance - primarily because dye-sensitized solar cells (also known as DSCs) are less fragile than panels that use crystalline silicon, also a benefit of thin-film panels, and don't require a clean room.
Solar power is an essential part of the future green energy mix, but adoption has been limited where government subsidies are not in place (a home in California put in a $160,000…
Microbes have been evolving for millions of years to efficiently digest organic material. Now researchers are tapping these natural processes to maximize energy output from the breakdown and use it to power farms and even waste facilities.
One process, developed by researchers at Michigan State University, mimics the natural mechanism of waste digestion and generates 20 times more energy than existing processes by creating ethanol and hydrogen for fuel cells.
Two bacteria are better than one
Instead of using one microbe to break down cellulose in a fermenter, Gemma Reguera, an associate…
No matter how much spin you hear and read from highly-paid lobbyists and clueless advocates, green energy is not viable. It will be, though science would get there faster if the Department of Energy would stop throwing money at solar panel companies and instead throw it at basic research, like battery technology.
After cost and efficiency, storage is the biggest obstacle preventing widespread use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power. The ability to store energy when it is produced is an essential waypoint on the road to turning alternative energy into regular energy. The…
Cyanobacteria are small organisms with huge importance. Ancient cyanobacteria created the oxygen atmosphere, and modern cyanobacteria produce a significant amount of the air we breathe. Now, these tiny organisms are helping us again by providing clues to improving biofuel production.
Because of their prolific photosynthesizing, cyanobacteria have great potential for solar-powered biofuel production. To tap into that potential, researchers from Queen Mary’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences recently became the first to visualize and control the “biological electrical switch” that…
Materials scientists at Harvard have demonstrated a solid-oxide fuel cell (SOFC) that converts hydrogen into electricity but can also store electrochemical energy like a battery. This fuel cell can continue to produce power for a short time after its fuel has run out.
The finding in Nano Letters will be most important for small-scale, portable energy applications, where a very compact and lightweight power supply is essential and the fuel supply may be interrupted.
The researchers typically work on thin-film SOFCs that use platinum for the electrodes (the two "poles" known as the anode and…
Hank |
Sometimes declaring bankruptcy is a good thing. In the case of Abound Solar Inc., a U.S. solar manufacturer that had American taxpayers on the hook for $400 million, the good thing is they closed the doors after only losing us $70 million in Department of Energy funds.
Chump change, I know, since we have committed $72 billion on alternative energy in the last few years, but $330 million here and $330 million there, and pretty soon we are talking about real money.
Is anyone surprised? No, when Energy Secretary Stephen Chu spoke of his desire for $9 gasoline, we knew he was not…