Energy
I was very happy to see Bio-diesel being sold (and cheaper) -at regular outlets, what we call petrol pumps in India. And cheaper than normal diesel.
That made me particularly happy because Spain played a leading role in developing biofuel, starting in 1970s and 80s. Professor Ayerbe from Spain was a leading proponent of petroplants, whom I had the chance to meet at a 1982 EU conference in Berlin and later in his lab near Madrid . The dream has come true. I hope it will also meet the desired goals of environmental protection also and green house gas mitigation.
Germany also has regular…
Hydrogen is the fuel-cell future but currently it has a number of issues, primarily related to storage(1) and cost. Cost because getting hydrogen out of a molecule requires a catalyst and efficient catalysts, like platinum, dissolve during the stop-and-go driving of a fuel-cell-powered electric car - as much as 45 percent of the catalyst can be lost during five days.
You know when gold looks cheap by comparison your energy technology is not ready for the mass market.
Chemical engineers at Purdue University say they are onto a new solution, a process they call hydrothermolysis,…
"In a major eco-friendly step towards renewable energy generation in India, seaweed sourced ethanol (ethyl alcohol), a biofuel additive in transport fuel, has been used to run a car for the first time. Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute (CSMCRI) in Bhavnagar scientists recently drove an ambassador car with a fuel blend of 10 per cent ethanol and 90 per cent petrol.
While this green fuel is already produced and used to run cars in some countries, specially US and Brazil, in India, this was not possible as sugarcane, the main source of ethanol, is a food crop here. To…
For solar cells to be viable (not relying on government mandates and subsidies) costs have to come down and efficiency must go up. Buried channel solar cells (BCSC) are one possible group of high efficiency devices.
Characteristic for buried channel solar cells are that the front contacts (lighted surface) are placed in deep trenches, formed in silicon crystal. The idea, is to be minimized the width of the contact bars, by the increasing the contact thickness in deep. In this way the formed element has lower shadowing effect and additionally the contact resistance is decreased. The…
With the official start of hurricane season approaching on June 1, news reports about the Deep Horizon oil spill that began fouling the Gulf last month have raised questions about how a hurricane might complicate the unfolding disaster.
A new study in Geophysical Research Letters suggests that hurricanes could snap offshore oil pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico and other hurricane-prone areas, since the storms whip up strong underwater currents.
These pipelines could crack or rupture unless they are buried or their supporting foundations are built to withstand these hurricane-induced currents…
According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), The Nile Delta Basic holds an estimated 223 trillion cubic feet (tcf) (mean estimate) of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas.
This is the first USGS assessment of this basin to identify potentially extractable resources. The USGS also recently completed an assessment of the adjacent Levant Basin Province, with a mean estimated natural gas endowment of 122 tcf.
"The Nile Delta Basin Province has significant natural gas potential, with estimated resources comparable to some of the other large provinces around the world and…
The talk will review some of the basic facts about the history and present status of the use of energy and its climatic consequences. It is clear that the world will have to change its way of energy production, the sooner the better. Because of the difficulty of storing electric energy, by far the best energy source for the future is thermal solar from the deserts, with overnight thermal storage. I will give some description of the present status of the technologies involved and end up with a pilot project for Europe and North Africa.
To watch the lecture simply click on the image bellow:…
Stanford scientists have harvested a tiny electric current from algae cells, found at the very source of energy production – photosynthesis, a plant's method of converting sunlight to chemical energy.
The research may be one of the many possible first steps toward generating "high efficiency" bioelectricity that doesn't give off carbon dioxide as a byproduct, the researchers say. The research team developed a unique, ultra-sharp nanoelectrode made of gold, specially designed for probing inside cells. They gently pushed it through the algal cell membranes, which sealed around it, and the…
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that the Levant Basin Province, in the Eastern Mediterranean region, holds 122 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas.
They say the province holds more natural gas resources than any region so far assessed in the United States. Some natural gas accumulations in the United States include the Southwestern Wyoming Province with an estimated 85 tcf, the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska Province with 73 tcf, and the Appalachian Basin Province of the eastern United States and the Western Gulf Basin…
A new review in the Agronomy Journal suggests that crop residue removal from corn, wheat, and grain sorghum may not be the most earth-friendly source of biomass for cellulosic ethanol production.
The review found that removal of more than 50% of crop residue can have negative consequences on soil structure, reduce soil organic carbon sequestration, increase water erosion, and reduce nutrient cycling and crop production, particularly in erodible and sloping soils.
While most research is focused on the conversion of cellulosic feeedstocks into ethanol and increasing production of biomass…