Energy
Tel Aviv University biologists say a solution to our search for alternative energy may come from an unexpected source ― peas.
Researchers isolating minute crystals of the PSI super complex from the pea plant suggests these crystals can be illuminated and used as small battery chargers or form the core of more efficient man-made solar cells.
To generate useful energy, plants have evolved very sophisticated "nano-machinery" which operates with light as its energy source and gives a perfect quantum yield of 100%. Called the Photosystem I (PSI) complex, this complex was isolated from pea…
Biomass currently supplies about a third of the developing countries’ energy varying from about 90% in countries like Uganda, Rawanda and Tanzania, to 45 percent in India, 30 percent in China and Brazil and 10-15 percent in Mexico and South Africa. The crucial questions are whether the two billion or more people who are now dependent on biomass for energy will increase. The fact that 90 percent of the worlds population will reside in developing countries by about 2050 probably implies that biomass energy will e with us forever.
Tropical deforestation is currently a significant environment…
Plants and algae, as well as cyanobacteria, use photosynthesis to produce oxygen and "fuels," the latter being oxidizable substances like carbohydrates and hydrogen. There are two pigment-protein complexes that orchestrate the primary reactions of light in oxygenic photosynthesis: photosystem I (PSI) and photosystem II (PSII). Researchers writing in PNAS say they have taken a significant step closer to understanding how these photosystems work their magic, which may boost the effort to develope new sources of energy.
The team created mutations in a single-celled green alga (Chlamydomonas…
Researchers have developed a way to produce ethanol from waste products such as orange peels and newspapers. The approach is 'greener' and less expensive than the current methods available to run vehicles on clean energy and can be applied to several non-food products throughout the United States, including sugarcane, switchgrass and straw.
The new technique uses plant-derived enzyme cocktails to break down orange peels and other waste materials into sugar, which is then fermented into ethanol. The findings are detailed in Plant Biotechnology.
Researchers cloned genes from wood-rotting fungi…
Energy Policy Should Maximize Benefits of All Renewable Biomass
February 12th, 2010
The new rule announced by EPA last week implementing the federal Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) takes a major step toward a clean energy future by including forest biomass as a feedstock for transportation fuels. However, any effort to maximize this plentiful source of low-cost, domestically produced biomass is hamstrung by a flawed legal definition that excludes an estimated 90 percent of the nation’s renewable biomass from private forests from the program.
The RFS, which was authorized by the Energy…
Administration Support for Biofuels is Part of a Bigger Policy Need
February 4th, 2010
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Leave a comment President Obama and members of his Biofuels Interagency Working Group are to be applauded for actions announced this week that will reinforce the vital role that biofuels will play in our nation’s energy future. The administration unveiled on Wednesday steps they say will boost the development of biofuels and generate billions of dollars in additional revenue for rural America.
As welcome as these decisions are, it is important to note that biofuels are only one part of a…
Here is an idea for a new energy policy: teach people what energy is and where it comes from.
Whether or not you think human activity is effecting global climate change, whether we should drill-baby-drill or hug a tree, a nature-based perspective of the challengingly intangible concept of ‘energy’ may help you better understand your political position.
First of all, what is ‘energy?’
The answer may depend on whom you ask. If you pause for a moment and think how you would put it into words you may find it isn’t so easy. - A physicist will tell you energy is ‘the ability to do work’…
Any 600 million productrion of Jatropha would need involvement of all those who have worked for years in DBT projects and developed accessions and high yielding plants. (Kumar 2008)
The debate of food vs fuel is an excuse for putting lame excuses for our failures to retain productivity level of the farmlands, irregular practices of growing crops in the areas where they should not be grown .i.e. growing rice in areas which is not its “natural home”, introducing plants in ecological zones not adapted to receive “strangers plants”
over exploitation of ground water, deep drilling and forgetting traditional agricultural patterns and knowledge. When we started our work on bio-fuel plants we concentrated on plants which are able to grow at temperatures of 48 degree with almost…
An international team of researchers has identified a new theoretical approach that may one day make the synthesis of hydrogen fuel storage materials less complicated and improve the thermodynamics and reversibility of the system. The team of researchers has developed a process using an electric field that can significantly improve how hydrogen fuel is stored and released. The findings will appear in an upcoming issue of PNAS.
"Although tremendous efforts have been devoted to experimental and theoretical research in the past years, the biggest challenge is that all the existing methods do not…