Energy

Biofuel have a great potential but turnig food into biofuel is not correct way instead work on the petroplants, local plants and search for non edible oil plants like Jatropha etcas source of biofuel and improve their agrotechnology of production extraction purification and conversion. Invite people to suggest extraction procedures for petrocrops and optimise yield of Jatropha curcas.

Biomass refers to all the matter that can be obtained from photosynthesis. Most vegetable species use solar energy to create sugars from carbon dioxide and water. They store this energy in the form of glucose or starch molecules, oleaginous, cellulose, and lignocellulose. Biomass appears to be an attractive feedstock for three main reasons. First, it is a renewable resource that could be sustain ably developed in the future. Second, it appears to have formidably positive environmental properties, notably the recycling of carbon in the biological processes, resulting in no net releases of…

Diesel and gasoline fuel sources both bring unique assets and liabilities to powering internal combustion engines. But what if an engine could be programmed to harvest the best properties of both fuel sources at once, on the fly, by blending the fuels within the combustion chamber? Such an engine just might be possible thanks to the University of Wisconsin-Madison engine research group headed by Rolf Reitz. The research team is developing a diesel engine that produces significantly lower pollutant emissions than conventional engines, with an average of 20 percent greater fuel efficiency as…

A new paper outlines what it calls a simple-to-use technique which enables companies to optimize the performance of industrial boilers and reduce their main emissions. It's about time.    Obviously there aren't going to be any new super-efficient combustion techniques any time soon -   combustion is what it is - but using a new oxidation method with an improved catalyst is a different story.    A catalyst is a substance which increases the speed of chemical reactions, without taking any apparent part in the reaction, or which modifies the parameters of the reaction (…

Now that people have finally realized ethanol is a government-run, unscientific boondoggle, efforts are under way to make legitimate biofuels efficient enough for mass usage. Microalgae are monocellular, plant-like organisms that use photosynthesis and convert carbon dioxide (CO2) into biomass. From this biomass, both potential resources and active substances as well as fuels like biodiesel may be produced. While growing, algae take up the amount of CO2 that is later released again when they are used for energy production. Hence, energy from algae could potentially be produced in a CO2-…

Uncompressed hydrogen will require a tank the size of a bus to take your car 300 miles but compressed hydrogen can be ... explosive ... unless the materials for storage get a lot better. Engineers in the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have a different idea entirely:  they want to pack hydrogen into a larger molecule. There are obstacles.   A gas flows easily out of a tank but getting hydrogen out of a molecule requires a catalyst. New details about one such catalyst in the Journal of the American Chemical Society may be a step toward better hydrogen…

There's this little company you may have heard of called GE.   Yeah, it's the one Edison started and I don't know where you come down in the whole Westinghouse/Edison fight but one of those guys screwed Tesla and one did not, so I am inclined to like Westinghouse more than Edison even though GE stock obviously did much better. Hey, I can stick with my principles and still make some money. But GE has earned my respect, not because of Jack Welch (though he earned my respect, mostly by making the stock a gold mine and despite being a part of that annoying Six Sigma crap that has been…

It's easy for Arizona residents to hope for widespread solar power usage - they don't have to think about the thousands of miles of new power lines on land that will be grabbed under eminent domain. And you'd think hockey stick analogies regarding climate issues would be bad, since the most famous one turned out to be made up. But University of Arizona postdoctoral electrochemist Erin Ratcliff can't resist.  She says solar power is ready to take off.   "We're right at the magic moment when the hockey stick starts to take off, when you go from flat to hockey stick. We're right…

CO2 reduction targets can be met with affordability. An EPRI report released this week concludes affordability requires a "full portfolio" of electricity sector technologies. Diverse generation "could simultaneously address the challenge of growing load demand while meeting carbon constraints and limiting increases in the cost of electricity."  The new study estimates the extra electricity cost to the average household is $398 a year to achieve 80 percent greenhouse-gas reductions by 2050. This reduction target is consistent with a bill…

There's an irrational belief held by some about economics that if a technology is subsidized, the magic of capitalism will make it cheaper even though there being no benefit to consumers or industry to do so, since it is already cheap for one and profitable as is for another. So it goes with hybrid vehicles, though you can insert ethanol or wind power or solar panels and the math is the same.  Despite major costs to taxpayers in the U.S. and Canada, government programs that offer rebates to hybrid vehicle buyers are failing to produce environmental benefits, according to a new University…