By Zachary Shahan •
October 14, 2009
Looking to create products for the real world as soon as possible, a new research center in the UK is aiming to speed up the development and installment of a variety of low carbon technologies to ensure a greener future for us all.
This new £50 million ($80 million) center hopes to do this through more coordinated and focused efforts from four universities and a regional development agency. The four universities that have teamed up are Hull, Leeds, Sheffield and Yorkshire, and they are working with the regional development agency Yorkshire Forward. The name of the new center is Centre for Low Carbon Futures (CLCF).
By Tina Casey •
October 12, 2009
They don’t know how it works, but it does.
A team of researchers at Georgia Tech has developed a new high-tech ceramic material that could make solid oxide fuel cells less costly and less finicky, and much more durable and efficient. The material is called Barium-Zirconium-Cerium-Yttrium-Ytterbuim Oxide. [Ed note: Say that three times fast and you get a gold star.] I don’t know if it’s any less of a tongue twister, but it’s known as BZCYYb for short.
Solid oxide fuel cells are of interest because they can generate energy without the need for an expensive catalyst such as platinum, which is typically used in hydrogen fuel cells. While nanotechnology is enabling the development of hydrogen fuel cells that use less platinum, with BZCYYb the prospects look good for ditching the precious metal entirely in favor of more sustainable technology—if solid oxide systems can be developed in a commercially viable form, that is.
By Nick Chambers •
October 6, 2009
Researchers have found a way to create a battery out of Nickel and Lithium that can store more than 3.5 times the energy of lithium-ion batteries and are much safer to boot.
Lithium-ion batteries are great and all—having heralded in a new age of portable electronics and allowed for the possibility of mass-market electric cars—but they have a few major drawbacks. For instance, they have a propensity to catch fire and explode and, although they have a much better energy storage capacity than say lead-acid or nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries, they still weigh too much to pack more than a couple hundred miles of range into a passenger car.
By Nick Chambers •
October 2, 2009
As part of a National Science Foundation grant program to examine cutting edge ways to make nature work for us, a team of scientists at Iowa State University have been awarded $2 million to unravel how some plants and algae can make hydrocarbons and discover if the genes that govern that process might be isolated.
“These plants are capturing solar energy and creating something that’s chemically identical to petroleum,” said Jackie Shanks, Iowa State’s Manley R. Hoppe Professor of Chemical Engineering, in a statement.
By Nick Chambers •
September 30, 2009
Just about this time last year I reported on the very promising and innovative Mcgyan® biodiesel process. It was one of the most popular stories gas 2.0 ran that year, and rightly so: the breakthrough seemed to deliver the possibility of making biodiesel in mere seconds from start to finish, reducing costs by half the price of other biodiesel, producing no waste, using no chemical reactants, and using any animal fat or vegetable oil as a feedstock.
At the time the company in charge of the project, Ever Cat fuels, had only succeeded at making a small-scale pilot operation of 50,000 gallons per year. But, as of 2 days ago, the process has been completely commercialized.
By Nick Chambers •
September 29, 2009
This is one of those topics I’m just not sure what to think of…
When the average person hears the term fuel cell, typically what comes to mind is something that mysteriously makes electricity from hydrogen. In reality the process isn’t all that mysterious—basically the hydrogen is split into its component parts (electrons and protons) and the protons are allowed to flow through the cell, but the electrons are forced to travel another path, which creates the current (and charges the battery or runs the motors or turns on the lights).
Although the hydrogen fuel cell is the most common type of cell, you can make fuel cells that use many different things, including hydrocarbons and sugars. They all work on the same basic principal, but hydrogen fuel cells are considered superior because their only emission is water vapor and they produce lots of energy.
By Zachary Shahan •
September 25, 2009
A new report released today says that if we shift our economy — to a greener, low-carbon economy — we will have more jobs, not fewer.
Earlier this week, Tony Blair (former prime minister of the UK) and the Climate Group reported that if we worked to avoid climate change we’d create 10 million new jobs by 2020 — worldwide. Another recent study by Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council says that such a shift could increase employment in the EU by 2.7 million jobs by 2030.
One more report, released today by the Global Climate Network (an alliance of nine influential think tanks) comes to similar conclusions.
By Leah Edwards •
September 21, 2009
How old is too old to be an entrepreneur? The stereotype that people take fewer risks as they age does not bear out in a report by the entrepreneur-supporting Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Titled “THE COMING ENTREPRENEURSHIP BOOM“, the report shows that the average age of entrepreneurs is higher than many would expect.
“It turns out that over the past decade or so, the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity belongs to the 55-64 age group. The 20-34 age bracket, meanwhile, which we usually identify with swashbuckling and risk-taking youth (think Facebook and Google), has the lowest rate.”
Since the U.S. population is aging quickly, the number of people 55 and older is increasing dramatically. Because of increasing (healthy, productive) life expectancies and a decline in lifetime employment by large companies, the Kauffman Foundation is expecting that we’re “on the cusp of an entrepreneurship boom”. Download the fairly brief “pdf” of the report.
By Nick Chambers •
September 18, 2009
Welcome to another episode of “If college students can do it, why can’t the rest of the world figure it out too?”
An enterprising and organized group of undergraduate and graduate students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have fitted an old sail boat with a spiffy set of hydrogen fuel cells and plan to run the boat from Manhattan to upstate New York later this month in a “green power” tour of sorts.
I love it when college students do this kind of stuff. Seriously. If I could have stayed in college forever, I would have. Believe me, I tried.
By Nick Chambers •
September 17, 2009
Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest electricity provider, has secured $70.5 million in stimulus funds to expand an innovative project that turns carbon dioxide emissions from a coal power plant into biofuel using algae. While part of the funds will be used to scale up the algae processing portion, some of the funds will also be used to investigate the potential benefits of turning the coal into a gas prior to burning it for power.
The concept of creating two products — electricity and fuel — from the same process is known as cogeneration. In this case, the cogeneration also helps to reduce environmental pollution. It’s an idea that has been gathering support as a way to make coal less polluting while finding an additional revenue source to pay for the pollution control itself. In fact, a while back I reported on a similar pilot project in Oregon.
