[TheAntiDoomer]

Fujitsu Gizmo Turns Heat, Light Into Electricity, Promises "Power From Everywhere"
http://www.fastcompany.com/1708463/fuji ... where-tech

Fujitsu just unveiled an "energy harvesting" device that can turn both heat and light into electrical power. Along with the company's self-powered medical devices, this hints at a future where power can be gleaned from everywhere.

Separate light- and heat-based systems for creating electrical energy--such as solar power and geothermal--have long been known. Fujitsu's trick is to combine the two ways of generating power into one device, leading to more efficient ways to gather energy from the environment, or what Fujitsu's calling "energy harvesting."

[Timo]

AD, i appreciate your posts on the development of new technologies. Mind if i join in?

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-fine-art-chemicals-electricity-organometallic.html

"Hansjörg Grützmacher holds a rectangular device made of transparent plastic, a little bigger than a fist. There is a rectangular recess on the front and two connections protrude from the top, one gold-coloured, the other silver. Two oversized-looking clamps hold together the two halves that make up the device. What you cannot tell from looking at this device is that it is the prototype of a novel so-called organometallic fuel cell, which Grützmacher’s group has developed in collaboration with an Italian research team.

”This fuel cell won’t solve the world’s energy problems,” says the ETH Zurich professor, “But I think the fact that it can be used to make fine chemicals from renewable raw materials with no waste products is an enormous step forward.” The new fuel cell’s achievement is really extraordinary. Firstly, it allows fine chemicals to be manufactured with no waste, while secondly it also generates CO2-free electrical energy. The aim of an environmentally friendly chemical industry must be to produce chemicals while creating less waste products or none at all, because according to Grützmacher, some of the these may be rather toxic and their disposal is therefore expensive and problematic.

The operating principle of the new organometallic fuel cell is entirely different to that of previous types. It is based on a special molecular complex containing the metal rhodium. This complex is molecularly embedded in the anode material. The anode of a fuel cell absorbs liberated charges and transfers them to the cathode, which releases them again. This process generates an electric current. The special feature of the organometallic fuel cell is that the molecular complex in the anode acts as a catalyst and its function can easily be optimised. The anode’s support material is carbon powder, to which the molecular complex is applied as a fine dispersion.

The active catalyst forms and changes progressively while the chemical reaction is taking place in the fuel cell. As a result, various catalysts specific to the individual reaction steps are formed from the metal complex. Thus an alcohol such as ethanol is converted into a corresponding aldehyde, and in the next step it is turned into the corresponding carboxylic acid, e.g. acetic acid. However, the use of this special catalyst enables not only alcohols but also sugars such as glucose to be transformed. The raw materials, i.e. the alcohols used, can be natural fermentation products or by-products from bio-diesel manufacture."

[TheAntiDoomer]

Solar fuel invention seeks industrial partner
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/science_tec ... d=29182862

The breakthrough discovery that environmentally clean car and aircraft fuel can be made using solar power faces the challenge of reaching commercial mass production.
Scientists at two Swiss universities have come up with a new way of making carbon neutral fuel alongside American counterparts. They hope it can become commercially viable by the end of the decade.

[Xenophobe]

First that pesky plateau turns into yet ANOTHER peak oil....then we get the mass produced solutions for a peak oil which suddenly....ISN'T....and now, in a rush to make sure the EV movement takes hold even WITHOUT the threat of the last peak oil, we get electric sportscars! Yeah baby! I was getting all ready to really enjoy the next half decade in our post peak living, and now we both get more crude, AND electric sportscars!

I mean, in another year or two we'll be able to assemble the entire sequence!

Threat of peak oil causes new cars to be built. New cars...cure peak oil! Turns out...the last peak wasn't a peak....we get MORE crude. So...we get BOTH the cool EV future, AND more crude to run all the old ICE stuff some of us still like too! Its like the 70's, when we lost the muscle cars to the 70's peaks, and got Corollas and such...except THIS time, we get to keep BOTH!

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/01 ... .html#more

[TheAntiDoomer]

There will be 10 kilowatt nickel hydrogen cold fusion demonstration on January 15 in Italy and peer reviewed papers
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/01/multi- ... cold.html#

Saturday january 15th Sergio Focardi and Andrea Rossi will make a press conference online about the presentation of the 10 kilowatt module reactor: with 100 of such modules is made the 1 MW plant in construction.

[vision-master]

So our current energy sources have all been about pop/ kapow.......



Sounds like a male thingy, no?

Welcome back to the 1950's....


Of course anti-gravity technology is just a myth.

These were cut with copper tools and transported and erected into place with slave power.

[Timo]

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-material-percent-greater-thermoelectric-conversion.html

Maybe global warming will end up saving us all.

"The durable and relatively easy-to-produce material has innumerable applications, including recycling waste heat from industrial refineries or using auto exhaust heat to help recharge the battery in an electric car. "It's a very amazing area," Levin said, particularly since many years of prior research into TAGS materials enables researchers to understand their nature. Better understanding of the thermoelectric and their improvement can immediately result in applications at larger scale than now."

[Timo]

Bring on the heat!!! New material produced at the U. of Minn. that directly produces electricity from heat. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-source-green-electricity.html

"University of Minnesota engineering researchers in the College of Science and Engineering have recently discovered a new alloy material that converts heat directly into electricity. This revolutionary energy conversion method is in the early stages of development, but it could have wide-sweeping impact on creating environmentally friendly electricity from waste heat sources.

Researchers say the material could potentially be used to capture waste heat from a car's exhaust that would heat the material and produce electricity for charging the battery in a hybrid car. Other possible future uses include capturing rejected heat from industrial and power plants or temperature differences in the ocean to create electricity. The research team is looking into possible commercialization of the technology.

"This research is very promising because it presents an entirely new method for energy conversion that's never been done before," said University of Minnesota aerospace engineering and mechanics professor Richard James, who led the research team."It's also the ultimate 'green' way to create electricity because it uses waste heat to create electricity with no carbon dioxide."

To create the material, the research team combined elements at the atomic level to create a new multiferroic alloy, Ni45Co5Mn40Sn10. Multiferroic materials combine unusual elastic, magnetic and electric properties. The alloy Ni45Co5Mn40Sn10 achieves multiferroism by undergoing a highly reversible phase transformation where one solid turns into another solid. During this phase transformation the alloy undergoes changes in its magnetic properties that are exploited in the energy conversion device.

During a small-scale demonstration in a University of Minnesota lab, the new material created by the researchers begins as a non-magnetic material, then suddenly becomes strongly magnetic when the temperature is raised a small amount. When this happens, the material absorbs heat and spontaneously produces electricity in a surrounding coil. Some of this heat energy is lost in a process called hysteresis. A critical discovery of the team is a systematic way to minimize hysteresis in phase transformations. The team's research was recently published in the first issue of the new scientific journal Advanced Energy Materials."

[sicophiliac]

How about calling this Soylent Brown....


http://www.dailytech.com/Japanese+Make+ ... e21932.htm

the delicious "steak" is even finished with red food color to give it a comforting hue. Mr. Ikeda claims that in initial testing people found the feces steak to taste somewhat like beef.

[rangerone314]

How about calling this Soylent Brown....


http://www.dailytech.com/Japanese+Make+ ... e21932.htm

the delicious "steak" is even finished with red food color to give it a comforting hue. Mr. Ikeda claims that in initial testing people found the feces steak to taste somewhat like beef.

I guess that is a little better than the Human Caterpillar.

[TheAntiDoomer]

Economy is coming back strong, natural gas production and oil production rising in the US. My technocopia meter still jeetering on MAX.

[TheAntiDoomer]

Oh and this nugget!!!

Joule raises $70M, heads for commercialization

http://biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2012/ ... from-soda/

The productivity rates are, in prospect, remarkable. 15,000 gallons of renewable diesel per acre of deployed systems, per year. 25,000 gallons of ethanol per acre per year. At such productivities, the entire non-corn ethanol portion of the 36 billion gallon Renewable Fuel Standard target for 2022 could be produced from 840,000 acres, about 1300 square miles.

The costs are even more interesting. $20/barrel for diesel, $0.60 per gallon for ethanol – a fraction of the costs from biomass-based systems today, and a fraction of the cost of fossil-based oil today.

[Pops]

Scary AD, I didn't see your post before I bumped the doom-o-meter

[TheAntiDoomer]

UT biosolar breakthrough promises cheap, easy green electricity

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-ut- ... -easy.html

Barry D. Bruce, professor of biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is turning the term "power plant" on its head. The biochemist and a team of researchers have developed a system that taps into photosynthetic processes to produce efficient and inexpensive energy.