The Green Optimistic

It’s no wonder technology evolves so fast: the Army uses it first. For their needs, the US Army will equip their troops in isolated areas, without any source of energy with a different kind of fuel cells: ones you put water in. The device’s name is also military: MRC-201.

Its name sounds like it’s taken out of Star Trek. Still, this is Chinese technology kicking some much bigger butts all over the world. BYD, the Chinese cell phone battery maker unveils today the F3DM, an all-electric sedan designed to show some more capitalist, more prudent, oil-led giant companies like Chevrolet, GM or Toyota, that you can do a decent electric car with a low price and high expectations.

When I was like 12, I did an interesting experiment: I connected a piezoelectric cigarette lighter to a halogen lamp based voltmeter measuring up to 3000V. The short spark easily raised the voltage above that figure. Of course, the current is very small, but the voltage is high - to the degree of about several tens of thousands volts.

Nevada researchers have recently found out that waste coffee grounds can be used to create biodiesel. Mano Misra, Susanta Mohapatra, and Narasimharao Kondamudi discovered that spent coffee grounds contain 11 to 20% oil by weight, as much as traditional biodiesel sources of palm, rapeseed or soybean oil.

We have been talking a while ago about refrigerators that needed no electricity or that were powered by the Sun, through evaporation, helping poor countries with a cool place to keep their food. Now, venture capitalist Adam Grosser teamed up with some Stanford scientists to create refrigerator that really doesn’t need to be plugged in anything but the Sun.

Everyone knows two are more powerful than one. On the same principle, IBM and Harvard University researchers launched a joint project today in an effort to search for the optimum combination of materials to create the most efficient solar cells ever.

Some University of Arkansas researchers want to give solar power a new meaning. They want to store the Sun’s heat in concrete, and then pass that heat on to generate electricity. Since the US hasn’t had many projects involving storing of thermal energy in concrete, it is a good time to start.

Here’s some good news for DIYers. If it ever passed through your head to convert your actual car to an electric one, here are some Orange County guys that already did that and sell Prius conversion kits so you can do it at home, too.