Indonesia Planning to Get Another 4,000 MW from Volcanic Geothermal Plants by 2014
Indonesia, the world's third greenhouse gas contributor, wants to diversify its clean energy production potential by using the active volcanoes in the archipelago of 17,000 islands. If finished, this would be the world's biggest geothermal energy project, adding another 4,000 MegaWatts of geothermal capacity to the existing 1,189 MW... all of this by 2014.
For Efficient Fridges: New Magnetocaloric Material Also Cools Under Mechanical Pressure
Magnetocaloric materials have been the most advanced in this field by now. The researchers' new material also produces a caloric effect under hydrostatic pressure. For developing their discovery, they worked on a high-pressure system developed by the UPC.
Link Between Whale Droppings and Carbon Sequestration Discovered
The Australian Antarctic Division performed a research in this area, and found out that the whale poo is very rich in iron - about some 10 million times richer than sea water, as Steve Nicol, one of the scientists, said: "The plants love it and it actually becomes a way of taking carbon out of the atmosphere."
Muammer Yildiz Magnetic Motor at Delft University, Netherlands
An inventor from Turkey, Muammer Yildiz, as Overunity.com and Pesn.com report, has just demonstrated his own version of a magnetic motor at the University of Delft, in the Netherlands, in front of an audience made of university staff and students. His device ran for more than 10 minutes, rotating a fan. The wind speed was measured and it has been concluded that the power of Yildiz's magnetic motor is about 250 W.
New Method of Making Supercapacitors on Thin Films Improves Price and Capacity
Supercapacitors are energy storage devices that can be recharged for virtually unlimited times, but the amount of energy they store is limited. Their working principle is not based on chemical reactions, but rather on transferring surface charges.
Caltech Metamaterial Refracts Light Coming From Broad Range of Angles: Suitable for Solar Cells
Caltech researchers have just discovered a metamaterial with a particular three-dimensional structure that exhibits a negative index of refraction for the light entering it. It simply bends the light in another angle than it would normally be expected, no matter what angle the incident light had.
DIY: How to Build an Energy Meter for Your Stand-by Devices
This DIY presents a device capable of detecting the stand-by mode of low-consuming electronics in your home (like plugged-in phone chargers, without the phones attached) etc. The metering starts when the devices enter stand-by and stop when they start consuming in large amounts.
Ames Scientists Studying Way to Enhance Hydrogen Storage Nanomaterials
Vitalij Pecharsky, a researcher from the U.S. DOE - Ames Laboratory, along with his team, studies the possibility of storing hydrogen at room temperatures, in a recyclable container - just like your car's reservoir.
Plasmonic Thin Film Solar Cells Producing 30% More Electricity Than Non-Treated Ones
Kylie Catchpole (image), from the Australian National University in Canberra, working to make thin film solar cells more efficient, discovered that nanoparticles of silver deposited on the surface of a thin-film solar cell would not reflect the incident light back, but instead it would deflect the photons so they bounce back and forth withing the cell, allowing longer wavelengths to be absorbed.
Graphene Flakes With Attached Brushes Improving Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells
Until now, graphene could have theoretically been incorporated into the dye used to make the Graetzel cell to improve its efficiency, but what stopped the scientists to do that was that it always clumped together, forming graphite, which is of no use for a solar cell.
