Oslo-based Scatec Solar plans a new solar power project in Iron County, Expected to be the largest in Utah, the Norwegian company says the investment will be around $500 million. The photovoltaic panels will be placed across 650 acres in northwestern Parovan.
A group of undergraduate students at Cornell University has conceived a device that can harness wind-induced vibrations into electricity through the piezoelectric effect. The Vibro-Wind Research Group is led by Frank Moon, Joseph Ford Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
Inspired by a cold-war ultra secret Russian invention, the Ekranoplan, Jaron Dickson, an Australian designer has designed a hydrogen-powered boat that can hover above the water at astonishing speeds by using the so-called "wing-in-ground-effect."
Scientists at Xylofuel LLC, a startup from Columbia, MD, discovered microorganisms that convert carbon dioxide and hydrogen to alcohols and hydrocarbons similar to the components of gasoline. The gases are inexpensive to produce as industrial byproducts or from heating or anaerobic digestion of biomass. The fuels produced by microbial isolates include hexane and other medium length alkanes.
Maryland-based New Energy Technologies has great plans for the future - they want to develop a new type energy generating window. Last week, the company has unveiled a working 12 x 12 inch prototype of its SolarWindow product.
A plant that will eat up waste pop soda and beer and will output ethanol good for pouring in fuel tanks will be set up by the end of February in Atlantic Canada. The $500,000 pilot plant, is part of a project led by New Brunswick Community College's bioenergy and bioproducts applied research and technology facility in Grand Falls, New Brunswick, located near the Maine border.
According to Siemens, all city buses equipped with the new hybrid drive system they released, Elfa (a combination of electric motors and a diesel engine), consume 33% less fuel compared to conventional buses.
Researchers at the University of Illinois claim that the Agave plant (used in making tequila) could be a great source of biofuel. According to some articles published in the journal Global Change Biology Bioenergy, two Agave species greatly exceeded the yields of other biofuel feedstocks such as sorghum, corn, soybean and wheat.
A system that converts the energy of sunlight directly into hydrogen has been discovered at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Scientists there have managed to design what they call a "biohybrid photoconversion system," which consists in the interaction of plant proteins responsible with photosynthesis and a synthetic polymer they created.
By using a technology that is normally suited to cleaning jewelery, with common solvents, ultrasounds, and 1 milligram of layered material (such as graphite), Dr. Valeria Nicolosi, the collaborator from the University of Oxford says they can make "billions and billions of one-atom-thick nanosheets can be made at the same time from a wide variety of exotic layered materials."
