The officials at California's South San Joaquin Irrigation District (SSJID) and solar energy experts at Denver-based Conergy Americas have developed the world's first single-axis solar tracking system which is stated to generate about 419kW of electricity. The utility will...
Last week Scotland's Energy Minister launched the Biomara research project to study the feasibility of microalgae and seaweed usage as alternative energy in the production of biofuels. This project aligns with the requests of having at least 10% of clean transport energy by 2020. The project is about $8 million (€6 million) worth.
We have been so focused on chemical storage systems lately, that some us forget other old, seemingly more efficient, mechanical batteries. Such a battery is the flywheel. Several successful experiments have been carried out in the last 50 years, and the flywheel's applications ranged from acting as a UPS for a hospital to putting an entire train to movement and then to cruise speed, only by its power.
Analyzing a single-celled green alga, researchers have found a fermentation process which was not known before that can revolution hydrogen production. Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a soil or fresh water single-celled alga, produces its own energy by fermentation when it has no source of oxygen.
New types of solar cells emerge every month, but this particular kind has caught my attention, not due to its efficiency (approx 1%), but to the idea that conceived it.
Obama's plans for a prosperous hydrogen economy cannot come alive if we don't find the proper storage for the hydrogen, as an energy carrier. The scientific community, funded by their governments and/or private investors, are looking for several solutions to this issue.
As if it wasn't enough for MIT's virus batteries, scientists from the University of British Columbia have now devised a fuel cell prototype able to feed itself from the sugar in the blood stream.The tricky part of the invention is that the fuel cell is made of nothing else but a type of bacteria, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, that lives in yeast.
Viruses seemed like a frightened enemy that kept standing in our way for the past... million years. Although they have their qualification and role in the ecosystem, we seem to hate viruses and only associate them will our colds, hepatitis, and other illnesses. Not for a moment we could think of them as of a power source.
As the world's potable water resources thin each year, scientists strive to decypher ways to use the immense amounts of water that abound the oceans and seas, and to make them drinkable. All that desalination process consumes energy resources, and that makes water more expensive to produce and drink in some parts of the world.
Lithium-ion batteries are used in all the gadgets that surround us, and in the forthcoming electric cars. New versions of them are on their way, and one month after another brings news about new emerging technologies.
