Penn State researchers have found a cheaper method of producing hydrogen from water by the same old effect of electrolysis aided by the Sun's rays. They do not use classic solar cells, because these are expensive, but made a nanotechnology-based solar cell, called photoelectrochemical diode, that is simplistically said on the bottom of the water holding recipe.
Modern cars need a lot of battery power due to the high electricity consumption by those electronic gadgets people have in them. Often, the car sales personnel confronts with the issue of a dead battery when they are trying to sell a vehicle that has been standing parked for a long time.
Coulomb Technologies, a start-up company whose activity domain is somehow presumed from its title, launches an electric car/plug-in hybrid recharging network in San Jose, CA.
John Gilmartin, Scottish inventor, has found out a way to harness the free electricity from his backyard water stream near Staveley, in Cumbria, by using used youghurt pots and with the help of PhD engineering student Mr Cattley, now hopes to see the invention in the shops by the end of 2008.
Smart Fortwo Micro Hybrid Drive (MHD) has been available for quite a while on Europe's car markets. It's Smart's way of saying "I am cleaner than the cleanest", and a quite impressive innovation that brings some kind of a "hybrid" system into play by using a start-stop mechanism of the engine. It uses regenerative brakes, like all hybrids do, to recharge the battery, and it stops the engine when you halt at a stop light (in fact, when your speed drops below 8km/h).
A company, named QuantumSphere, has designed a metal coating system made for electrolyzers, made out of nanoparticles of NiFe (Fero-Nickel, or in plain english, a combination between iron and nickel). This coating would cover the electrolyzers' anode and cathode and increase the actual contact surface with water by over 1000 times!
As you already know, Earth's ecosystems are in a closed-loop. Researchers from the University of Birmingham have created a closed loop hydrogen energy eco-system based on two types of bacteria and a twist of fuel cell technology. How did they do that?
Vehicles based on hydrogen fuel cells are still 15 years away to becoming a viable business for manufacturers, informs Reuters. In the best case, the manufacturers will be able to sell only two million electric vehicles based on fuel cells until 2020, according to a study conducted by the National Research Council. This figure represents less than 1% of the cars located at that time on U.S. roads.
Have your every drove your car on "fumes"? They're gas vapors that form when it evaporates. One man, John Weston, from Charlottle County, FL, has found these fumes useful and made a fueling system out of them so his car gets an incredible mileage: 463 miles per gallon! In European measurements (if I'm correct) this is 0.8L/100km!!! Wow! Not even VW's latest gadget car can't get this mileage!
New York authorities hurry to increase the city fleet taxis with a rate of 300 new hybrid cars per month, announced mayor Michael Bloomberg. Currently, there are already over 1,300 hybrid taxis in the city, each making a...
