As it moves along a carbon-nanotube track it continuously harvests energy from strands of RNA molecules vital to a variety of roles in living cells
and viruses. ur motors extract chemical energy from RNA molecules decorated on the nanotubes and use that energy to fuel autonomous walking along the carbon nanotube trackchoi says.
The core is made of an enzyme that cleaves off part of a strand of RNA. After cleavage the upper DNA arm moves forward binding with the next strand of RNA
CNTS are long chains of carbon atoms that are extremely efficient at conducting and controlling electricity.
They are so thinâ##thousands of CNTS could fit side by side in a human hairâ##that it takes very little energy to switch them off according to Wong a co-author of the paper. hink of it as stepping on a garden hosewong explains. he thinner the hose the easier it is to shut off the flow. n theory this combination
Depending on how the CNTS grow a fraction of these carbon nanotubes can end up behaving like metallic wires that always conduct electricity instead of acting like semiconductors that can be switched off.
Then they pumped the semiconductor circuit full of electricity. All of that electricity concentrated in the metallic nanotubes
which grew so hot that they burned up and literally vaporized into tiny puffs of carbon dioxide.
#Colonies of wired microbes turn sewage into electricity Stanford university rightoriginal Studyposted by Tom Abate-Stanford on September 19 2013a new way to generate electricity from sewage uses naturally occurring ired microbesas mini power plants
to produce electricity as they digest plant and animal waste. Scientists hope the icrobial batterycan be used in places such as sewage treatment plants
At the moment however the laboratory prototype is about the size of A d-cell battery and looks like a chemistry experiment with two electrodes one positive the other negative plunged into a bottle of wastewater.
and produce electricity that is captured by the battery s positive electrode. e call it fishing for electronssays Craig Criddle a professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford university.
but tapping this energy efficiently has proven challenging. What is new about the microbial battery is a simple yet efficient design that puts these exoelectrogenic bacteria to work.
As reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences at the battery s negative electrode colonies of wired microbes cling to carbon filaments that serve as efficient electrical conductors.
Using a scanning electron microscope the Stanford team captured images of these microbes attaching milky tendrils to the carbon filaments. ou can see that the microbes make nanowires to dump off their excess electronscriddle says.
At that point it is removed from the battery and re-oxidized back to silver oxide releasing the stored electrons.
Engineers estimate that the microbial battery can extract about 30 percent of the potential energy locked up in wastewater.
That is roughly the same efficiency at which the best commercially available solar cells convert sunlight into electricity.
Of course there is far less energy potential in wastewater. Even so the microbial battery is worth pursuing because it could offset some of the electricity now used to treat wastewater.
That use currently accounts for about 3 percent of the total electrical load in developed nations.
Most of this electricity goes toward pumping air into wastewater at conventional treatment plants where ordinary bacteria use oxygen in the course of digestion just like humans and other animals.
Looking ahead the engineers say their biggest challenge will be finding a cheap but efficient material for the positive node. e demonstrated the principle using silver oxide
#Will 3d printing bring space-based solar power to reality? Spiderfab 3-D robotic printer Since the 1970##s, space-based solar power has been a futuristic fantasy
but the advent of 21st#century 3-D printing may bring it a step closer to reality.
It would##enable construction of large support structures for systems such as multi-hundred-kilowatt solar arrays, large solar sails,
##For#space-based solar power (SBSP), there would be two basic steps, Hoyt explained. First, the 3-D printer would build a carbon fiber truss structure that would act as a frame for the system.
if concentrating solar power was being deployed.####We haven t yet looked in detail at space-based solar,
But a just-completed design analysis for a 300-kilowatt orbital solar array verified that Spiderfab can provide the projected tenfold decrease in stowed volume
TUI also developed a lab version of the device that would fabricate the truss structure in that analysis.##Geostationary solar could produce baseload electricity for 99 percent of the hours of the year,
Terrestrial solar arrays have achieved grid parity Davis said, but without storage they cannot provide the baseload power utilities need.
And#the cost of storage#to provide that service will##double or triple our electricity rates.##
##The Solar High Group is working##to put together a consortium of government and industry, ##Davis said.
They looked at technology feasibility, environmental impact, land use, manpower needs, energy payback, and estimated costs and confirmed the concept was##technically feasible with no new science
The microwave transmission that would deliver SBSP s electricity from an orbiting antenna to terrestrial rectennas would be##2 million times the power of that produced by the microwave oven.##
##and Lobbyists who protect#other energy sources subsidies#who would be##out of their jobs###The term 3-D printing has become a catch-all for a number of purposes
and other forms of passive energy, our future water networks will be operate with far more efficiency and convenience than anything imaginable today.
After many years of development and testing, the WMS1000 (shown above) became the world first wind turbine able to produce 1, 000 liters of water a day from air condensation.
and is designed to work with PV solar panels and batteries, to continually generate water even in emergency situations.
so that it can can carry the battery, electronic centers, and all the other things necessary for autonomous flight.
In theory, they would just have to come back to something to recharge their batteries. But we re very early on in working this out.
That s important for the battery and other electronics and sensors. Once the robot can stay aloft on its own,
increasing its battery life, and making it fly faster. Then there are a whole host of issues to work out dealing with wireless communications s
in order to take advantage of the sun s energy, or grow indoors with the help of artificial lights. Vertical farming is promising
and energy and improve crop yield. It takes advantage of the vertical space of city buildings rather than turning over wide expanses of land to agriculture and uses advanced greenhouse technology:
The cost of growing Vertical farming s biggest limitation is energy consumption. Considerable energy is required to power a closed, indoor greenhouse facility s artificial lighting, heating and cooling
and hydroponic or aeroponic growing systems. The amount of energy required per unit of product is an important factor for ensuring
not only that the farm is sustainable, but that it is economically viable. Recently, more and more studies have focused on pairing solar panels
and wind turbines with greenhouses to provide self-generated renewable electricity on-site. But the single technology that will be key to making vertical farms possible is lighting.
New LED light technology is the key that makes it possible to build vertically integrated farms.
and reduces transmission losses. They re also physically small, have a long service life, lower power consumption, generate less heat,
and can produce light of varying intensity. Because it produces less heat, the light can be moved closer to the plants.
This increases efficiency, not just in terms of energy use but by allowing layers of growing plants to be packed more densely, making more efficient use of space.
produce energy, provide food, and maintain and enhance human health and our environment. Scientifically viable in 2013;
from the filament in a light bulb to the silicon in a computer chip. Whether we 3d print them
#Honda Smart home produces more energy than it uses Wouldn it be great if your house produced more energy than it consumed?
Does that mean negative utility bills? Indeed it does, because solar panels can return power to the grid
and make your meter spin backwards. Japanese companies are fascinated with net-zero energy buildings, usually incorporating transportation as part of the mix.
Panasonic Eco Ideas House, with solar, a fuel cell, battery backup and a plug-in Toyota prius, has stood long next to a company headquarters in Tokyo,
and the company is also developing a green-themed housing development. In Japan, Toyota is invested also heavily in green communities.
A 9. 5-kilowatt solar array, backed up by a 10-kilowatt-hour lithium battery and a 10-kilowatt DC car charger.
The solar will generate more than enough energy to heat the house, supply the appliances, and power a Honda Fit electric car.
Michael Koenig, Honda Smart home project leader, said that converting DC to AC wastes energy, so this is a DC-based project.
The Home energy management System (HEMS) optimizes the house microgrid, so that the Fit can charge during the low-demand nighttime,
and run on stored solar power. A geothermal system with eight, 20-foot deep boreholes uses a heat pump to heat
and cool the home floors and ceiling all year. LED lighting, with five times the efficiency of conventional illumination, is used throughout.
a large machine/small waste treatment plant developed by Janicki Bioenergy (an offshoot of Sedro-Woolley-based Janicki Industries)
but electricity used to power the machine itself. Any leftover electricity generated through the process is fed back into the power grid.
The small amount of solid waste that comes out on the other end is no longer poop
000 people and, from that, produce 86,000 liters of clean water on a daily basis while also generating a net 250 kilowatts of electricity.
The resulting films conduct electricity better than any other sample of graphene produced in the past. Until recently
His team is also looking at using the graphene electrodes in photovoltaic cells. Easing the pain
but is used in everything from stainless steel to rechargeable batteries. Rare-earth elements are concentrated much less at around 0. 1,
#Beating battery drain Stream video on your smartphone or use its GPS for an hour or two and you ll probably see the battery drain significantly.
As data rates climb and smartphones adopt more power-hungry features battery life has become a concern.
Now a technology developed by MIT spinout Eta Devices could help a phone s battery last perhaps twice as long
and help to conserve energy in cell towers. The primary culprit in smartphone battery drain is an inefficient power amplifier a component that is designed to push the radio signal out through the phones antennas.
Similar larger modules are found in wireless base stations where they might use 10 or even 100 times the power.
Prepared to send sizeable chunks of data at any given time the amplifiers stay at maximum voltage eating away power more than any other smartphone component and about 75 percent of electricity consumption in base stations#and wasting
This means smartphone batteries lose longevity and base stations waste energy and lose money. But Eta Devices has developed a chip (for smartphones)
and a shoebox-size module (for base stations) based on nearly a decade of MIT research to essentially switch gears to adjust voltage supply to power amplifiers as needed cutting the waste.
You can look at our technology as a high-speed gearbox that every few nanoseconds modulates the amount of power that the power amplifier draws from the battery explains Joel Dawson Eta Devices chief technology officer
The savings could be substantial Dawson says noting that a large carrier could save $100 million in annual electricity costs.
Dawson says this could potentially double current smartphone battery life. Besides battery life Dawson adds there are many ways the telecommunications industry can take advantage of improved efficiency.
Eta Devices approach could lead to smaller handset batteries for example and even smaller handsets since there would be less dissipating heat.
The technology could also drive down operating costs for base stations in the developing world where these stations rely on expensive diesel fuel for power
At the time I was suffering as everyone else was from my iphone running out of battery at lunchtime Astrom says.
The research was supported by KFUPM through the Center for Clean water and Energy at MIT f
But a more cyclical approach where waste is used as an energy source could provide higher profit yields
for example, consumes over 3 percent of the electricity in the United states, yet organics in the wastewater have energy that can be extracted
and used locally, Silver says. nd that the case for a lot of waste products in general. Cambrian automated and modular Ecovolt system delivered on a flatbed
in the process, generate electricity. This electricity travels through a circuit and onto cathodes coated with separate microbes that consume that electricity
along with carbon dioxide to produce biogas at a rate of up to 100 cubic feet per minute.
The biogas enters a connected cogeneration system for power conversion. Depending on several site factors, this produces anywhere from 30 to 400 kilowatts of electricity.
Treated wastewater exits the reactor with 80 to 90 percent of pollutants removed, so it can be used for irrigation, equipment washing,
and other things. The system can treat 10,000 to 1 million gallons of wastewater daily.
through carbon-free energy generation and avoiding municipal wastewater treatment ffectively planting over 4, 400 acres of trees in a year,
At current usage rates, Cambrian estimates the system will generate enough electricity to meet 25 to 50 percent of these breweriesneeds
where aerobic microorganisms degrade pollutants consume a lot of energy and generate biosolids (organic materials) that are managed at cost.
and provides real-time data thanks to using exoelectrogens as sensors. hese bugs are generating electricity,
to see how well the reactor is doing, explains Buck, who invented Cambrian sensor technologies.
and generates electricity to power itself. Another project, funded by the National Science Foundation, uses exoelectrogens to sense nitrate in wastewater, cheaply and with very high specificity,
and generate electricity for astronauts. Soon, they came across exoelectrogens; a 1999 study had revealed that exoelectrogens could,
where the waste of industry is recycled to create energy and value much like in natural ecosystems. n a natural ecosystem,
Now, a team of MIT researchers wants to make plants even more useful by augmenting them with nanomaterials that could enhance their energy production
In a new Nature Materials paper, the researchers report boosting plantsability to capture light energy by 30 percent by embedding carbon nanotubes in the chloroplast,
Supercharged photosynthesis The idea for nanobionic plants grew out of a project in Strano lab to build self-repairing solar cells modeled on plant cells.
As a next step, the researchers wanted to try enhancing the photosynthetic function of chloroplasts isolated from plants, for possible use in solar cells.
The plant captures this electrical energy and uses it to power the second stage of photosynthesis building sugars.
however, will require extremely low-power sensors that can run for months without battery changes or, even better,
that can extract energy from the environment to recharge. Last week, at the Symposia on VLSI Technology And circuits, MIT researchers presented a new power converter chip that can harvest more than 80 percent of the energy trickling into it
even at the extremely low power levels characteristic of tiny solar cells. Previous ultralow-power converters that used the same approach had efficiencies of only 40 or 50 percent.
Moreover, the researcherschip achieves those efficiency improvements while assuming additional responsibilities. Where most of its ultralow-power predecessors could use a solar cell to either charge a battery
or directly power a device, this new chip can do both, and it can power the device directly from the battery.
All of those operations also share a single inductor the chip main electrical component which saves on circuit board space
the chip power consumption remains low. e still want to have battery-charging capability, and we still want to provide a regulated output voltage,
Ups and downs The circuit chief function is to regulate the voltages between the solar cell, the battery,
If the battery operates for too long at a voltage that either too high or too low, for instance, its chemical reactants break down,
since the rate at which it dissipates energy as heat is proportional to the square of the current.
and falls depends on the voltage generated by the solar cell, which is highly variable. So the timing of the switch throws has to vary, too.
whose selection is determined by the solar cell voltage. Once again, when the capacitor fills, the switches in the inductor path are flipped. n this technology space,
because there a fixed amount of energy that consumed by doing the work, says Brett Miwa,
#Nanoparticle network could bring fast-charging batteries (Phys. org) A new electrode design for lithium-ion batteries has been shown to potentially reduce the charging time from hours to minutes by replacing the conventional graphite electrode with a network of tin-oxide nanoparticles.
Batteries have called two electrodes an anode and a cathode. The anodes in most of today's lithium-ion batteries are made of graphite.
The theoretical maximum storage capacity of graphite is limited very at 372 milliamp hours per gram hindering significant advances in battery technology said Vilas Pol an associate professor of chemical engineering at Purdue University.
The researchers have performed experiments with a porous interconnected tin-oxide based anode which has nearly twice the theoretical charging capacity of graphite.
Findings are detailed in a paper published in November in the journal Advanced Energy Materials.
and contract or breathe during the charge-discharge battery cycle. These spaces are very important for this architecture said Purdue postdoctoral research associate Vinodkumar Etacheri.
Without the proper pore size and interconnection between individual tin oxide nanoparticles the battery fails. The research paper was authored by Etacheri;
#Toward a low-cost'artificial leaf'that produces clean hydrogen fuel For years scientists have been pursuing artificial leaf technology a green approach to making hydrogen fuel that copies plants'ability to convert sunlight into a form of energy they can use.
and harvest hydrogen is one of the most intriguing ways to achieve clean energy. Automakers have started introducing hydrogen fuel cell vehicles
But making hydrogen which mostly comes from natural gas requires electricity from conventional carbon dioxide-emitting power plants.
Producing hydrogen at low cost from water using the clean energy from the sun would make this form of energy
#Streamlining thin film processing saves time energy Energy storage devices and computer screens may seem worlds apart but they're not.
When associate professor Qi Hua Fan of the electrical engineering and computer science department set out to make a less expensive supercapacitor for storing renewable energy he developed a new plasma technology that will streamline the production of display screens.
His research focuses on nanostructured materials used for photovoltaics energy storage and displays. Last spring Fan received a proof-of-concept grant from the Department of energy through the North Central Regional Sun Grant Center to determine
and commercialize renewable bio-based energy technologies. The proof-of-concept grants allow researchers to advance promising research to the next level of toward product development and commercialization.
This saves energy and is much more efficient Fan said. In this project he has been collaborating with assistant professor Zhengrong Gu in the agricultural
whose research focuses on energy storage materials and devices. They plan to use these promising results to apply for federal funding.
The high-energy plasma can deposit highly transparent and conductive thin films create high quality semiconductors and pattern micro-or nanoscale devices thus making the display images brighter and clearer.
The activation method has the potential to improve production efficiency saving time and energy he noted d
this area of research could revolutionise renewable energy production. Working in collaboration with researchers at the University of Sheffield,
and replace them with synthetic components to create a new generation of solar cells. Professor Evans concludes:"
whether it is for energy capture, or to create artificial noses for the early detection of disease
"Many researchers are looking to inorganic materials for new sources of energy, "said Elena Rozhkova, chemist at Argonne's Center for Nanoscale Materials, a DOE Office of Science (Office of Basic energy Sciences) User Facility."
"Our goal is to learn from the natural world and use its materials as building blocks for innovation."
"For Rozhkova, this particular building block is inspired by the function of an ancient protein known to turn light into energy.
and pump protons through a membrane, creating a form of chemical energy. They also know that water can be split into oxygen
Graphene is a super strong, super light, near totally transparent sheet of carbon atoms and one of the best conductors of electricity ever discovered.
can create new sources of clean energy. Her team's discovery may provide future consumers a biologically-inspired alternative to gasoline."
"Working in the basic energy sciences, we were able to demonstrate an energy-rich biologically-inspired alternative to gas."
"This research,"Photoinduced Electron Transfer pathways in Hydrogen-Evolving Reduced graphene oxide-Boosted Hybrid Nano-Bio Catalyst,
but instead retain that energy. The concept behind the detector is simple says University of Maryland Physics Professor Dennis Drew.
which heat up but don't lose their energy easily. So they remain hot while the carbon atomic lattice remains cold.
In digital electronics these transistors control the flow of electricity throughout an integrated circuit and allow for amplification and switching.
or LEDS, and solar technologies.""Heterojunctions are fundamental elements of electronic and photonic devices, "said senior author Xiaodong Xu, a UW assistant professor of materials science and engineering and of physics."
and solar cells to be developed for highly integrated electronic and optical circuits within a single atomic plane."
which is encouraging for optoelectric and photonic applications like solar cells c
#On the frontiers of cyborg science No longer just fantastical fodder for sci-fi buffs, cyborg technology is bringing us tangible progress toward real-life electronic skin, prosthetics and ultraflexible circuits.
#Stronger better solar cells: Graphene research on the cusp of new energy capabilities (Phys. org) There remains a lot to learn on the frontiers of solar power research particularly
when it comes to new advanced materials which could change how we harness energy. Under the guidance of Canada Research Chair in Materials science with Synchrotron radiation Dr. Alexander Moewes University of Saskatchewan researcher Adrian Hunt spent his Phd investigating graphene oxide a cutting-edge material that he hopes will shape the future
of technology. To understand graphene oxide it is best to start with pure graphene which is a single-layer sheet of carbon atoms in a honeycomb lattice that was made first in 2004 by Andre Geim
All of this makes graphene a great candidate for solar cells. In particular its transparency and conductivity mean that it solves two problems of solar cells:
first light needs a good conductor in order to get converted into usable energy; secondly the cell also has to be transparent for light to get through.
Most solar cells on the market use indium tin oxide with a nonconductive glass protective layer to meet their needs.
Indium is extremely rare so it is becoming more expensive all the time. It's the factor that will keep solar cells expensive in the future
whereas graphene could be very cheap. Carbon is said abundant Hunt. Although graphene is a great conductor it is not very good at collecting the electrical current produced inside the solar cell
which is why researchers like Hunt are investigating ways to modify graphene to make it more useful.
Whether or not it will solve the solar panel problem is yet to be seen and researchers in the field are building up their understanding of how the new material works.
It's a pitfall that could be important to understand in the development of long-lasting solar cells where sun could provide risky heat into the equation.
More research like this will be the key to harnessing graphene for solar power as Hunt explains.
"One application the group is now exploring is a thin film solar cell, made of densely packed nanowires,
that could harvest energy from light much more efficiently than traditional thin-film solar cells s
#Device Could Harvest Wasted Energy From Wi-fi, Satellite Signals A wireless device developed by researchers at Duke university that converts microwaves into electricity could eventually harvest Wi-fi or satellite signals for power according to its creators.
It could also one day be built into cell phones to let them charge while not in use they say.
In this case the microwave-harvesting metamaterial that acts kind of like a solar panel converting microwaves into up to 7. 3 volts of electricity enough to charge small electronics.
and make lost energy usable. â##It s possible to use this design for a lot of different frequencies
and types of energy including vibration and sound energy harvestingâ#according to Duke graduate student Alexander Katko one of the inventors. â##Until now a lot of work with metamaterials has been theoretical.
The device is described in the journal Applied Physics Letters c
#Scientists Create First Cloned Human Embryo Scientists have made an embryonic clone of a person using DNA from that person's skin cells.
#U k. Supermarket To Run on Electricity Made From Its Own Rotting Food One U k. grocery store plans to power itself using biogas harvested from its own unsold, rotting produce.
The store plans to use electricity solely from the digesters, taking no electricity from the U k.'s national power grid,
which is fed by a combination of coal, natural gas, nuclear power plants and other sources. Sainsbury's will even sell any excess electricity it makes back to the grid.
The Cannock Sainsbury's will be the first U k. store to stop using U k. grid electricity
the BBC reports. While we've never heard of a big U s. store doing exactly that,
U s. grocery-store chain Kroger is supposed to have an anaerobic digester that provides more than 20 percent of the electricity needs of its Compton distribution center.
then uses the resulting biomethane just like natural gas mined from the ground to produce electricity.
A 1. 5-kilometer-long cable carries the electricity back to the Cannock Sainsbury's store.
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