#World's first biolimb: Rat forelimb grown in the lab IT MIGHT look like an amputated rat forelimb,
and preparation-has been designed to produce crops with the least amount of energy expenditure possible. The operators claim the hydroponics
#Flexible methane production from electricity and biomass The variable operation modes were the biggest challenge during development says Project Head Siegfried Bajohr of the Engler-Bunte Institute (EBI) of KIT.
From the products of a biomass gasification plant i e. hydrogen carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide the Demosng pilot plant directly produces methane and water by means of a nickel catalyst (SNG operation.
Then the volume flow in the plant can be doubled utilization of carbon from biomass will increase to nearly 100%and a large amount of usable waste heat will be produced by the catalyst (Ptg operation.
As conventional methanation processes reach their limits at this point we have developed a new reactor concept Bajohr says.
There it will be integrated into the gas flows of a biomass gasification plant utilizing wooden residues.
Via an effective methanation wind and solar power can be fed into the natural gas grid without any limitations.
With plants such as Demosng excessive green electricity can be used much better. For example it might be converted decentrally with the carbon dioxide produced by the about 800000 biogas facilities
which could help us reduce our reliance on conventional energy sources, in the ACS journal Nano Letters.
Yi Cui and colleagues note that nearly half of global energy consumption goes toward heating buildings and homes.
they can also be warmed actively with an electricity source to further crank up the heat. The researchers calculated that their thermal textiles could save about 1
000 kilowatt hours per person every year--that's about how much electricity an average U s. home consumes in one month h
Running fuel cells on bacteria Researchers in Norway have succeeded in getting bacteria to power a fuel cell.
and the products of the process are purified water droplets and electricity. This is an environmentally-friendly process for the purification of water derived from industrial processes and suchlike.
It also generates small amounts of electricity--in practice enough to drive a small fan, a sensor or a light-emitting diode.
In the future, the researchers hope to scale up this energy generation to enable the same energy to be used to power the water purification process
often involving mechanical and energy-demanding decontamination steps at its outset. Nature's own generator The biological fuel cell is powered by entirely natural processes--with the help of living microorganisms."
"In simple terms, this type of fuel cell works because the bacteria consume the waste materials found in the water,
The voltage that arises between these particles generates energy that we can exploit. Since the waste in the wastewater (organic material) is consumed and thus removed,
and began discussing how bacteria could be used to generate energy. Since then, they have both been working to put the idea into practice--each from their own respective fields of expertise.
and generate electricity. The wastewater comes from the local Tine dairy and is rich in organic acids,
"At the moment, we're not talking about producing large volumes of energy, "says Netzer.""But the process is very interesting
because water purification processes are very energy-demanding using current technology. We're particularly pleased at being able to produce
just as much energy using low-cost materials as others are achieving using much more expensive approaches,
The clock signal alone synchronizing the circuits uses up to 30%of the energy--energy which can be saved through optical transmission explains Prof.
The next big step forward will be generating laser light with electricity instead and without the need for cooling if possible.
The current 3. 5-inch lab prototype, for example, has a force threshold level of 200 newtons--capable of absorbing the energy of a 100 mph fastball in 0. 03 seconds.
"First, lactic acid is fed into a reactor and converted into a type of pre-plastic under high temperature and in a vacuum,
"We have applied a petrochemical concept to biomass, "says postdoctoral researcher Michiel Dusselier.""We speed up and guide the chemical process in the reactor with a zeolite as a catalyst.
Zeolites are porous minerals. By selecting a specific type on the basis of its pore shape,
It's an advance that could have huge implications for everything from photography to solar power.
and emit light energy is such that it can make itself--and, in applications, other very small things--appear 10,000 times as large as its physical size."
amplifying itself as the surrounding environment manipulates the physical properties of its wave energy. The researchers took advantage of this by creating an artificial material in
meaning it can gather a lot of light energy, and then scatters the light over a very large area,
Much as a very thin string on a guitar can absorb a large amount of acoustic energy from its surroundings
this one very small optical device can receive light energy from all around and yield a surprisingly strong output.
Given the nanoresonator's capacity to absorb large amounts of light energy, the technology also has potential in applications that harvest the sun's energy with high efficiency.
In addition, Yu envisions simply letting the resonator emit that energy in the form of infrared light toward the sky,
which is very cold. Because the nanoresonator has a large optical cross-section--that is, an ability to emit light that dramatically exceeds its physical size--it can shed a lot of heat energy,
and could enable new technologies in light sensing and solar energy conversion, "Yu says s
#Chemists find a way to unboil eggs UC Irvine and Australian chemists have figured out how to unboil egg whites an innovation that could dramatically reduce costs for cancer treatments, food production and other segments of the $160 billion global biotechnology industry,
#Perovskites provide big boost to silicon solar cells Stacking perovskites onto a conventional silicon solar cell dramatically improves the overall efficiency of the cell,
The researchers describe their novel perovskite-silicon solar cell in this week edition of the journal Energy & Environmental science. ee been looking for ways to make solar panels that are more efficient and lower cost,
said study co-author Michael Mcgehee, a professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford. ight now, silicon solar cells dominate the world market,
but the power conversion efficiency of silicon photovoltaics has been stuck at 25 percent for 15 years.
One cost-effective way to improve efficiency is to build a tandem device made of silicon and another inexpensive photovoltaic material,
Mcgehee said. ou simply put one solar cell on top of the other, and you get more efficiency than either could do by itself.
iodide and methylammonium could convert sunlight into electricity with an efficiency of 3. 8 percent.
rivaling commercially available silicon solar cells and spawning widespread interest among silicon manufacturers. ur goal is to leverage the silicon factories that already exist around the world,
co-lead author of the study. ith tandem solar cells, you don need a billion-dollar capital expenditure to build a new factory.
Sunlight to electricity Solar cells work by converting photons of sunlight into an electric current that moves between two electrodes.
Silicon solar cells generate electricity by absorbing photons of visible and infrared light, while perovskite cells harvest only the visible part of the solar spectrum where the photons have more energy.
Microscopic cross-section of a tandem solar cell made with two photovoltaic materials, perovskite stacked on top of CIGS (copper indium gallium diselenide).
COURTESY: Colin Bailie, Stanford bsorbing the high-energy part of the spectrum allows perovskite solar cells to generate more power per photon of visible light than silicon cells,
Bailie said. A key roadblock to building an efficient perovskite-silicon tandem has been a lack of transparency. olin had to figure out how to put a transparent electrode on the top
Mcgehee said. o one had made ever a perovskite solar cell with two transparent electrodes. Perovskites are damaged easily by heat and readily dissolve in water.
This inherent instability ruled out virtually all of the conventional techniques for applying electrodes onto the perovoskite solar cell
Remarkable efficiency For the experiment, the Stanford team stacked a perovskite solar cell with an efficiency of a 12.7 percent on top of a low-quality silicon cell with an efficiency of just 11.4 percent. y combining two cells
In another experiment, the research team replaced the silicon solar cell with a cell made of copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS.
it might be possible to upgrade conventional solar cells into higher-performing tandems with little increase in cost,
We have a ways to go to show that perovskite solar cells are stable enough to last 25 years.
Propelling the electrons in silicene requires minimal energy input, which means reducing power and cooling requirements for electronic devices. f silicene could be used to build electronic devices,
so it can be integrated it into ultra-small renewable energy devices, such as solar cells, data storage hardware and advancing quantum computing. uow195685 o one in the scientific community believed silicene paper could be made
These challenges have now been met with a new technique developed by researchers at the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI
and the BP energy company. ee combined chemical catalysis with life-cycle greenhouse gas modeling to create a new process for producing bio-based aviation fuel as well as automotive lubricant base oils,
a chemical engineer with joint appointments at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley. he recyclable catalysts we developed are capable of converting sugarcane biomass into a new class of aviation fuel and lubricants with superior cold
and lubricants from biomass optimized using life-cycle greenhouse gas assessment. Corinne Scown, a research scientist with Berkeley Lab Energy Analysis and Environmental impacts Division,
and Dean Toste, a chemist with joint appointments at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley, are the other two corresponding authors.
Biofuels synthesized from the sugars in plant biomass help mitigate climate change. However jet fuels have stringent requirements that must be met. et fuels must be oxygen-free,
because batteries and fuel cells simply aren practical. The process developed at EBI can be used to selectively upgrade alkyl methyl ketones derived from sugarcane biomass into trimer condensates with better than 95-percent yields.
These condensates are deoxygenated then hydro into a new class of cycloalkane compounds that contain a cyclohexane ring and a quaternary carbon atom.
sugar and electricity, says PNAS paper co-author Gokhale, a chemical engineer, who is managing the research project from BP side. xpanding the product slate to include aviation fuels
The rest of the waste biomass can be combusted to produce process heat and electricity to operate the refinery.
This new EBI process for making jet fuel and lubricants could also be used to make diesel
the strategy behind the process could also be applied to biomass from other non-food plants
and agricultural waste that are fermented by genetically engineered microbes. lthough there are some additional technical challenges associated with using sugars derived entirely from biomass feedstocks like Miscanthus
because these movements are driven not by energy from metabolic processes but solely by physical mechanisms. From a biological point of view, there no other way to achieve this.
as the latter would require significantly more energy. When the air or fluid pressure inside the cells was increased
#New nanogenerators collect friction energy from rolling tires Team of engineers from University of Wisconsin-Madison and a collaborator from China have developed a new nanogenerator that is able to generate power from friction created by rolling
In the future such technology could help harvest otherwise wasted energy to squeeze just that extra bit of efficiency out of cars and other vehicles.
The nanogenerator harvests the wasted tire friction energy by relying on the triboelectric effect. It is the electric charge that results from the contact or rubbing together of two dissimilar objects.
The generator harnesses energy from the changing electric potential between the pavement and a vehicle wheels.
Scientists said that it could become a very useful way to use the energy that is usually wasted due to friction taking advantage of this lost energy would improve efficiency,
which is a major goal in today automotive industry. Professor Xudong Wang, one of the authors of the study, noted that he friction between the tire
since that energy is wasted simply, f we can convert that energy, it could give us very good improvement in fuel efficiency Improving fuel efficiency would benefit everyone it would help automotive industry meet new strict regulations for emissions,
make traveling just that little bit cheaper and would improve energy efficiency which would benefit environmental causes as well.
The technology is depending on an electrode integrated into a segment of the tire. When it comes into contact with the ground,
the friction between those two surfaces ultimately produces an electrical charge-a type of contact electrification known as the triboelectric effect.
The friction was strong enough for the electrodes to harvest enough energy to power the lights,
which means that scientists confirmed the idea that wasted friction energy can be collected and reused.
Engineers also determined that the amount of energy harnessed is directly related to the weight of a car
It means that different vehicles would waste different amounts of energy and different percentage of it could be saved using this method.
However, scientists estimated that fuel efficiency could be improved by as much as 10%,given 50%friction energy conversion efficiency.
This is always largely about collecting wasted energy. That is why this technology has a huge potential
where they create clothing that kills bacteria, conducts electricity, wards off malaria, captures harmful gas and weaves transistors into shirts and dresses. otton is one of the most fascinating and misunderstood materials,
With ultrathin solar panels for trim and a USB charger tucked into the waist, the Southwest-inspired garment captured enough sunshine to charge cell phones
Made by Promethean Power systems, a company based in Pune, India, and Boston, the system keeps milk chilled with a thermal battery that stores energy and releases it,
as cooling power, over the course of a day. Like India, Bangladesh has outdated an power grid that supplies electricity sporadicallyften as little as a few hours per day.
Rural dairy farmers on the subcontinent bring their milk to village collection centers that typically rely on diesel generators, a costly, dirty way of providing electricity.
Two Americans, Sam White and Sorin Grama founded Promethean Power in 2007 to address a simple but widespread and pressing problem:
they were determined to craft a technology that relied on solar power noble attempt that ultimately failed because solar power,
Eventually they settled on a thermal energy storage system that uses a phase-change material to store energy in the form of ice.
and the battery circulates that thermal energy into a heat exchanger to keep milk chilled over the course of the day.
The thermal battery can store up to 28 kilowatt-hours of energy. ee not delivering new forms of energy;
That a huge improvement in a country where more than 300 million people live without access to electricity
has pledged to bring reliable electricity to the full population by 2022 t
#Processors do grow on trees: your next phone could be made of wood Engineers hunting for a way to make electronics more sustainable have hit on a novel invention-a semiconductor chip made almost entirely out of wood.
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