and create biochar a highly porous charcoal said project principal investigator Karl Linden professor of environmental engineering.
Additionally the biochar can be burned as charcoal and provides energy comparable to that of commercial charcoal.
Linden is working closely with project co-investigators Professor R. Scott Summers of environmental engineering and Professor Alan Weimer chemical and biological engineering and a team of postdoctoral fellows professionals graduate students undergraduates
methane Rice university scientists have created a highly sensitive portable sensor to test the air for the most damaging greenhouse gases.
and laser pioneer Frank Tittel and his group uses a thumbnail-sized quantum cascade laser (QCL) as well as tuning forks that cost no more than a dime to detect very small amounts of nitrous oxide and methane.
and found it capable of detecting trace amounts of methane, 13 parts per billion by volume (ppbv),
"Methane and nitrous oxide are both significant greenhouse gases emitted from human activities, "Tittel said.""Methane is emitted by natural sources, such as wetlands,
and human activities, such as leakage from natural gas systems and the raising of livestock.""Human activities such as agriculture, fossil fuel combustion, wastewater management and industrial processes are increasing the amount of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere.
The warming impact of methane and nitrous oxide is more than 20 and 300 times, respectively, greater compared to the most prevalent greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide over a 100-year period.
For these reasons, methane and nitrous oxide detection is crucial to environmental considerations.""The small QCL has only become available in recent years,
Tittel said, and is far better able to detect trace amounts of gas than lasers used in the past.
Previous versions of the QCL are just as effective, but far too bulky for mobile use.
What makes the technique possible is the small quartz tuning fork, which vibrates at a specific frequency when stimulated."
When light at a specific wavelength is absorbed by the gas of interest, localized heating of the molecules leads to a temperature
and pressure increase in the gas.""If the incident light intensity is modulated, then the temperature and pressure will be said as well,
That signal is proportional to the gas concentration.""The unit can detect the presence of methane or nitrous oxide in as little as a second,
he said. To field test the device, the Rice team installed it on a mobile laboratory used during NASA's DISCOVER-AQ campaign, which analyzed pollution on the ground and from the air last September.
"This was a milestone for trace-gas sensing, "Ren said.""Now we're trying to minimize the size of the whole system."
and their bases are immersed in a solution of deionized water, ethanol, and a dissolved polymer.
the water-ethanol mixture streams upward, dragging chains of polymer with it. The water and ethanol quickly dissolve, leaving a tangle of polymer filaments opposite each emitter, on the electrode.
The researchers were able to pack 225 emitters, several millimeters long, on a square chip about 35 millimeters on a side.
and sandwiched a layer of oil in between. Then they carefully injected into the mix individual water droplets that had been infused with tiny magnetic nanoparticles.
including an oil company in Thailand and Japanese heavy-equipment manufacturer IHI Corp. The process has received eight patents
The scientists can use gas-based samples rather than high concentrations in solution and the technique is much more detailed by looking at energies involved scientists can see many other things about the molecule,
Most of the material is gas, but about 1%of this mass (quite a lot in astronomical terms) takes the form of tiny dust grains made predominantly of silicates (sand is also silicates),
They are essential to the chemistry that takes place in the interstellar medium by providing gas molecules with a surface on
In that case, both the plastic and the oil-based sauce are hydrophobic and interact together.
and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, carcinogenic compounds formed from incomplete combustion of fuels, from contaminated soil. The process is irreversible
In the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco city in Tianjin, China, Itron deployed one network that runs three meters--water, electricity and gas.
Council Lead Partner Itron, meanwhile, completed installation of smart water, heat and gas meters and communication modules as well as its fixed network for Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco city in Tianjin, China.
greener way of getting natural gas out of the ground through hydraulic fracturing.##The investment falls under GE's Ecoimagination program, a cross-company business initiative that has used already $12 billion
On the natural gas front an area that many environmentalists would argue is not a green energy source GE will work on developing alternative technologies to replace water in the hydraulic fracturing process.#
commonly called fracking, is a technique drillers use to reach vast tracts of previously untouchable gas trapped in shale.
Environmental concerns posed by fracking like the release of methane and groundwater contamination have escalated with the advent of the natural gas boom in the U s. The huge amount of water used in fracking has become a particularly touchy subject in drought-ridden areas where some 55 percent of the wells fracked
since 2011 are located, according to study released in February by Ceres. The study found 97 billion gallons of water were used to frack more than 39,
000 oil and shale gas wells between January 2011 and May 2013.##GE said it will work with Statoil to evaluate
whether CO2 can be used economically as an alternative to water. It's possible to use CO2 to fracture shale rock formations,
a renewable fermentation process that seeks to act as a partial replacement for the an oil-based processes that goes into making synthetic rubber.
a technology that replaces the oil-based feedstock for part of the synthetic rubber-making process with renewable biomass.
but both companies are interested also in creating a cost-competitive product that is a better economic alternative than the petroleum-based isoprene,
If only briefly, Apple has surpassed Exxon mobil as the world's largest company. The fact that a firm that produces mobile devices is now more valuable than an oil company is the most powerful repudiation of the sprawling, exurban, oil-dependent old economy
I can think of. It's not a stretch to understand why: mobile devices are suited uniquely to the urban environment.
oil, long commutes--to a new one built on a desire to capitalize on virtual connectivity by recapitulating it in the real world.
Give us gas and oil's $12b, and we'll cool planet Siemens: 880m euros'worth of wind power orders since July Google invests $75 million in U s. wind far r
the world's largest crude oil exporter, is launching an ambitious multi-billion-dollar plan aimed at creating an industry around its other abundant resource,
the sun. Saudi arabia has a lot of oil. But an increasing amount of that crude is staying in the country where it's used run to desalination and power plants.
Millions of barrels of oil are used every day to power those desal plants. As a result
Half of that power will be generated using hydrocarbon fuel. With demand for electricity and fresh water increasing, Saudi arabia is seeking out other sources of power including solar, geothermal, wind and nuclear.
The country's solar strategy aims to save 523,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day,
The cost of new oil supply Saudi arabia taps China for nuclea a
#Why share and share alike makes a great business model SAN FRANCISCO-The quintessential example of how sharing an asset can be at the center of a business is probably the Zipcar car sharing organization,
car ownership costs rising (high gas prices, insurance, etc.;states making it difficult to get a driver's license;
Much depends on whether oil and gas prices stay highthis is where discussions of eak oilbecome relevant and on how quickly the U s. economy rebounds.
But if there has been a genuine cultural shift among younger Americans, then driving may not rebound to the extent it did during the 1990s.
You have this polymer that s made from carcinogenic compounds like benzene and it will last up to 10,000 years.
#Leaked EU documents rank biofuel emissions higher than crude oil European union politics website Euractive has gotten its hands on official EU data reporting that many biofuel crops release more carbon dioxide than crude oil,
and approximate the emissions of the much-maligned oil mined from tar sands. The numbers were intended for release in the spring when the EU presents new proposals on biofuels,
And with ILUC added to the mix, it looks like some top biofuel crops are worse for the environment, in terms of carbon emissions, than crude oil.
The EU's default value for measuring carbon efficiency for oil from tar sands is 107g CO2 equivalent per megajoule of fuel (CO2/mj.
Meanwhile, crude oil's efficiency value is 87. 5g CO2/mj. Here are the data (g CO2/mj) from the EU documents,
Palm oil-105g Soybean-103g Rapeseed-95g Sunflower-86g Palm oil with methane capture-83g Wheat (process fuel not specified)- 64g Wheat (as process fuel natural gas used in CHP)- 47g
Corn (Maize)- 43g Sugar cane-36g Sugar beet-34g Wheat (straw as process fuel in CHP plants)- 35g 2g Ethanol (land-using)- 32g 2g Biodiesel (land-using)- 21g 2g Ethanol
or to govern the processing of crude oil in a refinery. Haidar group is one of a number of academic and corporate teams vying to create a closed-loop system for an artificial pancreas. ach patient is represented by a set of differential equations,
and petroleum-based plastic substrates that are used in electronicsnd are not biodgradablehe substrate for Ma
and heated to a gas state. The gas then drives a turbine. Although it is an attractive energy storage technology because of its long duration,
liquid-air energy storage requires a significant amount of electricity to make the liquid air, limiting its usage by utilities.
Although several options to store hydrogen as a fuel for cars have been investigated, a practical and affordable way to store
they simply extract hydrogen from diesel fuel on the go. The research group,"Fuel cell Based Power Generation (FCGEN),
The extraction of the hydrogen from the diesel fuel happens through autothermal reforming, a catalytic reaction in
which the diesel fuel is decomposed into hydrogen, steam, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide. The CO is converted then to CO2
It didn escape their notice that the extraction of hydrogen from the diesel fuel releases CO2 directly into the atmosphere. ctually all carbon in the diesel is converted to CO2,
fuel consumption is 80 percent lower, and consequently, the produced amount of CO2 is decreased by 80 percent,
the investigators could boost upconversion up to a thousandfold by coating the nanocrystals with anthracene, a component of coal tar.
The Fueloyal Is A Smart Fuel Cap For Truckers Breaker breaker 10-4 good buddy.
This robotic fuel cap essentially keeps track of the fuel poured into your vehicle independently of the truck itself
and lets fleet owners ensure they no one is stealing the fuel poured into their 18-wheelers.
and fuel prices going up it important to control costs, said Hristov. The product is being built now
Because it fits right into the gas inlet and measures the gas poured into the vehicle
and prevents siphoning. ompany owners can install it on the fuel tank in less than a minute.
It cannot be removed without the security key, and if unauthorized removal occurs the system will said lertheadquarters,
since the 2007 legislation targeting ethanol; and in May 2014, Congress blocked yet another energy-efficiency bill that could positively impact the environment,
The round was led by new investor Khosla Ventures with additional funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Fuel Capital, SV Angel and other unnamed investors.
A Quick History lesson The steam-powered Spinning jenny, followed by the petroleum-powered version, led the first Industrial revolution.
#Cheaper Sensors Will Fuel The Age Of Smart Everything For better or worse, we are about the enter the age of smart everything.
the tiny devices that fuel the Internet of things are getting smaller and cheaper all the time. As they do,
but gas and other fossil fuels have eclipsed it as a preferred energy source. The reasons for low adoption of the tech are varied
if our current abundance of crude oil keeps up) but it does hold the promise of a cheap clean and efficient source of energy.
The Devotec Micro Fuel Charger a key ring sized fuel cell cellphone charger added about 20-30 minutes of extra talk time
The kraftwerk units come in three different colors rbanutdoorand lamand run on a short spray of camping gas or standard lighter fluid.
or to a consumer-centric app like Unmooch to split the cost of fuel with friends.
The app is designed to help drivers determine their actual income taking fuel costs and time spent waiting around into account.
but now with data from Automatic, drivers will have exact numbers on the fuel burning while waiting for another fare.
They measured for chemicals that are hazardous to breathe, like nitrogen dioxide, nitric oxide, ozone, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, black carbon, particulate matter,
By making solar power cheaper than diesel fuel in many places, it could help bring clean power to some of the more than one billion people in the world without reliable electricity (see Billion People in the Dark.
a new natural gas plant. The technology originated in the lab of John Rogers, a professor of chemistry and materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois. Semprius has raised $45 million from investors including Siemens,
Such advances might eventually make solar power cheaper than fossil fuels, even without Semprius technology. But silicon-based solar power is not yet there,
The U s. Energy Information Administration estimates that new solar power plants will produce power at just under 15 cents per kilowatt-hourar higher than the 6. 5 cents per kilowatt-hour for natural gas power.
Besides a small rise in the price of natural gas and slightly cheaper coal, the weather played the biggest role in in pushing up emissions,
and relatively small changes in fuel prices are enough to counteract the emissions reductions that have resulted from greater solar
and wind power capacity and increased use of cleaner-burning natural gas instead of coal. Compared with 2012,
In addition, the amount of electricity generated using natural gas dropped 10 percent between 2012 and 2013,
The price of natural gas rose from $3. 54 per million BTU in 2012 to $4. 49 in 2013
More coal and less gas meant a much smaller drop in the U s. energy system arbon intensity?
#Shape-Shifting Carbon Composites Could Save Fuel Airbus and researchers at MIT are developing shape-shifting materials that could make aircraft simpler and lighter potentially saving fuel.
Made of carbon fiber composites the materials shift between two or more shapes in response to changes in heat air pressure or other environmental factors.
#An Industrial-Size Generator That Runs on Waste Heat, Using No Fuel Power plants waste huge amounts of energy as heat about 40 to 80 percent of the total in the fuel they burn.
A new device could reduce that waste cutting fuel consumption and carbon emissions by as much as 3 percent and saving companies millions of dollars.
Matt Scullin the CEO of Alphabet Energy the startup that developed the new device says connecting it to the exhaust pipe of a 1000-kilowatt generator will yield enough electricity to save 52500 liters of diesel fuel a year for a reduction
The first customers will probably be oil gas and mining companies that use large generators to produce power in remote areas.
The generator could save those companies millions in fuel Scullin says. There aren t many levers these companies can pull to reduce costs that much he adds.
Even improved thermoelectric materials however are unlikely to reduce fuel consumption by more than 5 or 10 percent.
#Why Coconuts Could Be the Hydrogen storage Material of the Future Hydrogen is a potential renewable fuel
The hope is that it could also be distributed using the same global network of liquid fuel transport that moves petrol around the planet.
Hydrogen gas has a poor energy density by volume compared to petrol. In fact, there is at least 60 percent more hydrogen in a liter of gasoline then there is in a liter of pure liquid hydrogen.
In other words hydrogen will always require bigger tanks. So finding ways to store more of it is a huge challenge.
Now Viney Dixit and buddies at the Hydrogen energy Center of Banaras Hindu University in India say they have discovered that carbonized coconut flesh is particularly good at this task.
which can be used as a fuel and is stored easily. Michael Graetzel, who directs the Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces at the Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne
The particles they want to assemble are tiny droplets of fluorinated oil placed in water. These droplets are 50 micrometres in diameter
and solar power in recent years is launching more than 20 demonstration projects that involve storing energy by splitting water into hydrogen gas and oxygen.
and distribution infrastructure already used for natural gas and eventually turned back into electricity via combustion or fuel cells.
Germany isn t the only country investing in hydrogen energy storage. Canada is getting in on the action too with a major demonstration facility planned for Ontario.
and the hydrogen can be used to replace fossil fuels not only in electricity production but also in industry and transportation
When it opens next year it will have the capacity to produce 650000 kilograms of hydrogen a year the energy equivalent of 650000 gallons of gasoline.
Hydrogenics which has supplied electrolyzers for many of the biggest projects in Germany is designing a 40-megawatt system that will produce the equivalent of 4. 3 million gallons of gasoline a year.
Electrolysis remains more expensive than producing hydrogen from natural gas at least in the United states where natural gas is cheap.
That s a reality that businesses must embrace to attract the best employees and leverage their talents to fuel true innovation.
This could clear the way for slimmer longer-lasting smart watches as well as electric cars with a range similar to gas-powered ones.
#China s Shale gas Bust China is finding it harder than it expected to unlock a shale gas boom like the one in North america,
calling into question its lofty goals to use natural gas to help clean up its air and control the growth of greenhouse gas emissions.
the Chinese government has cut its ambitious 2020 target for shale gas development roughly in half.
In 2013 China became the third biggest user of natural gas behind the United states and Russia, consuming 166 billion cubic meters (bcm).
By 2019, the International Energy Agency expects China annual natural gas consumption to grow 90 percent, to 315 bcm.
Half of that increase is expected to be supplied by domestic gas production, which would come from multiple sources,
That IEA estimate for gas consumption is much lower than the production target China had set for itself:
420 bcm of natural gas annually by 2020, with hydrofracturing, or fracking, being used to get 60 to 80 bcm from shale.
China is estimated to hold the largest technically recoverable reserves of shale gas in the worldearly twice as much as the U s
Most projects are still in the exploration Phase in many cases the formations that hold gas are deeper than in North america
which is an obstacle to extraction (see hina Has Plenty of Shale gas, But It Will be Hard to Mine.
These challenges led the government last week to reduce the 2020 shale gas target to 30 bcm.
Of the 117 bcm of natural gas that China produced in 2013, only 0. 2 bcm came from shale.
If China is going to meet its goals for using natural gas, it probably will have to rely more on imports.
and storing imported natural gas r
#Turning a Regular Smartphone Camera into a 3-D One Microsoft researchers say simple hardware changes
#Stacking Cells Could Make Solar as Cheap as Natural gas When experts talk about future solar cells they usually bring up exotic materials and physical phenomena.
The wafer can then be removed and heated up so that the hydrogen ions form hydrogen gas, which expands and causes a 26-micrometer-thick layer of sapphire to lift off.
#How to Clean the Gas and Oil industries Most Contaminated water In a nondescript site in Midland, Texas, an inexpensive new process is cleaning up some of the most contaminated water aroundhe extremely salty stuff that comes up with oil at wells. By the end
or fracking, for oil and natural gas production (see atural Gas Changes the Energy Map. The technology may provide a way to deal with the increasing amounts of contaminated water the fossil fuel industry is generating as it pursues more and more difficult-to-reach deposits.
Many oil formations can produce as much as five barrels of contaminated water for every one barrel of oil.
And the volume of this so-called roducedwater is rising as the industry pumps water into nearly depleted wells to enhance oil recovery.
In the Midland plant, the technology is proving more economical than the existing strategy: re-injecting the wastewater back into the wells,
Right now, gas producers tend to store water that comes back up during the process in man-made ponds
The water is pretreated to remove oil and grease residue and solid particles. The company heats the saline water
The processhich the company calls carrier gas extractionecycles up to 85 percent of the heat needed to keep the system running.
The project is being done with Pioneer Natural resources, an oil company in Texas. Anurag Bajpayee, president and CEO of Gradiant who co-developed the technology with the company CTO,
Prakash Govindan, says the initial focus is on the booming petroleum and natural gas industry in the United states and elsewhere. ater issues have been a point of a lot of controversy for the industry,
he says
#How An Intelligent Thimble Could Replace the Mouse In 3d Virtual reality Worlds The way in
and make fossil fuels expensive in comparison. High-efficiency solar cells would lower the cost of installation
a strategy he claims will make solar power ay cheaperthan power from fossil fuels. Solar City is one of the country largest and fastest-growing solar installers,
The weight savings could reduce fuel consumption by 10 percent, according to an auto industry consortium. As the company scales up production, one key question will be
the computer controlled the gas and brakes to pull to within 10 meters (roughly three car lengths) of the truck ahead.
and could therefore save trucking companies millions of dollars in fuel every year. The trucks were fitted with technology developed by a startup called Peloton Tech (elotonis The french word for platoon.
Joshua Switkes, CEO of Peloton Tech, says the fuel savings are 4. 5 percent for the front truck and 10 percent for the rear truck.
and streams vehicle data to a smartphone app to help users track their driving, their fuel economy,
but some experts worry that the gas will leak back out. Research described in the journal Science points to a more secure way of storing its rock.
whose research suggests that earthquakes could cause carbon dioxide gas to leak out of underground storage sites,
or perhaps be better factories for useful molecules like fuels and drugs. Already the researchers have shown that inducing mutation in yeast using the designer sites led to some cells that grow more slowly,
Brazil state oil company, Petrobras, as well as Rousseff own cell phone. The big question in this MIT Technology Review business report is how the Snowden revelations are affecting the technology business.
-which is used already widely in the petrochemicals industry-could offer enormous benefits in other areas, at a"relatively low cost".
*The Airbus a380 passenger jet has a carbon fibre reinforced plastic fuselage for a lower fuel consumption. The researchers claim the new technology would allow wings to fix themselves in mid-flight,
-which is used already widely in the petrochemicals industry-could offer enormous benefits in other areas, at a"relatively low cost".
*The Airbus a380 passenger jet has a carbon fibre reinforced plastic fuselage for a lower fuel consumption. The researchers claim the new technology would allow wings to fix themselves in mid-flight,
polluting generators that require expensive fuel oil. The supply chains for such oil can be broken, making procurement unpredictable.
These problems gave the students the idea of designing a photovoltaic balloon inspired by inflatable balloons,
The electrolyser uses nine litres of water plus the solar energy collected, coupled with the batteries inside the housing, to produce the gas needed to inflate Zephyr in half a day.
polluting generators that require expensive fuel oil. The supply chains for such oil can be broken, making procurement unpredictable.
These problems gave the students the idea of designing a photovoltaic balloon inspired by inflatable balloons
The electrolyser uses nine litres of water plus the solar energy collected, coupled with the batteries inside the housing, to produce the gas needed to inflate Zephyr in half a day.
the researchers are also working on its application to monitor gas emissions from any source, be it an industry
or leakage of petroleum pipes going through fields or farms. The devices is developed by the Nagpur-based National Environmental engineering Research Institute (NEERI) of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) of the Department
As for power, the Blade is equipped with a 700-horsepower bi-fuel engine that can use both compressed natural gas or gasoline,
into a channel filled with oil. Since oil is immiscible with water, a'string'was created of a number of blue, virtually identical, microdroplets.
Interesting things started to happen when such a droplet'train, 'flowing in oil of one type, was injected into a channel filled with another oil immiscible with the other two fluids,
"says Dr. Jan Guzowski (IPC PAS; currently at Princeton university. The surface tension of the liquid shell around the encapsulated droplets caused it to itself form a drop.
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