a pollutant gas commonly found in vehicle exhaust that also results from fossil fuel combustion. Prolonged exposure to nitrogen dioxide can be dangerous to human health,
#New Material Could Turn Water into Fuel Scientists have designed theoretically a new material that could help supply the world with clean energy by turning water into fuel,
the complex new material could also be used to turn carbon dioxide from the air into a carbon-based fuel,
"Finding a material that can help create readily available fuels is one of the holy grails of science,
environmentally-friendly fuels to power the future.""Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen is an energy-intensive process,
which currently requires much more energy in from electricity than comes out in usable fuel. To make the process more efficient,
The Reading-led team used supercomputer simulations to look at many different candidates as potential photocatalysts for fuel production reactions.
With applications for both the food packaging and cosmetic industries, the new bioactive film is a green alternative to traditional petroleum-based plastics
In this process, the titanium dioxide and platinum precursors are dissolved in ethanol and converted to a fog using an ultrasonic bath.
#Artificial leaf harnesses sunlight for efficient fuel production Generating and storing renewable energy, such as solar or wind power, is a key barrier to a clean energy economy.
a cost-effective method of producing fuels using only sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide, mimicking the natural process of photosynthesis in plants
and storing energy in the form of chemical fuels for use on demand. Over the past five years, researchers at JCAP have made major advances toward this goal,
safe, integrated solar-driven system for splitting water to create hydrogen fuels.""This result was a stretch project milestone for the entire five years of JCAP as a whole,
the membrane lets the hydrogen fuel be collected separately under pressure and safely pushed into a pipeline.
so cannot be used to directly generate fuel. A major advance that allowed the integrated system to be developed was previous work in Lewis's laboratory,
Another key advance is the use of active, inexpensive catalysts for fuel production. The photoanode requires a catalyst to drive the essential water-splitting reaction.
converts 10 percent of the energy in sunlight into stored energy in the chemical fuel,
"Our work shows that it is indeed possible to produce fuels from sunlight safely and efficiently in an integrated system with inexpensive components,
Methane capture and storage provides a double environmental return-it removes a harmful greenhouse gas from the atmosphere that can then be used as a fuel that is cleaner than other fossil fuels.
Berkeley Lab researchers find a better way to store natural gas as a transportation fuel Researchers with the U s. Department of energy (DOE)' s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a variety
which in turn has the potential to help make the driving range of an adsorbed-natural-gas (ANG) car comparable to that of a typical gasoline-powered car."
"Our flexible MOFS can be used to boost the usable capacity of natural gas in a tank,
"This ability to maximize the deliverable capacity of natural gas while also providing internal heat management during adsorption and desorption demonstrates a new concept in the storage of natural gas that provides a possible path forward for ANG applications where none was envisioned before."
"Long is the corresponding author of a Nature paper that describes this work entitled,"Methane storage in flexible metal-organic frameworks with intrinsic thermal management."
The United states holds a vast amount of proven natural gas reserves-some 360 trillion cubic feet and climbing.
While compressed natural gas-fueled vehicles are already on the road, the widespread use of natural gas as a transportation fuel has been hampered by cumbersome and expensive onboard gas storage tanks and the cost of dispensing compressed natural gas to vehicles.
The storage issue is especially keen for light-duty vehicles such as cars, in which the space available for onboard fuel storage is limited.
ANG has the potential to store high densities of methane within a porous material at ambient temperature and moderate pressures
and packing strategies should also allow further reductions to external thermal-management requirements and optimization of the overall natural gas storage system performance. c
That would pave the way for eventual scale up to capturing CO2 from natural gas plants, which produce emissions containing about 5 percent CO2, to the higher concentrations of coal fired power plants."
there's a lot of opportunity to improve fuel economy in vehicles, but the scientific understanding of how all the additives work is still in development.
which require a lot of fuel. With further R&d, future AUVS and other marine vehicles can adopt this mechanism to help it evade threats or track something fast stealthily underwater without the need for much energy.
This work is a significant advance towards developing more efficient electrocatalysts for water-splitting reactions and fuel generation.
#Scientists a step closer to developing renewable propane (Nanowerk News) Researchers at The University of Manchester have made a significant breakthrough in the development of synthetic pathways that will enable renewable biosynthesis of the gas propane.
In this latest study, published in the journal Biotechnology for Biofuels("A microbial platform for renewable propane synthesis based on a fermentative butanol pathway"),scientists at the Universitys Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB
working with colleagues at Imperial College and University of Turku, have created a synthetic pathway for biosynthesis of the gas propane.
Their work brings scientists one step closer to the commercial production of renewable propane, a vital development as fossil fuels continue to dwindle.
Professor Nigel Scrutton, Director of the MIB, explains the significance of their work: The chemical industry is undergoing a major transformation as a consequence of unstable energy costs, limited natural resources and climate change.
Natural metabolic pathways for the renewable biosynthesis of propane do not exist but scientists at the University have developed an alternative microbial biosynthetic pathway to produce renewable propane.
The team led by Nigel Scrutton and Dr Patrik Jones from Imperial College, modified existing fermentative butanol pathways using an engineered enzyme variant to redirect the microbial pathway to produce propane as opposed to butanol.
The team was able to achieve propane biosynthesis creating a platform for next-generation microbial propane production.
Propane has very good physicochemical properties which allow it to be stored and transported in a compressed liquid form.
While under ambient conditions it is a clean-burning gas, with existing global markets and infrastructure for storage,
distribution and utilization in a wide range of applications ranging from heating to transport fuel.
Consequently, propane is an attractive target product in research aimed at developing new renewable alternatives to complement currently used petroleum-derived fuels.
This study focused on the construction and evaluation of alternative microbial biosynthetic pathways for the production of renewable propane.
It also expands the metabolic toolbox for renewable propane production, providing new insight and understanding of the development of next-generation biofuels
"More than 80 percent of our energy today comes from burning fossil fuels, which is both harmful to our environment and unsustainable as well.
Pieter Elshout and fellow environmental scientists at Radboud University have demonstrated how long it takes for the advantages that biofuels offer over fossil fuels to earn a return on this initial emission On the global scale,
our calculations of the durations of payback times took account of the entire production chain for fossil fuels and biofuels with the accompanying greenhouse emissions.
The new Georgia Tech algorithm that fuels this system demonstrates the potential of easily controlling large teams of robots,
and convert carbon dioxide to make fuel Capture and convert--this is the motto of carbon dioxide reduction,
a liquid fuel and the focus of a recent study conducted at the U s. Department of energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory("Carbon dioxide Conversion to Methanol over Size-Selected Cu4 Clusters at Low pressures").
and burned for fuel. Of course the catalyst still has a long journey ahead from the lab to industry.
nearly 70-percent of the electricity generated in this country continues to come from fossil fuels. Low-cost alternatives to todays photovoltaic solar panels are needed for the immense advantages of solar power to be realized fully.
It is believed this new process will have significant environmental benefits by improving the yield of biodiesel in a sustainable way that doesn't require the use of additional fossil fuels
By 2020, the EU aims to have 10 per cent of the transport fuel of every EU country come from renewable sources such as biofuels.
Fuel suppliers are required also to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of the EU fuel mix by 6 per cent by 2020 in comparison to 2010.
which is derived usually from fossil fuels. A waste product from this process is crude glycerol which is formed on a large scale
"Biodiesel manufacture is a growing part of the EU fuel pool, with statutory amounts being required to be added to diesel that is derived from fossil fuels."
"We've provided unprecedented chemistry that highlights the potential to manufacture biodiesel in a much more environmentally friendly,
and seriously improve the quality of life by reducing carbon emissions from fossil fuels and encourage efficient use of resources."
They specifically concentrated on the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide on metal electrodes ecause of the current interest in this process for sustainable production of fuels and value added chemicals,
such as reducing carbon dioxide to convert it into a usable fuel, Surendranath says. This could reduce emissions of a principal greenhouse gas that fosters climate change,
and transform it into a useful, renewable fuel. The initial finding described in this paper is ust one piece of
and electricity at a low cost from fuel found in water. Both heating generators and generators for electricity could be developed within a few years,
using high efficiency solar cells to power water electrolysis("A 24.4%solar to hydrogen energy conversion efficiency by combining concentrator photovoltaic modules and electrochemical cells").
"This is a significant step toward the substitution of fossil fuels with solar hydrogen. Increased demand for hydrogen as a clean fuel for vehicles and other applications is anticipated,
but it is produced currently from fossil fuel. In order to increase Japan use of renewable energy at a substantial fraction in the total energy demand, it is vital to develop technologies for the high efficiency
and low cost production of hydrogen using solar energy. Conventional approaches to solar hydrogen production using photocatalysts achieved a solar-to-hydrogen energy conversion efficiency of less than 10,
%requiring improvements for real-world applications. The research group of Associate professor Masakazu Sugiyama and Project Professor Katsushi Fujii (Graduate school of Engineering
%The researchers also reduced energy loss by improving the connection between the CPV modules and electrolyzers, resulting in a solar-to-hydrogen energy conversion efficiency above 24%.
which blocks fire's access to its fuel source--the polymer. The synergistic combination of both these processes makes polydopamine an attractive and powerful flame retardant.
a pollutant gas commonly found in vehicle exhaust that also results from fossil fuel combustion. Prolonged exposure to nitrogen dioxide can be dangerous to human health,
Potentially, hydrogen could be transported to other locations and burned as fuel.""In theory, this should be a self-sustaining energy source,
and you do need not a large amount to capture enough sunlight to carry out fuel generation
#Ultrasensitive sensors made from boron-doped graphene Ultrasensitive gas sensors based on the infusion of boron atoms into graphene--a tightly bound matrix of carbon atoms--may soon be possible, according to an international team of researchers
Although fracking has unlocked new fuel sources and slashed energy prices, there is a risk that toxic compounds in the fracking fluid can get into shallow aquifers via fractures in the bedrock.
Instead of chemical fuel, which is heavy and inefficient, they use an ionic liquid, made entirely of positively or negatively charged ions.
using up all the fuel without corroding the spacecraft. his is one of the other show stoppers we had at the beginning:
Liquid fuel and a liquid oxidizer combine within a combustion chamber and ignite. Ultimately its this combustion that thrusts the rocket forward.
requiring extra hardware and additional fuel. But with Rutherford, the engines turbopumps get a much more condensed energy source.
Using the sun instead of fossil fuels to power a desalination plant isn't a totally new idea.
"including the insertion of the aluminum"fuel"(b) and movement/fusion of gallium alloy droplets (e). Tsinghua University scientists led by Jing Liu,
The ability of liquid metal with its own embedded power source could even one day be the basis to build self repairing armor on tanks and changing aircraft fuselages for fuel efficiency and speed.
We import 94%of our energy as fossil fuels from abroad and that has big consequences for our state budget,
el-Haite told the Guardian. e also used to subsidise fossil fuels which have a heavy cost,
Already envisaged scenarios include its use as fuel for vehicles or for producing carbon-based energy carriers.
#A better way to pack natural gas into fuel tanks A new and innovative way to store methane could speed the development of natural gas-powered cars that don require the high pressures
or cold temperatures of today compressed or liquefied natural gas vehicles. Natural gas is cleaner-burning than gasoline,
and today there are more than 150,000 compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles on the road in the U s, . most of them trucks and buses. But until manufacturers can find a way to pack more methane into a tank at lower pressures and temperatures,
allowing for a greater driving range and less hassle at the pump, passenger cars are unlikely to adopt natural gas as a fuel.
UC Berkeley chemists have developed now a porous and flexible material so-called metal-organic framework (MOF) or storing methane that addresses these problems.
the main ingredient of natural gas, at 35 to 65 times atmospheric pressure (500 to 900 psi),
whereas compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles compress natural gas into an empty tank under 250 atmospheres (3, 600 psi).
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) vehicles operate at lower pressures but require significant insulation in the tank system to maintain the natural gas at minus-162 degrees Celsius (minus-260 degrees Fahrenheit)
so that it remains liquid. Next-gen NG vehicles Long said that next-generation natural gas vehicles will require a material that binds the methane and packs it more densely into the fuel tank, providing a larger driving range.
One of the major problems has been finding a material that absorbs the methane at a relatively low pressure,
are one of the most promising materials for adsorbed natural gas (ANG) storage. his is a big advance both in terms of capacity and thermal management,
so there is less cooling of the fuel required. f you fill a tank that has adsorbent, such as activated charcoal,
Improving onboard natural-gas storage Natural gas from oil wells is one of the cheapest and cleanest fossil fuels today,
however, because of the expensive and large onboard compressed fuel tanks. In addition, gasoline packs over three times the energy density per volume as natural gas
even when compressed to 3, 600 psi, which results in natural gas vehicles with a shorter driving range per fill up.
In order to advance onboard natural gas storage, Ford motor company teamed up with UC Berkeley on this project, with funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agencynergy (ARPA-E) of the U s. Dept of energy.
Ford is a leader in CNG/propane-prepped vehicles with more than 57,000 sold in the U s. since 2009, more than all other major U s. automakers combined.
station compressors and fuel along with serving to increase natural gas-powered vehicle driving range within the limited cargo space. atural gas storage in porous materials provides the key advantage of being able to store significant amounts of natural gas at low pressures
than compressed gas at the same conditions, said Veenstra, the principal investigator of this ARPA-E project. he advantage of low pressure is the benefit it provides both onboard the vehicle and off-board at the station.
and hydrogen fuel cells,"said Yugang Sun, a nanoscience scientist in Argonne's Nanoscience and Technology Div."
Mos2 is a common industrial catalyst that is used as a dry lubricant and in petroleum refining.
but its high-cost and scarcity limit its widespread use for hydrogen production and in hydrogen fuel cells.
Such a high energy density would be comparable to that of gasoline -and would enable an electric car with a battery that is a fifth the cost and a fifth the weight of those currently on the market to drive from London to Edinburgh on a single charge.
there are several practical challenges that need to be addressed before lithium-air batteries become a viable alternative to gasoline.
inexpensive fuel from water An inexpensive method for generating clean fuel is the modern-day equivalent of the philosopher's stone.
and oxygen and then harvest the hydrogen for use as fuel. But splitting water efficiently turns out to be not so easy.
-based ethanol into hydrocarbon blend-stocks for use as fossil fuel alternatives. Scientists have experimented for decades with a class of catalysts known as zeolites that transform alcohols such as ethanol into higher-grade hydrocarbons.
As ORNL researchers were developing a new type of zeolite-based conversion technology, they found the underlying reaction unfolds in a different manner than previously thought."
"For 40 years, everyone thought that these reactions must go first from ethanol to ethylene,
"It has been assumed that you must go from ethanol to ethylene, which is endothermic and requires energy.
"Our method of direct conversion of ethanol offers a pathway to produce suitable hydrocarbon blend-stock that may be blended at a refinery to yield fuels such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel or commodity chemicals,
By reducing wasted food in landfills, we cut harmful methane emissions that fuel climate change, conserve our natural resources,
One day he realized that no matter how fuel efficient or how few tailpipe emissions the modern car has,
Even the most fuel efficient car has a large carbon footprint before ever leaving the plant. Czinger and his team's approach was to take the large plant out of the equation.
The Blade is fitted with a 700 horse power engine that runs on natural gas, reducing its carbon footprint even further.
and the University of Bristol in the UK studied the response of cancer cells to reduced availability of glucose, the main fuel source for most cancer cells.
Alternative fuels for cancer cells The group also found evidence of increased PEPCK levels in tissues from lung-cancer patients."
"Our work shows that cancers can use alternative fuel sources to help drive their growth under stressful conditions,"notes Prof.
as well as producing'electrolyte fuels'that might be used to power future electric vehicles,"one of the team,
and natural gas, giving up coal isn't as big a deal as it would be for other countries(*cough*Australia, the United states*cough),
The power station itself will continue to run on natural gas for the foreseeable future. Over the past year and a half, New zealand has increased significantly the amount of electricity it produces from renewable energy,
and for the first time in 40 years, geothermal electricity generation contributed more electricity than natural gas during 2014, "Bridges announced to the press."
#The UK is trialling a new road surface that charges your electric car as you drive One of the problems with being on the cutting edge of electric car technology is you're not as sure of being able to find a filling station as all the petrol-burning drivers around you.
and cut down on fuel costs for drivers at the same time. With the European union imposing fines for countries that don't meet emission targets
say researchers Figures indicate that the world uptake of renewable energy has eclipsed finally its demand for fossil fuel sources,
clean and renewable source of hydrogen as the ultimately sustainable fuel, said Leone Spiccia, lead author of the research,
and we can have distributed food and fuel across the planet, he told Hall at the ABC
I guess until the rest of the world catches up with Sweden-which btw is also making moves to become the world's first fossil fuel-free nation-we'll all just have to move there v
to produce net zero emission fuels, "company chief executive Adrian Corless told the AFP. Funded by private investors,
direct air capture works just like these new solar cells that split water into a hydrogen fuel-the CO2 recycling plant extracts CO2 from the air using a giant complex of fans,
and either heated to between 800 and 900 degrees Celsius to release pure carbon for use as fuel,
According to CBC News, the larger plant should be able to produce up to 400 litres of gasoline
because it turns the CO2 into fuel, no change in infrastructure will be needed to power big fuel-guzzlers such as ships, planes,
and long-haulage trucks. Even existing petrol pumps can work with the fuel. A major limitation of solar and wind technologies, on the other hand, is that they require specific technologies to capture
and disperse energy.""The nice thing about the technology is that there are no real limitations for it to ultimately,
in theory, displace all of the existing fossil-based transportation fuels, "Corless said. Going forward, the most important thing for Carbon Engineering to figure out is how to be commercially viable.
"said Lonnie O. Ingram, director of the Florida Center for Renewable Chemicals and Fuels at the University of Florida,
Unlike other hydrogen fuel production methods that rely on highly processed sugars, the Virginia Tech team used dirty biomass--the husks and stalks of corn plants--to create their fuel.
This not only reduces the initial expense of creating the fuel it enables the use of a fuel source readily available near the processing plants,
making the creation of the fuel a local enterprise. Rollin used a genetic algorithm along with a series of complex mathematical expressions to analyze each step of the enzymatic process that breaks down corn stover into hydrogen and carbon dioxide.
He also confirmed the ability of this system to use both sugars glucose and xylose at the same time,
which increases the rate at which the hydrogen is released. Typically in biological conversions, these two sugars can only be used sequentially, not simultaneously
One of the biggest hurdles to widespread hydrogen use is the capital cost required to produce the fuel from natural gas in large facilities.
The dominant current method for producing hydrogen uses natural gas, which is expensive to distribute and causes fossil carbon emissions.
enzymatic reactions such as those being used in this system generate high-purity hydrogen, perfect for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
"We believe this exciting technology has the potential to enable the widespread use of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles around the world
and displace fossil fuels, "Rollin said d
#First metal-free catalyst created for rechargeable zinc-air batteries Zinc-air batteries are expected to be safer, lighter, cheaper and more powerful and durable than lithium-ion batteries common in mobile phones and laptops and increasingly used in hybrid and electric cars.
However, in prostate cancer cells, Runx2 triggered genes that fuel tumor growth and metastasis."It's unusual that a protein
including biodegradable plastics, pharmaceutical drugs and even liquid fuels. Scientists with the U s. Department of energy (DOE)' s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have created a hybrid system of semiconducting nanowires and bacteria
and oil industry in that we can produce chemicals and fuels in a totally renewable way, rather than extracting them from deep below the ground."
Atmospheric carbon dioxide is now at its highest level in at least three million years, primarily as a result of the burning of fossil fuels.
Yet fossil fuels, especially coal, will remain a significant source of energy to meet human needs for the foreseeable future.
The yields of target chemical molecules produced from the acetate were also encouraging--as high as 26-percent for butanol, a fuel comparable to gasoline, 25-percent for amorphadiene, a precursor to the antimaleria drug artemisinin,
#Sensor detects spoilage of food VTT has developed a sensor that detects ethanol in the headspace of a food package.
Ethanol is formed as a result of food spoilage. The sensor signal is wirelessly readable, for instance, by a mobile phone.
The sensor monitors ethanol emitted from the spoilage of foods into the headspace of a package.
Ethanol, in addition to carbon dioxide, was found to be the main volatile spoilage metabolite in fresh-cut fruit.
This ethanol sensor can have potential in other applications, such as in alcometers. The sensor layer is part of a radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag,
A similar optical readout based on the colour change of the ethanol sensor was developed also for a smartphone.
#Artificial leaf harnesses sunlight for efficient fuel production Generating and storing renewable energy, such as solar or wind power, is a key barrier to a clean energy economy.
a cost-effective method of producing fuels using only sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide, mimicking the natural process of photosynthesis in plants
and storing energy in the form of chemical fuels for use on demand. Over the past five years, researchers at JCAP have made major advances toward this goal,
safe, integrated solar-driven system for splitting water to create hydrogen fuels.""This result was a stretch project milestone for the entire five years of JCAP as a whole,
the membrane lets the hydrogen fuel be collected separately under pressure and safely pushed into a pipeline.
so cannot be used to directly generate fuel. A major advance that allowed the integrated system to be developed was previous work in Lewis's laboratory,
Another key advance is the use of active, inexpensive catalysts for fuel production. The photoanode requires a catalyst to drive the essential water-splitting reaction.
converts 10 percent of the energy in sunlight into stored energy in the chemical fuel,
"Our work shows that it is indeed possible to produce fuels from sunlight safely and efficiently in an integrated system with inexpensive components,
Uranium plays an important role in the search for alternative energies to fossil fuels; however, uranium resources on land are limited.
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