Synopsis: Oil & gas industry: Fuel:

and fuel consumption electric and hybrid cars and trucks struggled for years to find a solid customer base.

and charging them requires plug-in infrastructure that s still sparse in the United states. Now MIT spinout XL Hybrids is upfitting (and retrofitting) gas and diesel commercial vans and trucks with fuel-saving add-on electric powertrains

and Fedex among others can provide a 20 percent reduction in fuel consumption and CO2 EMISSIONS. The goal is to reduce oil consumption with cost-effective electric drive technology where fleets don t need additional infrastructure

At the end of the day it s about making the economics work to compete against the price of fuel Hynes says adding We re able to do a lot with a little.

XL Hybrids installs small 1. 8-kwh lithium-ion batteries that provide a 20 percent fuel savings Hynes says.

which involves running a vehicle on treadmill-like rollers to estimate fuel mileage in urban driving.

With this savings companies can expect to save 4000 gallons of fuel over the life of an XL Hybrids system Hynes says.

When a fleet customer looks at the numbers they want to see benefits based on fuel savings

and fuel-injected engines, as well as for processes such as spray cooling of hot metal. One application now being considered by Varanasi

have helped replace thousands of kerosene lanterns usually burned in homes for lighting; such lanterns spew out black carbon that contributes to global warming and indoor air pollution.

These stoves, Wu says, cook twice as fast, with half the charcoal. Moreover, Wu says,

high-quality fuels from low-quality oil New findings released by MIT researchers could help energy companies implement a long-recognized process for converting heavy, high-sulfur crude oil into high-value,

cleaner fuels such as gasoline without using hydrogen a change that would reduce costs, energy use, and carbon dioxide emissions.

But converting crude oil into lightweight, clean-burning, high-quality fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel is getting harder.

In the past, oil found in the ground tended to be lightweight, clean, and easily made into high-value fuels.

Now, more and more of it is heavy thick, tarry material that, when refined, yields a higher fraction of lower-value products such as asphalt along with solid chunks of waste called coke.

which companies typically produce from natural gas a high-cost process that consumes valuable gas resources and releases high levels of carbon dioxide (CO2).

o there a lot of interest in finding alternative processes for converting low-quality crude oil into valuable fuels with less residual coke and for removing the sulfur efficiently

One approach calls for using water rather than natural gas as the source of the hydrogen molecules needed for key chemical reactions in the refining process.

setting the stage for the desired chemical reactions without any added hydrogen from natural gas. Industrial and academic researchers have demonstrated that mixing heavy oils with SCW produces lighter hydrocarbons (compounds of hydrogen

When crude oil is mixed with SCW, the hundreds of chemical compounds present can react together in different combinations and at different rates,

and the products ultimately include lighter hydrocarbons that are converted readily into valuable light fuels. The sulfur combines with hydrogen atoms to form hydrogen sulfide, a gas that can easily be removed

and upgrading technologies to create a combined system that will make it practical to continue producing high-value fuels from all kinds of oil for decades to come.

and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, carcinogenic compounds formed from incomplete combustion of fuels, from contaminated soil. The process is irreversible

and represents a clean and ultimate replacement for fossil fuels in the future. Over the past decades enormous efforts have been invested in developing efficient

which are competitive to the fossil fuel. Organic photovoltaic (OPV) has been regarded as one of the promising candidates for large-scale low-cost and efficient solar energy harvesting.

and light materials especially those that could help to protect the atmosphere including lighter more fuel efficient

#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.

Automakers have started introducing hydrogen fuel cell vehicles which only emit water when driven. 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

#Protons fuel graphene prospects Graphene impermeable to all gases and liquids can easily allow protons to pass through it,

Fuel cells use oxygen and hydrogen as a fuel and convert the input chemical energy directly into electricity.

One of the major problems is a fuel crossover through the existing proton membranes which reduces their efficiency and durability.

or monolayer boron nitride can allow the existing membranes to become thinner and more efficient with less fuel crossover and poisoning.

if biochar a byproduct of the a process that converts plants materials into biofuel could be used in place of expensive activated carbon to make electrodes for supercapacitors.

This excess oxygen leached at faster and faster rates over time actually contributes to the risk of failure and acts as fuel for a potential fire.

#Nanoparticle technology triples the production of biogas Researchers of the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), a Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence,

which allows increasing the production of biogas by 200%with a controlled introduction of iron oxide nanoparticles to the process of organic waste treatment.

This additive substantially increases the production of biogas and at the same time transforms the iron nanoparticles into innocuous salt."

"We believe we are offering a totally innovative approach to the improvement of biogas production and organic waste treatment,

According to researchers, today's biogas production is not very efficient-only 30 to 40 per cent of organic matter is converted into biogas

thereby greatly increasing the production of biogas, a renewable energy which is growing steadily and is accessible to everyone,

they actually stimulated the production of biogas, "he adds. Researchers saw this discovery as the opportunity to begin a business project

and then MWCNT@S and VACNTS were assembled into macro-CNT-S films via the dispersion in ethanol followed by vacuum filtration",Zhe Yuan,

'Suppose you fill the vesicle with fuel and medicines then you could transport the vesicle by creating a small opening

and only allow the fuel to get out. Then you could unload the remaining cargo at the destination.'

#Researchers uncover properties in nanocomposite oxide ceramics for reactor fuel Nanocomposite oxide ceramics have potential uses as ferroelectrics fast ion conductors

and nuclear fuels and for storing nuclear waste generating a great deal of scientific interest on the structure properties and applications of these blended materials.

In the context of nuclear energy composites have been proposed for the fuel itself as a way for example to improve the basic properties of the material such as the thermal conductivity.

It is the thermal conductivity that dictates how efficiently energy can be extracted from the fuel. Composites have also been created to store the by-products of the nuclear energy cycle nuclear waste where the different components of the composite can each store a different part of the waste.

Reactor fuel behavior better understood with phonon insights More information: The research is described in a paper out this week in Nature Communications Termination chemistry-driven dislocation structure at Srtio3/Mgo heterointerfaces s

The commercial separation process uses natural gas to react with superheated steam to strip away hydrogen atoms producing hydrogen fuel

is proof that hydrogen can be produced without burning fossil fuels. The scale is small, a little smaller than the diameter of spider silk.

because burning hydrogen fuel emits only water vapor.""Many researchers are looking to inorganic materials for new sources of energy,

Her team's discovery may provide future consumers a biologically-inspired alternative to gasoline.""These are the types of discoveries we can make at Argonne,

a laboratory usually devoted to studying fuel cellshe kind that run on methane or hydrogened by Shriram Ramanathan, Associate professor of Materials science at the Harvard School of engineering and Applied sciences (SEAS.

#Simple inexpensive fabrication procedure boosts light-capturing capabilities of tiny holes carved into silicon wafers Increasing the cost-effectiveness of photovoltaic devices is critical to making these renewable energy sources competitive with traditional fossil fuels.

#New method stabilizes common semiconductors for solar fuels generation Researchers around the world are trying to develop solar-driven generators that can split water yielding hydrogen gas that could be used as clean fuel.

The finding paves the way for the use of these materials in solar fuel generators. For the better part of a half century these materials have been considered off the table for this kind of use says Nate Lewis the George L. Argyros Professor and professor of chemistry at Caltech and the principal investigator on the paper.

In the type of integrated solar fuel generator that JCAP is striving to produce two half-reactions must take placene involving the oxidation of water to produce oxygen gas;

what was needed for this solar fuel generator application Deposited as a film ranging in thickness between 4 and 143 nanometers the Tio2 remained optically transparent on the semiconductor crystalsllowing them to absorb lightnd protected them from corrosion

"said Walter."Work with these enzymes could lead to future applications in green energy production such as fuel cells using biomaterials for fuel."

Synthetic natural gas from excess electricity More information: In situ Imaging of Silicalite-1 Surface Growth Reveals the Mechanism of Crystallization Science 2014

In addition The team is interested also in testing these fibers for multifunctional applications including batteries solar cells biofuel cells

By comparison the space shuttle which required an external fuel tank and two rocket boosters took about two months to turn around (due to damage incurred during launch and splashdown) and cost $100 million.

They can haul more cargo and more fuel than single-stage craft. Rockets also offer reliability on average only one out of 20 launches fail in part

or so of fuel to get it there says NASA's Dumbacher. The challenge with the SSTO has always been to get the craft as light as possible

and hold enough hydrogen fuel to carry itself and about 16.5 tons of payload about the same capacity as most operational rockets into orbit.

So basically a Ram Air (Oxygen) induction that is super cooled used to ignite/burn rocket/hydrogen fuel.

Secondary fuel source that doesn't require oxygen? Maybe just takeoff requires Ram and not return?

Plus they could use it as practice/tests for going to mars. It's about time the space faring governments of the world start building an infrastructure on the lunar surface that will support long term duration stays ship yards fuel generation and processing navigation stations for terrestrial navigation

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund announced that it is dropping all of its investments in fossil fuels-about $60. 2 million or 7 percent of the total $860 million endowment in favor of renewable energy.

and natural gas the symbolic splash is huge: Heirs to a major oil fortune are pulling their money out of the industry.

The move will likely put wind under the wings of the fledging international fossil fuel divestment movement

-or no-carbon economic development projects such as expanding their energy generation capacity with renewables like sun and wind instead of fossil fuels.

74 Fuel economy: n/a Price: n/a Range: 53 miles Charge time: 3. 5 hours from a 220-volt outlet Top Speed:

#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.

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.

then uses the resulting biomethane just like natural gas mined from the ground to produce electricity.

fossil fuel-produced carbon dioxide is considered different because that CO2 would have stayed in the ground, had a human not dug it up

Even hours later fires caused by kerosene and solid propellant were still burning. Unlike Spacex which is almost completely vertically integrated Orbital outsources most of its components and focuses on system integration and design.

We removed all subsidies on fuel products, offered incentives for hybrids and encouraged an aggressive diversifying approach.

and establish guidelines to accept electricity first from the most efficient and lowest-polluting fossil fuel generators,

and reused for future applications. f the micromotors can use the environment as fuel, they will be more scalable, environmentally friendly and less expensive, Kevin Kaufmann,

it would be easier to compete with fossil fuels. In CAES, the surplus energy from solar and wind installations to compress air into the caverns

and burning biofuels and storing the emitted carbon dioxide underground. These may sound farfetched, but the Intergovernmental panel on climate change concluded last year that reaching a key emissions goaloughly equivalent to limiting warming to 2°C by 2100ould rely on the deployment of one or several CDR technologies.

while the natural gas, solar and wind industries together created nearly four times that amount, according to a new Duke university study.

as well as operations and maintenance jobs in resource extraction and fuel transportation. Data for solar and wind generator operations and maintenance jobs were provided by the industries themselves.

Currently, ceramic composites consisting of ionic and electronic conductive components like those in this study are under consideration for membrane separation devices that provide oxygen for enhanced conversion of coal and natural gas

as well as for membrane reactors used in natural gas conversion and recovery y

#Go greener: Norway to clean up sovereign wealth fund Norway said Friday it would bar its state pension fund, the world's biggest sovereign wealth fund,

fuelled by Norway's state oil revenuesivest all of its holdings in companies linked to fossil fuels.

forcing Pemex to stop shipping finished fuel through its pipelines after discovering 3, 674 illegal taps last year.

The infalling gas fuels the black holesngine triggering outflows and gas turbulence that incites a firestorm of star birth.

but the lure of fewer accidents, reduced fuel costs not to mention less human error have generated excitement in the trucking industry as well as the transportation safety sector.

The savings in fuel costs would come from the truck's ability to accelerate and decelerate more gradually than humans normally do.

To meet the demand for food, fuel and fiber from a growing and increasingly affluent population,

as well as producing'electrolyte fuels'that might be used to power future electric vehicles, "said Mingzhe Yu, lead author of the paper and a doctoral student at Ohio State.

as well as producing'electrolyte fuels'that might be used to power future electric vehicles, "said Mingzhe Yu, lead author of the paper and a doctoral student at Ohio State.

#Now, a car powered by whisky residue Scientists in Scotland have become the first in the world to produce biofuel capable of powering cars from residues of the whisky industry.

Edinburgh-based Celtic Renewables plans to build a production facility in central Scotland after manufacturing the first samples of biobutanol from by-products of whisky fermentation.

The company has been awarded £11 million to fund a new plant to make the biofuels. Transport minister Andrew Jones says advanced biofuels have the potential to save at least 60%of the greenhouse gas emissions from equivalent fossil fuel.

He said""The technique could transform the Scottish whisky industry and generate up to £100 million of transport fuel a year."

"The latest biofuels use low value waste products to produce high value fuel and will help power modes of transport that cannot be electrified in the future such as heavy trucks or even aircraft.

A bacterial fermentation process known as Acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) produces acetone, n-Butanol, and ethanol from starch.

ABE fermentation was developed first in the UK a century ago, but died out in competition with the petrochemical industry.

but this time for advanced biofuel production using entirely sustainable raw materials.""Julie Hesketh-Laird from the Scotch whisky Association said,

"The production of biobutanol from draff and pot ale is another example of the industry putting its by-products to a good use to promote sustainability and jobs."

"Celtic in partnership with Ghent-based Biobase Europe Pilot Plant produced the first samples of biobutanol earlier this month.

Biobutanol is recognized now as an advanced biofuel a direct replacement for petrol. The biofuel is produced from draff the sugar rich kernels of barley soaked in water to facilitate the fermentation process necessary for whisky production and pot ale,

the copper-containing yeasty liquid that is left over following distillation. Scotland's distilleries currently produce around 750,000 tons of draff and 2 billion litres of pot ale annually

#Now, a car powered by whisky residue Scientists in Scotland have become the first in the world to produce biofuel capable of powering cars from residues of the whisky industry.

Edinburgh-based Celtic Renewables plans to build a production facility in central Scotland after manufacturing the first samples of biobutanol from by-products of whisky fermentation.

The company has been awarded £11 million to fund a new plant to make the biofuels. Transport minister Andrew Jones says advanced biofuels have the potential to save at least 60%of the greenhouse gas emissions from equivalent fossil fuel.

He said""The technique could transform the Scottish whisky industry and generate up to £100 million of transport fuel a year."

"The latest biofuels use low value waste products to produce high value fuel and will help power modes of transport that cannot be electrified in the future such as heavy trucks or even aircraft.

A bacterial fermentation process known as Acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) produces acetone, n-Butanol, and ethanol from starch.

ABE fermentation was developed first in the UK a century ago, but died out in competition with the petrochemical industry.

but this time for advanced biofuel production using entirely sustainable raw materials.""Julie Hesketh-Laird from the Scotch whisky Association said,

"The production of biobutanol from draff and pot ale is another example of the industry putting its by-products to a good use to promote sustainability and jobs."

"Celtic in partnership with Ghent-based Biobase Europe Pilot Plant produced the first samples of biobutanol earlier this month.

Biobutanol is recognized now as an advanced biofuel a direct replacement for petrol. The biofuel is produced from draff the sugar rich kernels of barley soaked in water to facilitate the fermentation process necessary for whisky production and pot ale,

the copper-containing yeasty liquid that is left over following distillation. Scotland's distilleries currently produce around 750,000 tons of draff and 2 billion litres of pot ale annually

#Artificial'plants'could fuel future cars Scientists have taken a big step towards creating artificial'plants'that can use only sunlight to make gasoline

and natural gas to run future cars without polluting the environment. A research team has created an artificial leaf that produces methane,

the primary component of natural gas, using a combination of semiconducting nanowires and bacteria. The research builds on a similar hybrid system that yielded butanol, a component in gasoline,

and a variety of biochemical building blocks. It is a major advance towards synthetic photosynthesis, a type of solar power based on the ability of plants to transform sunlight,

however, synthetic photosynthesis seeks to produce liquid fuels that can be stored for months or years and distributed through existing energy infrastructure.

"Burning fossil fuels is putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than natural photosynthesis can take it out.

a finding that will fuel speculation that life, if it ever arose there, could persist to now."

and bioplastics (derived from renewable biomass sources such as corn or biogas methane). As part of a"cradle-to-cradle"approach, the researchers will explore the fate of these materials

and bioplastics (derived from renewable biomass sources such as corn or biogas methane). As part of a"cradle-to-cradle"approach, the researchers will explore the fate of these materials

promising to help us reduce our deadly carbon footprints and reliance on nonrenewable fuels, the reality is that most electric cars can only drive short distancesnywhere from 25-312 milesefore they need to be recharged.

The team took advantage of 3d printing instant feedback and rapid prototyping to experiment with new shapes, printing speeds, battery technologies, cleaner burning fuels,

said Scott Curan of ORNL Fuels, Engines and Emissions department. Their ongoing philosophy during the construction phase?

or biofuels when exposed to the sun. The underlying concept is that such functions will,

equipped with a natural gas-powered generator, generates that power. This energy is passed from home to car or vice versa through a bidirectional wireless power transfer system, a pad besides the structure over which the PUV parks.

is a significant step toward the substitution of fossil fuels with solar hydrogen. The demand for hydrogen as a clean fuel for vehicles and other applications is expected to increase.

Unfortunately it is produced currently from fossil fuel. Conventional approaches to hydrogen production using solar-powered photocatalysts have achieved a solar-to-hydrogen energy conversion efficiency of less than ten percent,

requiring improvements for real-world applications. A team of researchers led by Associate professor Masakazu Sugiyama and Project Professor Katsushi Fujii from The University of Tokyo and Associate professor Kensuke Nishioka from Miyazaki University have doubled now more than the solar conversion efficiency to 24.4 percent.

They used concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) modules, which includes a photovoltaic cell using a high-quality semiconductor crystal similar to the ones for lasers

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 percent t

#N1 Technologies Seeks Patent for Non-Petroleum Nano Organic Motor oil The directors and management of N1 Technologies Inc. have filed a patent for a bio-based non-petroleum motor oil.

The company has taken renewable plant oils and added Tungsten and Carbon nanotubes to the oil blend.

The result is a"Green"motor oil that performs in many ways better than standard petroleum motor oil."

"A biodegradable motor oil that can go toe to toe with the best petroleum motor oil is the Holy grail

for example, prove especially valuable for crude oil transport, in which fuel lines frequently become clogged, leading to high costs and risk of gas accidentally escaping into the environment.

thereby promoting basic research in sustainable biofuels. This made the ORNL scientists to visualize several other applications.

#Nanoscientists Convert Sunlight into Liquid fuel Using Nature and Technology Imagine creating artificial plants that make gasoline

and natural gas using only sunlight. And imagine using those fuels to heat our homes or run our cars without adding any greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

By combining nanoscience and biology, researchers led by scientists at University of California, Berkeley, have taken a big step in that direction.

Peidong Yang, a professor of chemistry at Berkeley and co-director of the school's Kavli Energy Nanosciences Institute, leads a team that has created an artificial leaf that produces methane

the primary component of natural gas, using a combination of semiconducting nanowires and bacteria. The research, detailed in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in August, builds on a similar hybrid system, also recently devised by Yang and his colleagues,

that yielded butanol, a component in gasoline, and a variety of biochemical building blocks. The research is a major advance toward synthetic photosynthesis,

however, synthetic photosynthesis seeks to produce liquid fuels that can be stored for months or years and distributed through existing energy infrastructure.

"Burning fossil fuels is putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than natural photosynthesis can take it out.

an inert material obtained by the incomplete combustion of certain petroleum products. Prior to the team's research, the quantity and dimensions of the carbon black nanoparticles weren't considered particularly crucial to a battery's function."

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.

Globally, several clean energy policies and regulations have been implemented over the past decade to reduce the consumption of higher carbon fossil fuels.

There is a growing adoption of tank level monitoring system in various sectors, such as oil & fuel

In 2014, the oil & fuel application was the largest segment of the global tank level monitoring application market,

bacteria could be reprogrammed to convert readily available sources of natural energy into pharmaceuticals, plastics and fuel products."

Fuel factor Johan Steelant, a senior research engineer at the European space agency (Esa) and coordinator of Lapcat-II,

Fuel choice is important, especially as one consideration for any future hypersonic fleet will be to try to keep its emissions as low as possible.

This is why hydrogen was chosen, rather than a fuel based on hydrocarbons. What more, liquid hydrogen fuel is not highly combustible mid-flight.

Although hydrogen can be ignited, the risks of an explosion or fire are lower compared to conventional airline kerosene fuel.

Nasa used the same stuff to power the Space shuttle. f there is leak, the hydrogen is

hence there won't be a pool of hydrogen on the ground as is the case for kerosene.

Hydrogen, like kerosene, needs an igniter or a heat source to initiate combustion so it doesn't ignite spontaneously,

which simulates speeds up to Mach 1. 8. Hytex uses liquid hydrogen both as a fuel

The fuel consumption is one-fifth that of rocket engines, says Hideyuki Taguchi, leader of Jaxa hypersonic airplane research.

If the hydrogen can be sourced from natural gas, instead of from the electrolysis of water, the airfare tickets of a hypersonic trip could drop to about half the price of a business-class ticket.

An alternative fuel could be liquefied natural gas such as super-cold liquid methane; when stored as a liquid it needs far less space than gas. f a market for small business jets existed,

While the design consumes two times more fuel per second than a Mach 4 plane, it gets to the destination in roughly half the time so the fuel consumed overall during the trip is roughly the same.

A question of heat Dealing with heat will be a real concern. Anything travelling at Mach 5

we have lower fuel consumption and smaller tanks, which makes the vehicle again smaller, Steelant says.

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