In theory, it could simply increase power generation from traditional fossil fuels such as coal and gas, but stringent, legally-binding carbon dioxide emissions targets mean this is not possible.
Because of their surrounding habitat and the lack of readily available fuel mangrove forests are also not susceptible to forest fires.
and fuels using genetically engineered bacteria-such as common E coli -while safeguarding the"microbial workers"from infection by other microbes and pathogens."
and Israel that Tehran successfully reverse-engineered before turning it into their own cyber-weapon to destroy the servers of Saudi arabia's national oil and natural gas company.
Scientists Enlist E coli To Make Planet-Saving Plastic Out Of Practically Nothing The Intertubes have buzzing with news of a new way to make plastic without using petroleum or petrochemicals.
Based on artificial photosynthesis, the process uses sunlight and carbon dioxide to make the building blocks for renewable plastics as well as fuels, paints,
Theye beginning to pop up in renewable fuel and reenchemical applications, and the one involved in the new artificial photosynthesis study is one of those.
Aside from producing renewable fuel and other products, you can use it to sequester waste carbon dioxide from industrial processes.
which don produce power on demand as a fossil fuel power plant does. For an individual consumer, having a battery behind the meter provides a great deal of flexibility in managing energy use.
Today, fossil fuels still dominate. However, the revolution is only now picking up steam. In fact, if we continue on at our current growth rate,
Beyond the obvious benefits of minimizing traditional fossil fuel energy technologies, the report also concludes that such a scale up of renewables in Africa s an affordable means to help meet fast-growing energy demand while increasing energy access, improving health,
"If the micromotors can use the environment as fuel, they will be more scalable, environmentally friendly and less expensive,"said Kaufmann n
says Mr Shawyer. nce you no longer have to carry fuel with you, the possibilities are immense.
The new material also promises to improve automotive fuel economy because it combines light weight with heat resistancealthough syntactic foams have been around for many years,
powered by electricity instead of petrol. A 10.4 kilowatt-per-hour battery pack lasts 150 to 200 miles on a single charge, according to Lit Motors.
Canadian space firm Thoth has outlined plans for an elevator to space, potentially saving huge amounts of fuel and money that form part of the vast cost of launching rockets into orbit.
However, the craft lacked fuel to maintain a long-term lunar orbit or continue science operations and was sent intentionally into the lunar surface,
Liquid-oxygen or kerosene rockets would be fired to enable the plane to rapidly climb higher in the sky
the fossil fuels burned to power the machinery, and the decomposition of organic material within the wastewater itself.
and the existing facility will be generated using biogas from the project. Long island Compost also plans to convert the biogas to renewable natural gas that will be used to fuel its trucks on-site, reducing diesel consumption by 200,000 gallons annually.
An additional 1. 9 million gallons of diesel per year will be offset by injecting the remaining renewable gas produced by the digester into the National grid natural gas pipeline on Long island.
This will enable the gas to be used to fuel compressed natural gas vehicles in other areas. The project is part of the Cleaner, Greener Communities program, a statewide initiative encouraging communities to incorporate sustainability goals and principles into local plans and projects.
It is scheduled to be completed in August 2016 6
#Environmental remediation Reagent Reduces Time to Regulatory Closure Environmental remediation technology company Regenesis has launched a first-of-its-kind liquid activated carbon technology that the company says captures
This includes reducing chlorinated solvents at industrial dry cleaning sites as well as petroleum cleanup projects. Plumestop is composed of very fine particles of activated carbon (1-2 m) suspended in water through the use of unique organic polymer dispersion chemistry.
#Wood instead of petroleum: Producing chemical substances solely from renewable resources Petroleum might well be replaced by wood soon
when it comes to manufacturing chemical substances. Research has made now significant progress towards using sustainable biomass, like wood, as an alternative raw material for chemical production.
The process can be as cost-effective as the conventional petroleum product-based process and is less damaging to the environment."
or xylochemical, syntheses of substances for which petroleum products are employed usually as starting materials. This new work shows that the relevant carbon skeletons can be created solely from wood-based starting materials.
because of their chemical structure, are suited better than petroleum products for many applications. It is often necessary to subject the latter to extensive transformation processes before they acquire comparable functionality."
465-kilometer (910-mile) flight without a drop of fuel. The world's first aircraft powered by solar energy was to remain in Ahmedabad for two days before flying to the holy city of Varanasi on Saturday.
and vegetable wrapping foil but it is considered not yet a full alternative to traditional petroleum-based plastics,
LA will never fully replace petroleum-based plastics. For one thing, some objects, such as toilet drain pipes, are meant not to be biodegradable.
however, is that climatic shifts tied to rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere a direct result of burning fossil fuels can only make matters worse.
and to maximize the use of renewable fuels. While it can operate totally independent of a large central generator
Gundersen said. he extraction cost of fuels continues to rise, while technology costs continue to fall.
Theye even been approached by other producers of wine, hops and biofuel to join. Take that Chicago Board of Trade.
Speculation that fossil fuel use overall is fast approaching a peak has been percolating for some time. A recent study published in the journal Fuel
and conducted by a team of resource geologists and environmental engineers in Australia and China suggested that global fossil fuel use would likely top out within the next 10 years,
and decline precipitously thereafter. They attributed much of this projection to decreased reliance on coal in China,
and economics are unlikely to be realized, given changes in energy consumption patterns in various countries and the status of ultimately recoverable fossil fuel resources globally. n a business-as usual situation,
and parts of Asia will strategically position themselves to be dependent on fossil fuel imports, said Gary Ellem,
The nearly limitless accessibility provided by smartphones fuels the idea that sharing things is more important than doing things.
and efficiently create hydrogen fuel. his new system shatters all of the combined safety, performance, and stability records for artificial leaf technology by factors of 5 to 10
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. Previous work in Lewis laboratory led to a major advance in the design.
CHEAP CATALYST 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,
and can operate for more than 40 hours continuously. ur work shows that it is indeed possible to produce fuels from sunlight safely and efficiently in an integrated system with inexpensive components,
#wiss Army knifehelps turn algae into biofuel Scientists have figured out a way to streamline the molecular machinery that turns cyanobacterialso known as blue-green algaento biofuels.
organisms that have many potential uses for making green chemicals or biofuels. The new protein
but also alter the center of pressure as the fuel and oxygen are burned to keep the aircraft properly trimmed.
accelerating and braking, the system is said to be more efficient, meaning less fuel and carbon emissions as a result.
#Teenage Girl Turns Plastic Trash Into Million-Dollar Biofuel An Egyptian teenager has discovered an inexpensive way to turn plastic trash into fuel
Azza Faiad ideas attracted the attention of the Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute. The institute gave the teen access to a lab
and its researchers in order to help refine her trash to fuel formula. Faiad discovered a cheap and plentiful catalyst called aluminisilicate that drastically reduces the cost of converting plastic waste into gases like methane and propane,
which can be turned into ethanol, what some scientists are calling iofuelbecause the organic chemicals from plastic polymers she extracts,
are the same chemicals extracted from vegetation to create ethanol biofuel. The process releases other chemicals that can also be recycled and sold.
Egypt produces a million tons of plastic trash every year, and it estimated Faiad process could convert that much trash into fuel worth$78 million every year.
In fact, she believes it could raise the total return to $163 million each year from Egypt plastic trash.
and she is now working on a patent for her trash to fuel process p
#Connecticut Becomes 1st State To end Chronic Homelessness Among Vets Connecticut officials announced Thursday they had become the first state in the nation to provide housing for every one of its chronically homeless veterans.
these problems can add up to rocketing fuel costs, excessive wear and tear, and the need to significantly oversize generators to cover relatively rare moments of fluctuating load,
For the grid at large, it could place strict limitations on how much renewable energy can be integrated before the need arises for excessive amounts of fossil fuel-fired power plants
Innovus is looking to maintain high fuel efficiency and the constant delivery of clean and stable power
while saving about 450,000 liters of fuel per year--a significant cost reduction for an island that must import all its fuel.
Mining companies pay roughly 70 cents per liter of diesel fuel, but often have to oversize their fixed-speed generator fleets to meet rare peaks in demand,
since it doesn imply any burning of fossil fuels. But pure battery systems still have a hard time penciling out in all but the most expensive fossil fuel markets.
Even if batteries get to the point where the round trip is more cost-effective than burning fossil fuel, hat greatfor Innovus,
Hoffman said. e still say, dispatch it when it there. But it in storage best interest to have fossil fuel,
or a fuel cell, or some dispatchable power source beyond your storage. t
#Solarcity Has a New Plan to Make Distributed Energy an Integral Part of the Grid Solarcity has an idea for how to help California utilities tap their own customers as an integral part of their billion-dollar distribution grid plans:
The plan is called a istribution loading ordera variation of the state longstanding loading order that puts renewables and efficiency ahead of fossil fuel-fired power for large-scale power procurements and transmission planning.
#Insanely Fuel efficient Engine Could Go to Mars And Back On One Tank Of Fuel An ion engine that smashes the fuel efficiency record has been registered for an innovation patent.
Inventor Patrick Neumann told University of Sydney student newspaper Honi Soit the drive could go to ars
and back on a tank of fuel but its first application may be shunting networks of small satellites around in Earth orbit.
Neumann says metal fuels have advantages besides efficiency. Hipep uses Xenon, and as Neumann says,
Spaceships using his drive might find capturing fuel made from a dead satellite a handy way to refuel,
but the fuel tank would be empty when you got there. In the second case a return journey would require either scavenging material locally
or parking fuel in Mars orbit, or on a refuelling station established at Phobos or Deimos, preparatory to the voyage.
Visit to BMW factory fuels further rumours of possible partnership During the visit executives from the technology company asked detailed questions about tooling and production,
or biofuels when exposed to the sun. Oxman said, uch functions will in the near future augment the wearer by scanning our skins,
#GE scientist creates new fuel-saving material NISKAYUNA, N y. For nearly three decades Krishan Luthra stubbornly labored away in a General electric research lab on a long-shot effort to cook up a new type of ceramic that few consumers will ever see or use.
and promises to save billions of gallons of fuel in the coming decades by reducing weight
It has helped GE win jet engine orders worth $100 billion so far from airlines looking to shave their huge fuel bills.
Pratt & Whitney, CFM main competition, is trying to achieve similar fuel savings with a new type of jet engine that uses a gear system never tried before.
and fuel consumption could improve by 10 percent extraordinary gains for a technology that counts a single percentage point of improvement as a huge advance.
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
New photocathode with several advantages Under the"Light2hydrogen"BMBF Cluster project and an ongoing"Solar H2"DFG Priority programme, a team from the HZB Institute for Solar fuels has developed now a novel photoelectrode
In this process, the titanium dioxide and platinum precursors are dissolved in ethanol and converted to a fog using an ultrasonic bath.
provided imaging of poplar cell wall structures that yielded unprecedented topological information, advancing fundamental research in sustainable biofuels.
#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 new solar fuel generation system, or artificial leaf, is described in the August 24 online issue of the journal Energy and Environmental science.
and materials components needed for an integrated solar fuels generator.""The new system consists of three main components:
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,
The new complete solar fuel generation system developed by Lewis and colleagues uses such a 62.5-nanometer-thick Tio2 layer to effectively prevent corrosion
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.
This research is part of a programme of work aimed at developing the next generation of biofuels.
This study provides new insight and understanding of the development of next-generation biofuels. 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.
Efforts to find cleaner, more sustainable forms of energy as well as using biotechnology techniques to produce synthetic chemicals are currently being developed at The University of Manchester.
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.
#Biofuels: plant the right crop in the right place (Nanowerk News) Corn, wheat and rapeseed can be used to produce biofuels, such as bioethanol and biodiesel.
According to recent findings by environmental scientists at Radboud University, the location of the agricultural lands used to grow these biofuel crops has a major impact on the greenhouse gas emission they ultimately produce.
The study that arrived at this conclusion is due to be published By nature Climate change("Greenhouse gas payback times for crop-based biofuels".
"This figure shows the duration of the payback times for greenhouse gases produced by corn-based bioethanol per intensively farmed crop location,
i e. where fertilizers and irrigation are used. While intensive crop farming results in greater greenhouse gas emission, it also increases the yields of crops used to produce biofuels and,
ultimately, reduces emission levels. To increase production of biofuels from crops, such as corn and wheat,
natural areas need to make way for agricultural land. The initial result of this is an increase in greenhouse gas emission.
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,
This figure shows the duration of the payback times for greenhouse gases produced by corn-based bioethanol,
it also yields smaller crops for producing biofuels. From Western europe to the tropics Elshout, a Phd candidate at Radboud University, explains:
The model demonstrates that the location of biofuel crops has a significant impact on greenhouse gas emission more so than does the type of crop
spatially-explicit overview of biogenic gas emission resulting from crops used to produce biofuels. In developing this model,
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.
This global model is applicable to first-generation biofuels. These include bioethanol from corn, wheat and sugar cane,
as well as biodiesel from soybeans and rapeseed. Food for discussion These results will contribute an angle of nuance to the current debate on biofuels in The netherlands.
In a follow-up study on biofuel crop farming Elshout and his colleagues hope to investigate the payback times related to the impact on biodiversity y
#Controlling swarms of robots with light and a single finger (w/video)( Nanowerk News) Using a smart tablet and a red beam of light,
Georgia Institute of technology researchers have created a system that allows people to control a fleet of robots with the swipe of a finger.
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.
#Biodiesel made easier and cleaner with waste-recycling catalyst Researchers at Cardiff University have devised a way of increasing the yield of biodiesel by using the waste left over from its production process.
when biodiesel is formed from vegetable oil, and convert this into an ingredient to produce even more biodiesel.
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
and could potentially reduce the costs of the biodiesel production process. The results have been published today, 14 september, in the journal Nature Chemistry.
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.
At present, biodiesel is produced by combining fats and oils with methanol, which is derived usually from fossil fuels.
A waste product from this process is crude glycerol which is formed on a large scale and contains many impurities that make it costly to purify
and reuse in other areas. In their study, the researchers, from the Cardiff Catalysis Institute, developed a way of turning the crude glycerol back into methanol,
which could then be used as a starting reactant to create more biodiesel. To achieve this, the researchers reacted glycerol with water,
the researchers estimate up to a 10 per cent increase in biodiesel production, which they claim would be very helpful to industry at this point in time.
"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 potentially cheaper, way, by converting an undesired by-product into a valuable chemical that can be reused in the process."
and seriously improve the quality of life by reducing carbon emissions from fossil fuels and encourage efficient use of resources."
"This paper shows how fundamental catalysis research can develop new mild processes to enhance the sustainability of biodiesel.
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011