'Manufactured in France by Audi partner company, Global Bioenergies, the fuel is produced by converting corn-derived glucose-a renewable source of biomass sugar-into isobutane gas.
Commonly used in refrigeration systems and aerosols, isobutane gas is also one of the staples of the petrochemical industry.
In this case, the team at Global Bioenergies refined it into a clear, high-grade,'unleadedfuel.""The next step in the process was to run the material through a conditioning
so that no biomass is required-just water, hydrogen, CO2 and sunlight, like how they're producing their new'e-diesel'fuel."
vice president for chemical engineering at Global Bioenergies, told Gizmag.""It's basically how we're moving away from an oil-based economy towards something that has a renewable, sustainable future to it."
light batteries from wood pulp Researchers have created a new type of high-capacity storage device that both elastic and super-strong,
and it will let us store way more electricity in much smaller spaces. The foam-like batteries and supercapacitors were made using an aerogel material taken from tree fibres,
and unlike today batteries, could be used to create 3d structures, and line flexible and odd-shaped materials such as clothing or the bodies of vehicles."
"There are limits to how thin a battery can be, but that becomes less relevant in 3d,"lead researcher Max Hamedi,
from the KTH Royal Institute of technology in Sweden and Stanford university in the US, said in a press release."
The batteries and supercapacitors-which are devices that store and release power much faster than batteries-were made out of a wood-based aerogel.
To create this aerogel, the team first broke down cellulose, the fibre found in trees,
"This aerogel is coated then with a special ink that conducts electricity within the aerogel, giving it the electronic properties that a battery requires.
Using the material as a base, the team carefully engineered a 3d supercapacitor with carbon nanotube electrodes,
and a hybrid battery. Both of them were fully functional even at 75 percent compression,
porous batteries such as this one would not be practical or have much storage capacity, Hamedi explains that it actually offers more functionality.
but in the future they could be used to store electricity in places that current batteries can't, and could help electric cars travel further on a single charge, thanks to their light and bendy structure.
#Light-based computers will be even more awesome than we thought Researchers have come up with an efficient way of transporting data between computer chips using light rather than electricity.
it also means we could build machines that consume far less energy. Wee already able to send data in the form of photons at incredible speeds through the optical fibres that make up our Internet,
it's also energy intensive, and it's responsible for making our computers so hot.""Up to 80 percent of the microprocessor power is consumed by sending data over the wires, one of the researchers,
and far more energy-efficient computers that use light rather than electricity for internal data transport, "as the press release explains.
and made it capable of continuously powering a battery-free surveillance camera. Even better, their work didn interfere with the router's data transfer speeds.
Researchers have known long that the electromagnetic waves broadcast by Wi-fi routers could be harnessed for energy as well as sending information,
not only run battery-free temperature and camera sensors using Wi-fi signals from a distance of six and five metres respectively,
they also proved that they could charge a range of coin-cell batteries at distances of up to nine metres.
#This origami-style battery could double the life of wearable gadgets If you own a smartwatch
-or indeed a smartphone-then you'll know that battery performance on modern-day gadgets isn't quite
With these devices so central to our daily lives, scientists from all over the world are working on smaller, better-performing batteries,
The innovation here isn't so much the material used in the batteries-it's the same lithium-ion compound that makes up the smartphone batteries of today-but the way in
this new battery style can be extended and retracted like a car antenna, even while it's powering a device.
That means the stretchable battery can go places where normal batteries can't go, like the band of your smartwatch or inside a very thin section of a robot.
The batteries that the researchers have created can stretch and expand to more than 150 percent of their compacted size,
scientists have spent many years trying to work on batteries that can be folded in this way, but packs created from previous attempts at the technology would often break
The batteries produced by the team from the US and China overcome this problem by placing carefully calculated soft creases at various points along the battery's body.
The inventors say that these batteries could double the life of a smartwatch between charges, for example,
by being fitted into the band. What's more, the manufacturing process is reasonably straightforward. There is a tradeoff though-the shape of these batteries means they can't hold as much charge as a comparable rectangular one."
"When you ask a battery to be flexible like this, you give up some of the energy you can store in a given volume.
But if you're a designer trying to make the thinnest watch face possible, who knows?
The aesthetics might make that tradeoff worth it,"Princeton university energy storage engineer Daniel Steingart, who wasn't involved in this particular research,
It won't break any records for battery life, then, but it could add some invaluable extra power where normal batteries are unable to go
-and that means these new kirigami batteries have a lot of potential for the years to come e
#Microsoft is building a drone army to catch mosquitoes and stop epidemics One potential use for drones that you might not have thought about is preventing the spread of disease.
They use expensive batteries and chemicals that are difficult to source, and indiscriminately collect plenty other bugs besides mosquitoes-there's huge room for improvement in terms of the technology and its efficiency,
and can be hooked up to a city electricity mains and installed along the side of any major road.
now is now capable of producing at least half of their total energy from solar power. According to Reuters, BMW has funded already software
This hydrogen can be stored in fuel cells that power the system when the light is too low for the power cells.
And while its energy saving abilities overall haven't been tested as yet, Smith believes that it could substantially help to reduce the environmental costs of cooling."
rather than electricity-guzzling air-conditioners. Someone get the technology commercialised, ASAP. Love science? Find out more about the research happening at UTS Science
They're made using tiny points of plasma light called voxels, that are created when the focused energy of a laser ionises the surrounding air.
The lasers used by the team from the University of Tsukuba's Digital Nature Group (DNG) are special femtosecond lasers transmitting in bursts of 30 to 270 femtoseconds (1 femtosecond is a quadrillionth of a second
"Our results led to calmer and safer plasma generation that can be incorporated into our daily lives."
and preparation-has been designed to produce crops with the least amount of energy expenditure possible. The operators claim the hydroponics
and will charge from zero to 100 percent in 30 to 60 seconds, perhaps by harvesting energy from the air.
#Wave generator powers US electrical grid for the first time The US has started receiving power from wave energy for the first time, thanks to a prototype wave generator called Azura.
Installed off the coast of Hawaii at the US NAVY's Wave Energy Test Site in Kaneohe bay, this 40-tonne,
Northwest Energy Innovations (NWEI), says the design will be improved and the new iteration will be installed deeper and in the vicinity of much bigger waves,
which Steve Dent from Engadget says will be enough energy to power several hundred homes. The key to the success of the Azura design is in how it manages to capture all aspects of movement in a wave,
which the Doe says marks a radical shift in how wave energy devices operate.""Waves have both side-to-side and up and down-down motion,
bobbing, twisting and wobbling its way to a higher electricity output.""The team plans on installing the new megawatt-capable system in 2017,
and has been supplying wave energy to the local grid since February. According to World Ocean Review, the global potential of wave energy is estimated to be around 11,400 TWH per year,
with the potential for that to be converted into some serious useable energy.""Its sustainable generating potential of 1,
700 TWH per year equates to about 10 percent of global energy needs,"the Review States. If wee smart, wel get on that sooner rather than later h
#Abnormal IVF embryos can now be predicted within 30 hours of development The chromosomal abnormalities that affect at least half of the human embryos created for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) can now be predicted within the first 30 hours of development at the cell
New zealand tech firm Stretchsense has announced it's working on a new type of energy harvesting sensor that can bend and flex
as these gadgets are naturally bending and shifting shape during the course of the day-something like the Apple Watch could benefit from the extra battery life provided by Stretchsense's sensors."
harvesting energy from human motion, "said O'brien.""Through our work with the University of Auckland, we have been able to create a compact,
#The LHC has discovered a brand new class of particles Just months after switching the Large hadron collider (LHC) back on at record-breaking energy levels,
#Scientists figure out how to make solar cells produce fuel AND electricity A new type of solar cell can convert liquid water into clean hydrogen fuel 10 times more effectively than any other technology,
and uses 10,000 times less precious material in the process. Invented by researchers in The netherlands,
the secret to these new prototype solar cells are gallium phosphide nanowires, which can split water into its hydrogen
and oxygen components far more cheaply and efficiently than the batteries and semiconductor materials that have been used in the past.
The efficiency of solar cell technology has improved dramatically over the past decade and is now providing Germany with at least half its national energy requirements.
And earlier this year in The netherlands, it was announced that a tiny, 70-metre stretch of road covered in solar cells generated enough electricity to power an household for a year.
Over the past few years, scientists have been figuring out how to take things one step further by using solar cells to produce both fuel and electricity.
The dream is one day wel be using nothing but the boundless energy of the Sun to not only power our homes, but our cars
trains, and buses too. Previous studies have shown that connecting an existing silicon solar cell to a water-splitting battery can produce hydrogen fuel,
but it certainly not a cheap enough process to be a realistic alternative. The most promising option is using some kind of semiconductor material that can convert sunlight into an electrical charge while splitting water into useable components,
and when used in big, flat sheets, it not capable of absorbing sunlight as efficiently as needed for a viable solar cell system.
So the researchers tried producing a grid of tiny gallium phosphide nanowires measuring 90 nanometres thick and 500 nanometers long,
and integrated them with existing solar cell technology. Not only did they end up using 10,000 less gallium phosphide than
even though this is still some way off the 15 percent achieved by silicon cells coupled to a battery."
Their challenge now is to figure out how to increase the yield of their gallium phosphide grids
so their solar cells can meet this 15 percent battery yield.""For the nanowires we needed 10,000 less precious Gap material than in cells with a flat surface.
-so you then actually have a fuel cell in which you can temporarily store your solar energy.
but until now, they'd had to surgically implant an electrical device. This is the first time movement has been restored voluntarily without surgery."
with faster and tougher data mechanisms theoretically delivering benefits for everything from 3d gaming through to better and potentially cheaper solid state drives and personal storage devices.
#Improved solar panels and printed electronics on the horizon with new material discovery Published today in Nature Communications,
University of Melbourne researchers say their discovery of the highly sought-after'nematic liquid crystals'can now lead to vastly improved organic solar cell performance.
"We have improved the performance of this type of solar cell from around 8 per cent efficient to 9. 3 per cent,
"The discovery is a step forward for the wider commercialization of printed organic solar cells. But more than this, could aid in the development of new materials with improved performance such as LCD screens."
"Uptake of the current generation of organic solar cells has lagged behind more widespread silicon-based models, due to their comparative lack of performance even with a simplified construction via large printers.
as opposed to the traditional'grid'formation of silicon-based cells.""It had been theorized that a certain group of nematic liquid crystals would provide excellent electronic properties--as well as being printable
This discovery could help improve the performance of these solar cells, and lead to even more innovation in the coming years,"concluded Dr Jones s
#Carbon nanotube finding could lead to flexible electronics with longer battery life Led by materials science Associate professor Michael Arnold
energy storage devices that are important for portable, flexible electronics. The Rice lab of chemist James Tour discovered last year that firing a laser at an inexpensive polymer burned off other elements and left a film of porous graphene, the much-studied atom-thick
The flexible material created at Rice university has the potential for use in electronics or for energy storage.
The sections are stacked then with solid electrolytes in between for a multilayer sandwich with multiple microsupercapacitors.
Capacitors use an electrostatic charge to store energy they can release quickly, to a camera's flash, for example.
Unlike chemical-based rechargeable batteries, capacitors charge fast and release all their energy at once when triggered.
But chemical batteries hold far more energy. Supercapacitors combine useful qualities of both--the fast charge/discharge of capacitors and high-energy capacity of batteries--into one package.
LIG supercapacitors appear able to do all that with the added benefits of flexibility and scalability.
The flexibility ensures they can easily conform to varied packages--they can be rolled within a cylinder
"Ripples, wrinkles and sub-10-nanometer pores in the surface and atomic-level imperfections give LIG its ability to store a lot of energy.
while thin-film lithium ion batteries are able to store more energy, LIG supercapacitors of the same size offer three times the performance in power (the speed at which energy flows).
And the LIG devices can easily scale up for increased capacity.""We've demonstrated that these are going to be excellent components of the flexible electronics that will soon be embedded in clothing and consumer goods,
#Two-dimensional metamaterial surface manipulates light A single layer of metallic nanostructures has been designed, fabricated and tested by a team of Penn State electrical engineers that can provide exceptional capabilities for manipulating light.
#Glass for battery electrodes In this regard researchers are diligently looking for new materials that exhibit a greater energy density
or larger than those used in today's lithium-ion batteries. Today's batteries provide a reliable power supply for our smartphones electric cars
and laptops but are unable to keep up with the growing demands placed on them. Dr Semih Afyon a scientist at the Electrochemical Materials Institute sums up the fundamental idea that is driving battery research:
What we need is new chemistry and novel compounds to obtain safe better and longer-lasting batteries.
ETH researchers led by Afyon and Reinhard Nesper professor emeritus of chemistry have made now a discovery.
Over the course of their several years of research they discovered a material that may have the potential to double battery capacity:
Afyon used this vanadate-borate glass powder for the battery cathodes which he then placed in prototypes for coin cell batteries to undergo numerous charge/discharge cycles.
During initial trials with vanadate-borate electrodes which were made not with material coated in RGO the discharge capacity dropped drastically after 30 charge/discharge cycles
One battery with an RGO-coated vanadate-borate glass electrode exhibited an energy density of around 1000 watt-hours per kilogram.
This would be enough energy to power a mobile phone between 1. 5 and two times longer than today's lithium-ion batteries Afyon estimates.
Afyon currently works as a project leader in a research consortium led by Jennifer Rupp professor of electrochemical materials focused on developing an innovative solid-state battery.
which could be achieved by improving battery and electrode designs as well as by using coatings other than reduced graphite oxide i
like transistors and solar cells. Part of the challenge of working with nanowires is creating a good transition between these nanowires and an electrical contact to the outside world.
and insulin resistance in part by resolving chronic inflammation and increasing energy expenditure but that's not the whole story of the drug's effects said Shannon Reilly first author of the study.
-and TBK1 leading to higher camp increased sensitivity to catecholamines and increased energy expenditure by the fat cells.
#Flexible methane production from electricity and biomass The variable operation modes were the biggest challenge during development says Project Head Siegfried Bajohr of the Engler-Bunte Institute (EBI) of KIT.
From the products of a biomass gasification plant i e. hydrogen carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide the Demosng pilot plant directly produces methane and water by means of a nickel catalyst (SNG operation.
Then the volume flow in the plant can be doubled utilization of carbon from biomass will increase to nearly 100%and a large amount of usable waste heat will be produced by the catalyst (Ptg operation.
As conventional methanation processes reach their limits at this point we have developed a new reactor concept Bajohr says.
There it will be integrated into the gas flows of a biomass gasification plant utilizing wooden residues.
and transporting it in our gas grids in the form of methane Thomas Kolb Head of the Engler-Bunte Institute of KIT emphasizes.
So far admixture of hydrogen in the natural gas grid has been limited to a few percent as storage distribution
Via an effective methanation wind and solar power can be fed into the natural gas grid without any limitations.
With plants such as Demosng excessive green electricity can be used much better. For example it might be converted decentrally with the carbon dioxide produced by the about 800000 biogas facilities
Similar design strategies have great potential for use in a wide variety of human-made systems, from biomedical devices to microelectromechanical components, photonics and optoelectronics, metamaterials, electronics, energy storage
"Potential applications range from battery anodes, to solar cells, to 3d electronic circuits and biomedical devices.""The 3d transformation process involves a balance between the forces of adhesion to the substrate and the strain energies of the bent,
twisted elements that make up the planar precursors, "explained Sheng Xu, a postdoctoral fellow and co-author of the research paper."
His work in photovoltaics serves as the basis for commercial modules that hold the current world record in conversion efficiency.
For clinical relevance it remained necessary to more fully investigate intact components of function such as the ability to form a healthy barrier while still absorbing nutrition or specific mechanisms of electrolyte exchange.
and his colleagues now want the electricity supply sector to adopt safety measures used by vehicle manufacturers.
if the industry changes to soft housings that absorb energy in the same way as modern car bodies he says.
which SINTEF's materials and electricity experts are collaborating. Almost four years ago the initiators of the project began to seek solutions to the problem.
and in the pilot project they have been joined by four Norwegian electricity generators. All large transformers use oil for insulation
The increasing focus on energy efficiency actions might also enforce a substitution of many smaller dry isolated transformers with oil filled transformers.
#Transformers are equipped with relay protection that disconnect them from the grid within a few power cycles
Car bodywork is designed with soft zones that absorb energy from collisions by crumpling. Our idea is to design transformer tanks in such a way that they expand
If such an expansion is allowed there will be more time available for the transformer to be disconnected from the grid before rupture occurs.
The previously unknown durability to extreme conditions position Graphexeter as a viable and attractive replacement to indium tin oxide (ITO) the main conductive material currently used in electronics such as'smart'mirrors or windows or even solar panels.
This is particularly exciting for the solar panel industry where the ability to withstand all weathers is crucial.
Having a metallic conductor stable at temperatures above 600c that is also optically transparent and flexible can truly enable novel technologies for space applications and harsh environments such as nuclear power centrals.
At just one atom thick graphene is the thinnest substance capable of conducting electricity. It is very flexible
material able to conduct electricity. The same team have discovered now that Graphexeter is also more stable than many transparent conductors commonly used by for example the display industry y
#Suitcase laboratory developed for rapid detection of the Ebola virus No electricity, no reliable cold chain,
Moreover, the mobile suitcase laboratory will be operated by an integrated solar panel and a power pack. The mobile suitcase laboratory will enter a field trial in Guinea, in collaboration with the Institut pasteur de Dakar
"In remote field hospitals, resources such as electricity and cold storage are often in short supply.""added Dr. Ahmed Abd El Wahed,"The Diagnostics-in-a-Suitcase will
which could help us reduce our reliance on conventional energy sources, in the ACS journal Nano Letters.
Yi Cui and colleagues note that nearly half of global energy consumption goes toward heating buildings and homes.
they can also be warmed actively with an electricity source to further crank up the heat. The researchers calculated that their thermal textiles could save about 1
000 kilowatt hours per person every year--that's about how much electricity an average U s. home consumes in one month h
An inhalable vaccine may eliminate the need for refrigeration which can not only improve shelf life but also enable distribution of vaccines to low-resource areas including many developing countries where there is significant need for better access to vaccines s
) HIV-1 virus. The process acts much like the jumper cables attached to a live battery recharging a dead one to get it running again,
As a result the energy consumption is reduced by half and also the physical space required to perform the operation is less
In traditional preservation methods, donated tissues are stored within a medical-grade refrigeration unit in sealed bags filled with a standard preservation solution.
and even plasmas stated Junhwan Kim a graduate student at Illinois and first author of the paper Nonreciprocal Brillouin Scattering Induced Transparency appearing in the journal Nature Physics.
Mitochondria, for instance, provide energy, while the lysosomes of animal cells and the vacuoles of plant cells are responsible for breaking down substances.
#'Bulletproof'Battery: Kevlar Membrane for Safer Thinner Lithium Rechargeables New battery technology from the University of Michigan should be able to prevent the kind of fires that grounded Boeing 787 Dreamliners in 2013.
The innovation is advanced an barrier between the electrodes in a lithium-ion battery. Made with nanofibers extracted from Kevlar, the tough material in bulletproof vests,
the barrier stifles the growth of metal tendrils that can become unwanted pathways for electrical current.
"Lithium-ion batteries work by shuttling lithium ions from one electrode to the other. This creates a charge imbalance,
the electrons have a path within the battery, shorting out the circuit. This is how the battery fires on the Boeing 787 are thought to have started."
"The fern shape is particularly difficult to stop because of its nanoscale tip, "said Siu On Tung, a graduate student in Kotov's lab,
so we can get more energy into the same battery cell size, or we can shrink the cell size,
Kevlar's heat resistance could also lead to safer batteries as the membrane stands a better chance of surviving a fire than most membranes currently in use.
so that batteries can charge and release their energy more quickly. The study,"A dendrite-suppressing solid ion conductor from aramid nanofibers,
"will appear online Jan 27 in Nature Communications. The research was funded primarily by the National Science Foundation under its Chemical
Running fuel cells on bacteria Researchers in Norway have succeeded in getting bacteria to power a fuel cell.
and the products of the process are purified water droplets and electricity. This is an environmentally-friendly process for the purification of water derived from industrial processes and suchlike.
It also generates small amounts of electricity--in practice enough to drive a small fan, a sensor or a light-emitting diode.
In the future, the researchers hope to scale up this energy generation to enable the same energy to be used to power the water purification process
often involving mechanical and energy-demanding decontamination steps at its outset. Nature's own generator The biological fuel cell is powered by entirely natural processes--with the help of living microorganisms."
"In simple terms, this type of fuel cell works because the bacteria consume the waste materials found in the water,
The voltage that arises between these particles generates energy that we can exploit. Since the waste in the wastewater (organic material) is consumed and thus removed,
and began discussing how bacteria could be used to generate energy. Since then, they have both been working to put the idea into practice--each from their own respective fields of expertise.
and generate electricity. The wastewater comes from the local Tine dairy and is rich in organic acids,
"At the moment, we're not talking about producing large volumes of energy, "says Netzer.""But the process is very interesting
because water purification processes are very energy-demanding using current technology. We're particularly pleased at being able to produce
just as much energy using low-cost materials as others are achieving using much more expensive approaches,
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