The Weekend Link List

November 16, 2007 | 1 Comment

Yesterday we discussed James Hunt and the background on the hydrogen generator system his company is developing. So this release at Penn State with a microbial electrolysis cell system that’s yielding either 1:1.44 or 1:2.88 depending on what the writer meant is a confirmation of sorts and now there is a biological solution, too. Even more broadly is that the release mentions there is potential for using the research to design a substitute for current fertilizer production. It has been a very big week for hydrogen.

Frank Pringle’s microwave emitter is being installed commercially. This device subjects the material within its exposure zone to microwaves and the results are hydrocarbons. The commercial version will install at 1:17 in:out for a mighty result to say the least. Even as the feedstock is used tires with an abundance of hydrocarbon content, there is a wide array of feed stocks that work in the emitted field. The story is here at PopSci’s innovation award site. He seems a little oil company paranoid, but eccentrically successful for sure.

The noted scientist Nate Lewis at Caltech is the focus of a story by ABC News. To quote the best words that ABC quotes, “Energy is the single most important technological challenge facing humanity today. Nothing else in science or technology comes close in comparison. … With energy, we are in the middle of doing the biggest experiment that humans will have ever done. And there is no tomorrow, because in 20 years that experiment will be cast in stone. If we don’t get this right, we can say as students of physics and chemistry that we know that the world will, on a time scale comparable to modern human history, never be the same.” Those are the closing quotes, which I hope is an incentive to click over and read the whole thing. It’s an airy mass media piece but it’s worth the time.

An awful large part of engineering that addresses energy and fuel contains or exploits the attributes of magnets. This article by Science Daily covers a new innovation by Florida State University’s National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. Here is a press release that points to use by nanoscience and semiconductor research. But these things migrate and evolve and it is for me just fascinating as the electromagnetic force is a nuclear energy that we think we understand but I suspect holds much more promise.


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1 Comment so far

  1. Two Biology Studies Look Into Extracting and Replacing Oil on December 18, 2007 2:11 PM

    […] study might spark an innovation by someone else in connecting with other technologies such as Frank Pringle’s microwave degrader.  Frank won one of Popular Science’s top innovation awards with this […]

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