Nov
28
Another Way to See Catalysts At Work Plus a New Class of Catalysts
November 28, 2008 | 2 Comments
It seems to be a breakout month for catalysts. We just looked a few days ago at a method to see them working and now Rice University has announced and Michael Wong’s team has published their research in seeing catalysts work in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
This new technique relies on nanoparticles consisting [...]
Nov
27
A Couple Thanksgiving Day Treats
November 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Hey, getting away from the calories and that bloated feeling? Need a little insight, satire and hope for the days to come with a bit of reversed viewing to get a little perspective on all of this? Well, the Dow Industrials is about a 1000 points over the recent daily lows, mortgage rates fell nearly [...]
Nov
26
A Thorium Update
November 26, 2008 | 1 Comment
Way back on the main lists of power generation is the metal thorium that can be used similarly to uranium for fission nuclear fuel. Thorium misses most issues that concern people about nuclear power such as radioactivity, long-term waste issues and making weapons from the fuel.
Last month saw Senator Orrin Hatch pop a bill, S [...]
Nov
25
Anything Hot Equals Power
November 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Low temperature heat, now claimed down to 65 degrees C is being used to generate electricity. That would scald you but isn’t hot in terms of being past the boiling point of water or oven cooking temperatures. It’s well within range of lots of geothermal. It’s easily under the waste heat temperature in most all [...]
Nov
24
A Not So Small War
November 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment
For many the piracy off the horn of Africa seems interesting if a little remote. The stories about pirates catching up to freighter ships then asking for a ransom might seem an odd curiosity.
But when pirates seize and move 2 million gallons of oil, or more than 36,000 tons of wheat we’re talking food and [...]
Nov
21
Watching A Catalyst at Work
November 21, 2008 | 2 Comments
A team at Cornell University led by Professor Peng Chen has developed an internal reflection fluorescence microscope that is more versatile than commercial models designed to observe a catalyst at work. This is a first and an important breakthrough event.
“Ingenious” as described by the University writer Bill Steele, the microscope is part of a method [...]
Nov
20
Ideological Purity vs. Intelligence About Coal
November 20, 2008 | 5 Comments
With all the believers in the face of the best facts still pushing for global warming doomsdays, coal is having a difficult time as a fuel for the exploding need for electrical power generation. Now I fully agree that burning coal and sending clouds of effluents rich in nasty metals, sulfur compounds and an array [...]
Nov
19
Torrefaction – A New Process In Biomass and Biofuels
November 19, 2008 | 5 Comments
Torrefaction is a thermo-chemical treatment of biomass in the 200 to 340 degrees Celsius range. In this process the biomass partly (especially the hemi-cellulose) decomposes, giving off various types of volatiles. The remaining torrefied biomass (solid) has approximately 30% more energy content per unit of mass.
Annually, photosynthesis is said to store 5-8 times more energy [...]
Nov
18
Where to Make The Big Money In Energy
November 18, 2008 | 1 Comment
Many believe that buying equities, stocks, oil well drilling project shares and bonds in companies that work in finding and producing oil plus the companies that are researching and expecting to produce alternatives are the investments positioned for great future growth. That’s a near sure thing as energy use is going to be volatile over [...]
Nov
17
The Big Facts About Climate Change
November 17, 2008 | 9 Comments
One can fairly expect that the media, pseudo science, muckrakers, financial goblins and other players are going to try to have climate change pave the way to their holy nirvana. It’s enough to make taxpayers and consumers recoil in horror. It bad enough that we support an amazing array of “research” paid to prove global [...]
