Mar

19

A Very Bright Guy With Some Sense

March 19, 2009 | 5 Comments

Here really bright people get noticed. Especially those that demonstrate they have some sense, you know like common sense. Dr. James Sweeney at Stanford comes to mind. Now we’ll add Professor Richard A. Muller at UC Berkeley. I haven’t met him as I have Sweeney, but Kerry Dolan wrote about Professor Muller in Forbes Magazine [...]

Mar

18

The Birth of the Magnetic Battery

March 18, 2009 | 9 Comments

If the news item had appeared anywhere other than EurekAlert I’d have blown it off. Then the press release subtitle of “His discovery is a ‘proof of principle’ of the existence of a ‘spin battery’” both baited and repelled me. Press releases can be devilish things. Yet the paper and the supplemental notes make a [...]

Mar

17

A Great Idea for Using Carbon Nanotubes

March 17, 2009 | 1 Comment

Lots of researchers are making, by ‘growing,’ carbon nanotubes, so last week when researchers from Rice University and the University of Oulu in Oulu, Finland, announced finding that carbon nanotubes could significantly improve the performance of electrical commutators that are common in electric motors and generators, one gets an attention seizure. The research appeared online [...]

Mar

16

A Fast Charge Discharge Breakthrough

March 16, 2009 | 2 Comments

MIT researchers led by Gerbrand Ceder, the Richard P. Simmons Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, have developed a lithium iron phosphate electrode material that achieves ultra-high discharge rates comparable to those of “supercapacitors,” while maintaining the high energy density characteristic of lithium-ion batteries. Stop right there, by no means is the technology at the [...]

Mar

13

More Sunlight to Fuel Technology Progress

March 13, 2009 | 4 Comments

One goal of science is to develop an artificial version of photosynthesis to produce chemicals that would be fuels, hopefully for many a CO2 and water to a hydrocarbon or alcohol. The Sandia Lab, MIT, Penn State and now Feng Jiao and Heinz Frei, chemists with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Physical Biosciences Division who are [...]

Mar

12

Get Ready for $6 Gas with an E85 Ethanol Conversion or Build a Hotrod!

March 12, 2009 | Leave a Comment

One day, sooner or later oil prices will drive gasoline to very high prices. That plus the imminent Obama/Democrat campaign to tax carbon will have another cost added into the price and many states plus the Congress are actively shopping various gas tax ideas. All would become an economic government made disaster to add more [...]

Mar

11

A New Material for Ultracapacitors

March 11, 2009 | 15 Comments

The popular and news making EEStor has a competitor coming. EEStor, now famed for their secrecy about what goes in their capacitor, leaves lots of room for speculation. Of note is they have gained more credibility over the years and seem closer to delivering product. The ultracapacitor field is based on simple, or as simple [...]

Mar

10

A Whole New Solar Cell Type

March 10, 2009 | 10 Comments

The idea to use fool’s gold rather than silicon or thin film for photovoltaic solar cells is an idea developing out of Switzerland that is gaining credibility, sophistication and technical success. Fool’s gold, the shiny mineral found in some rocks is dirt cheap and comparatively easy to make molecule. The technical description is a mineral [...]

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