Apr
30
The New Lead Acid Battery
April 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Atraveda is providing the material for Glamorgan University’s research and development facility to test a “bi-polar” lead acid battery design. The news of the collaboration to produce the world’s first commercially viable bi-polar lead-acid battery was announced at the opening of the UK’s first Advanced Bi-polar Battery Development research facility. The UK is certainly in [...]
Apr
29
The Good News in Natural Gas
April 29, 2009 | 3 Comments
There is a lot of natural gas out there in the ground and stored away in methane hydrates. Today we’ll look into the land based new production skills that are releasing a lot of natural gas that used to be uneconomic as it is locked into rock that is so low in porosity that it [...]
Apr
28
A Great New Way for Using Ethanol
April 28, 2009 | 1 Comment
Ethanol as a fuel supplement (could be additive, but not accurate in practice) could be redeemed by the research and development done by D.R. Cohn, L Bromberg and the estimable J.B. Heywood at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Rather than mandate as in the command from government to add 10% ethanol to every gallon of retail [...]
Apr
27
Brutal Truth vs. Moral Salesmanship
April 27, 2009 | 1 Comment
You’ve already voted for Congresspersons and the pig is over the pit now. The issues are numerous, related, unrelated and bewildering fraught with unknown costs and changes. It’s called ‘Cap-and-Trade,’ the Congress’s idea of solving global warming hysteria with an energy revolution. I can’t remember a bigger more diffused economic disaster show in memory. This [...]
Apr
24
Bio Hacking the Way to Make Bio Gasoline
April 24, 2009 | 1 Comment
Christopher Voigt at the University of California is genetically ‘hacking’ into the brewers yeast of ethanol fame to modify the yeast so its output isn’t ethanol but a methyl halide. The methyl halide switches over to a bio gasoline with a simple catalytic reaction. This is not a simple problem.
Voigt is targeting to use crop [...]
Apr
23
Food Plus Fuel Answers
April 23, 2009 | 4 Comments
The food vs. fuel crowd lives in ignorance and plays off the ignorance of the media to scare folks and generally just make trouble. Reality is a very different thing. Almost a complete reversal from the popular concept now so well sold.
I was triggered to write today by a headline for a press release from [...]
Apr
22
Reviewing the 60 Minutes Piece on Cold Fusion
April 22, 2009 | 4 Comments
With both Keith Johnson at the Wall Street Journal and Brian Wang at thenextbigfuture covering the 60 Minutes piece on “cold fusion” (transcript link) I better put in two cents worth and clear up some things that aren’t covered.
First, Mr. Johnson does a nice job in the objective frame the WSJ is famed for. Yet [...]
Apr
21
The Nebel Led Bussard Fusion Project Gets Funding!
April 21, 2009 | 1 Comment
M. Simon broke the news last week that the Department of Defense released its expenditure plan for the projects to be funded with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 including $2 million for Plasma Fusion (Polywell) Demonstration fusion plasma confinement system for shore and shipboard applications in the Joint OSD/USN project.
While its not [...]
Apr
20
CO2 to Methanol Fuel in One Process
April 20, 2009 | 5 Comments
Yugen Zhang, Ph.D., team leader at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore announced through a paper in the international chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition, where it was designated a “Hot Paper.” that the team activated carbon dioxide in a mild and non-toxic process to produce methanol, by using organocatalysts. The journal [...]
Apr
17
The Battery Update
April 17, 2009 | 4 Comments
One might think that batteries are a slow uninteresting business and all is set for electric storage – nothing could be further from the facts. This past week has seen several announcements that have serious implications for storage, world economics and consumer benefits.
What has happened is Japan’s Toshiba is shipping, shipping mind you this fall, [...]
