Apr
20
CO2 to Methanol Fuel in One Process
April 20, 2009 | 20 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 [...]
Apr
16
Exploring a New Gasification Process
April 16, 2009 | 5 Comments
Diane Hildebrandt, the Director of the Centre of Materials and Process Synthesis at The University of Witwatersrand and colleagues at Rutgers University are proposing new Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) reaction chemistry and process designs. They are saying in their letter published in Science Vol. 323. no. 5922, pp. 1680 – 1681 doi: 10.1126/science.1168455 that the new reaction [...]
Apr
15
Space Based Solar Power Gets the First OK!
April 15, 2009 | 8 Comments
Pacific Gas and Electric the southern California utility asked California Public Utilities Commission last Friday for permission to buy 200 megawatts of electricity from Solaren’s orbiting power plant when and if it’s built, projected for 2016, a mere 7 years out. PG&E spokesman Jonathan Marshall said, “We’re convinced it’s a very serious possibility that they [...]
Apr
14
The New Nuclear Power Reactor System
April 14, 2009 | 8 Comments
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) has a new concept that uses lasers to trigger a fusion that feeds neutrons out to drive a fission reaction. The idea has been known since 1951 when Andrei Sakharov, Hans Bethe and other scientists explored using high-energy neutrons from fusion reactions to transmute, or burn, fissile material. Its not [...]
Apr
13
A Major Algae Breakthrough for Fuels and Food
April 13, 2009 | 2 Comments
Martin Spalding, professor and chair of the Department of Genetics, Development and Cell Biology at Iowa State University has identified one of the key proteins in the algae responsible for concentrating and moving that CO2 into cells. “This is a real breakthrough. No one had previously identified any of the proteins that are involved in [...]
Apr
10
The Thorium Promotion Issue Revisited
April 10, 2009 | 2 Comments
I was triggered to think about the issues getting thorium-fueled reactors on the market by a piece from Kurt Cobb at Scitizen.com. Mr. Cobb is a dependable professional writer with experience in the energy field and a long list of sites where his work has found a welcome. The list runs from the Energy Bulletin, [...]
Apr
9
The Technology Transfer Issues of Batteries
April 9, 2009 | 1 Comment
It may not be just the technology that is holding up progress, rather its more likely the technology transfers between engineering skills that is a subtle and slowing effect. There is a lot or research going on for batteries. There is a lot of development in automobile design racing to better products, too. The battery [...]
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