Sep

30

Building a Cheaper Hybrid Car

September 30, 2009 | 6 Comments

Hanna Plesko, a doctoral student at the Power Electronic Systems Laboratory of ETH Zurich has worked out a better and less costly to produce power electronic converters for hybrid cars. Plesko says, “It’s rumored that hybrid vehicles can improve your image, but in some cases the automobile companies have difficulties to cover their costs.”  With [...]

Sep

29

The Latest Nuclear Disaster

September 29, 2009 | 1 Comment

The U.S. is facing a nuclear disaster well underway and threatening to get much worse.  It’s personnel leaving the field, and it’s a horrifying nightmare.  Skills for oversight and regulatory issues, safety and new develpoments are disappearing. Christopher Kouts, is acting director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management at the Department of Energy.  [...]

Sep

28

Nails For the OPEC Coffin

September 28, 2009 | 7 Comments

LS9 has raised $25 million to help further test and scale up its technology for making diesel equivalent from designer microbes and sugar to help further test and scale up its technology.  This financing round includes a major oil company, Chevron as well as the venture firms of Khosla Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Chevron’s [...]

Sep

25

The Super Sexy Swedish Electric Stunner

September 25, 2009 | 5 Comments

Perhaps you remember when Volvos looked like they were carved from wood by an axe while other manufacturers were going windswept and aerodynamic.  Then they finally switched to svelte a decade or so back and improved on that while others have moved on to muscular, angular and blocklike.  One wonders who is leading whom. Volvo [...]

Sep

24

A Solution for an Unrecognized Battery Problem

September 24, 2009 | 1 Comment

Far from the minds of the media, journalists and press is the problem of temperature for electricity storage.  Batteries in particular have a major problem of releasing capacity particularly when cold.  A major share of the market for transport batteries is where winter would put a battery energized electric vehicle out of work simply because [...]

Sep

23

Up Rating Corn Ethanol Production

September 23, 2009 | 2 Comments

A British company has found and bred a compost bacterium that may be coming to the U.S. corn ethanol industry.  Chief executive officer Hamish Curran of TMO Renewables Ltd. said in an interview with Reuters on September 15th 2009, “The application of our technology results in the greening of corn ethanol.” Curran said the TMO [...]

Sep

22

Chevron Recycles Two of Three Major Plant Products Back to Fuel

September 22, 2009 | 1 Comment

Chevron’s division Chevron Technology Ventures (CTV) and Mascoma Corporation have come to a feedstock processing and lignin supply agreement. In the deal CTV will provide various sources of lignocellulosic feedstock to Mascoma, which will then convert the feedstock to cellulosic ethanol through its proprietary process, which produces lignin as a by-product. Now it gets interesting. [...]

Sep

21

A Great New Light Bulb

September 21, 2009 | 6 Comments

Vu1 Corporation announced last week that their new technology for a light bulb is going into production. It’s a very interesting take on an old technology.  Energy efficient like the compact florescent and pleasing to the eye like an incandescent, the new bulb has a good future. Vu1’s introduction is for their Electron Stimulated Luminescence [...]

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