Feb

16

Can Ammonia aka NH3 Be a Fuel?

February 16, 2010 | 21 Comments

Last week Houston investment banker and peak oil prognosticator Matt Simmons popped a plan to use wind, the generated electricity and air to manufacture ammonia. Then just use it to fuel cars.  The price to start up is “only” $25 billion plus a new generation of cars for consumers to buy.  Is ammonia, NH3, remotely [...]

Feb

15

Solar Powered Hydrogen Production

February 15, 2010 | 29 Comments

The need for free hydrogen in industry and fuels is huge and the potential when a low cost method arrives, staggering.  Methane is nothing more than a carbon atom and 4 hydrogen atoms, so any production that comes up with hydrogen at low cost is going to be a breakthrough.  Professor Thomas Nann and colleagues [...]

Feb

12

The Latest Electric Vehicle Controller

February 12, 2010 | 2 Comments

The researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have designed, fabricated and demonstrated a PHEV traction drive power electronics system that provides significant mobile power generation and vehicle-to-grid support capabilities. (The Oak Ridge press release isn’t specific, but here PHEV seems to mean Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicle, not parallel hybrid EV.)  The [...]

Feb

11

A Totally Organic Light to Paste on the Wall

February 11, 2010 | 1 Comment

Swedish and American researchers have succeeded in producing a new type of lighting component that’s inexpensive to produce and can be fully recycled. Using the new super material graphene, the invention as an example could pave the way for glowing wallpaper made entirely of plastic.  The emerging field of “organic” or “plastic” electronics has already [...]

Feb

10

A Battery That Can Be Made Into Panels

February 10, 2010 | 3 Comments

Researchers from Imperial College London, their European partners, and the Volvo Car Corporation, are expanding development of a prototype battery material which can store and discharge electrical energy.  The material is also strong and lightweight enough to be used for car parts and can be shaped to fit into panels as needed. The researchers expect [...]

Feb

9

The Best Electric Vehicle Motor

February 9, 2010 | 8 Comments

The electric motor as we know it was first designed by Nikola Tesla and then vastly improved for commercial use by George Westinghouse with many improvements along the way.  Today’s motors follow two dominating designs called permanent magnet and induction that are descriptions of the rotating assembly inside the case that delivers the twisting force [...]

Feb

8

Methane Is the Future

February 8, 2010 | 5 Comments

Its as safe a declaration as can be made, methane, the main part of natural gas is a major future fuel. Case Item No. 1: In the U.S. alone, the combination of horizontal drilling and reservoir fracturing services becoming more affordable has moved up the U.S. reserve by 35% in existing fields of 2007 to [...]

Feb

5

The Battery Explosion Is Coming, Part Two

February 5, 2010 | 2 Comments

The cover story at Nikkei Electronics Asia titled ‘Winning in the Gigantic New EV Market’ examines over 16 web pages the positioning of industry in lithium ion battery production.  Its a long piece so I’ll condense it down, but by all means if you’re interested in a world view seen from the Japanese point of [...]

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