Apr

30

BlackLight Makes Major Progress

April 30, 2010 | 8 Comments

Brian Wang at the site Nextbigfuture spotted a new pdf file on the BlackLight Power site that has a wealth of information with a significant notation about the company’s progress on validation called “Updated Technical Presentation -  4/21/10.” The notation from the third page in the pdf is, “Validations and Technical Due Diligence – underway [...]

Apr

29

Get Ready For the Super Ultra Capacitor

April 29, 2010 | 14 Comments

The latest news in energy storage has Drexel University with a new piece out that notes in a paper published in Science by John Chmiola doubling supercapacitors storage and then MIT Technology Review marking it up to triple. It’s a little amusing, yet Chmiola is on to something. Chmiola idea is to use an electrode [...]

Apr

28

A Fuel Cell Breakthrough

April 28, 2010 | 6 Comments

Researchers at the University of Houston  and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have created a new form of platinum that could be used to make cheaper, more efficient fuel cells. By tweaking platinum’s reactivity, the researchers were able to curtail the amount of platinum required by 80 percent, and hope to soon [...]

Apr

27

Getting Ready to Build the Electric Car

April 27, 2010 | 3 Comments

When it comes to getting organized the Germans may just be the world’s pacesetters if not leaders.  No less than 33 Fraunhofer Institutes are working together on the diversity of issues that surround “electromobility.” The goal is to help German companies speed up their pace of innovation.  When it comes to the electric vehicles (EVs) [...]

Apr

26

Don’t Mess With Texas Oil & Gas

April 26, 2010 | 11 Comments

The past week saw a flurry of reports and commentary about the Texas petroleum formation called Eagle Ford.  Eagle Ford is a huge new oil and gas discovery, well, maybe not ‘new’ as much as economically profitable with the technology of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.  With no particular surprise the technology has migrated from [...]

Apr

23

Will Biodiesel Survive?

April 23, 2010 | 6 Comments

Almost all biodiesel production is in serious financial straights as the U.S. government’s $1 a gallon tax credit for the blenders has expired.  When a gallon of biodiesel is blended at 2% spread over 50 gallons of selling product the higher price of biodiesel isn’t much of an issue.  But for the biodiesel producer that [...]

Apr

22

How Not to Be Afraid of Nuclear Power

April 22, 2010 | 1 Comment

The obvious answer, simply put is – get informed.  But that borders on silliness, as nuclear power is sophisticated science that needs a lot of successfully passed education to become involved.  But those smart geek types who do pass have a few among them that can get the messages most important to everyone else out [...]

Apr

21

Big Growth From Little Geothermal

April 21, 2010 | 2 Comments

Small geothermal in the US grew in the past year with 144 projects under way in 15 US states.  When completed, the projects will add more than 7,000MW of baseload power capacity, roughly equivalent to the total power used in California from coal-fired power plants.  That’s an average of 37.25MW each.  It really adds up. [...]

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