Oct
2
The Free Piston Engine Is Back In the News
October 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment
The free piston engine an offshoot of the “boxer engine” of BMW and Subaru fame is an opposed piston arrangement without connecting rods to a crankshaft. Instead a magnet is part of the connection between the pistons, which are simply connected straight across from each other.
That absence of rotating mass, angular torque use of the [...]
Sep
29
The Nuclear Success That Wasn’t Is Alive and Well
September 29, 2008 | 1 Comment
Its been 19 years since the Fleischmann-Pons Effect (FPE) burst out in a flurry of too much information that was poorly understood, explained and tested. That and the media storm and behaviors that people sometimes use under pressure led to the mainstream throwing out the science with the bad feelings. But, the spark triggered the [...]
Sep
18
Are Appliances as Good as the EPA Rating?
September 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy run the “Energy Star” program to award the labels that lead consumers to think one product is more efficient than another. They set standards, lay out the testing procedures and then manufacturers run self-done tests and sell based on their results.
There isn’t any third party or [...]
Sep
16
Power From Ball Lightning?
September 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment
One of the most mysterious phenomena is ball lightning. If some scientist’s theories are correct it could be powering large-scale reactors and could go a long way to solving the world’s energy needs. The latest is the joint study group led by Gerd Fussmann at the Max Planck Institute and Berlin’s Humboldt University who has [...]
Sep
1
Cry Havoc! And Let Loose the Dogs Of Law!
September 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Stupid is as stupid does. Last week saw some states attorneys’ generals file suit to compel the EPA to regulate CO2. So . . . a judge is going to decide that, what one responsible or credible person could say what might be the CO2 policy - but can not for lack of any reasonable [...]
Aug
25
A Case To Ditch Energy Independence
August 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Politics and the attending sound bites, slogans and dim thinking are soon to be laid on the Americans with a vengeance. One top slogan is “Energy Independence” that sounds good to the American mind but does, well, nothing for consumers, business or government. It’s nothing more than politicians and the press playing off of public [...]
Aug
13
John Axsen and Ken Kurani at the University of California’s Institute of Transportation Studies completed what may become a landmark in getting good handles on the personal vehicles available for purchase in the coming years in the form of plugin hybrid electric vehicles. (A pdf download)
What the study learned is the state of consumer knowledge [...]
Aug
12
A New Kind of Refrigeration
August 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Imagine a refrigerator, air conditioner or other compressed gaseous system that has no more coils, compressors and controls. Penn State’s Qiming Zhang is offering that his research is yielding a refrigeration technique that is based in ferroelectric polymers.
Ferroelectric polymers exhibit piezoelectric and pyroelectric effects that are usually encountered in certain single crystals and ceramics. Ziang [...]
Aug
7
The Competition of Energy and Fuel Demands
August 7, 2008 | 1 Comment
At this writing the energy and fuel demand for transport fuels in the developed nations is declining. Gas-guzzlers get parked, trucking gets better organized, and airline flight routes get cancelled. Consumption demand goes down. Special interests sue, lobby in Congress, bureaucrats regulate and investment is increased non-productively and paybacks are strung out over a longer [...]
Aug
3
The Energy Problem is Really a Political Problem
August 3, 2008 | 1 Comment
Last Friday saw the members of Congress, again for the several hundredth time, exit their jobs with the work undone. This again leaves the United States, for more of an indeterminate period of time, without any governmentally founded basis for working to a solution for expanding energy and fuel supplies. Its as if they don’t [...]
