Oct

20

DC Wiring for the Home

October 20, 2011 | 3 Comments

The Brits are first with a DC (Direct Current) system for the home.  It’s time and welcome.  It should become an international standard as soon as possible. The energy losses from converting alternating current (AC) of the grid to DC can be up to 45 percent. Most small electronic devices run on, or with converted [...]

Sep

27

Piezoelectric Power Grows Ten Times

September 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has discovered a new material that has 10 times the piezoelectric effect of crystals and ceramics making it suitable for perhaps hundreds of everyday uses.  A 10-fold increase is going to have impact. ORNL’s Volker Urban and colleagues at Technical University Aachen in Germany noticed the reverse piezoelectric effect [...]

Aug

18

Iron as a Catalyst Is Improved Again

August 18, 2011 | Leave a Comment

Iron as a catalyst is making news, especially in Europe where the element is suspected to have a role in the catalyst for the Rossi E-Cat.  That might be the case as scientists at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique Varennes, Québec, Canada (INRS) have published a paper in Nature Communications showing an iron [...]

Jul

26

Ready For a New Fuel Mix in a Dual Fuel Engine?

July 26, 2011 | 4 Comments

An award-winning University of Wisconsin-Madison team led by professor Rolf Reitz will showcase at the Wisconsin State Fair a student hybrid vehicle for advanced fuel technology that harnesses the advantages of both diesel and gasoline.  The fuels are mixed in the combustion process. Now this is something serious to watch.  The UW-Madison Hybrid Vehicle Team [...]

Jun

16

A Very Different Fuel and Fuel Cell

June 16, 2011 | Leave a Comment

Out of Poland comes an alternative fuel and fuel cell. The fuel chosen is formic acid and the fuel cell runs at room temperature. A room temperature operation seizes attention; formic acid makes for a set of questions. Dr. Andrzej Borodziński at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw [...]

Jun

1

NASA Licenses Its Direct Methanol Fuel Cell to the Private Sector

June 1, 2011 | 2 Comments

Just recently and just announced USC and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, which manages the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) for NASA has awarded a license to SFC Energy, Inc., the U.S. affiliate of SFC Energy AG a non-exclusive license for the JPL’s Direct Methanol Fuel Cell that will facilitate the expansion of the [...]

May

4

Harvesting Power From Vibrations

May 4, 2011 | 2 Comments

University of Michigan electrical engineers have built a piezoelectric generator that can harness energy from vibrations and convert it to electricity with five to 10 times greater efficiency and power than other devices in its class. It’s smaller than a penny. The UM team has built a complete system that integrates a high-quality energy-harvesting piezoelectric [...]

Apr

27

A Low Cost Fuel Cell Catalyst Design

April 27, 2011 | 1 Comment

Maybe this is it, or so close that fuel cells might get some market traction at consumer prices.  In a paper published Friday April 22, 2011 in Science, Los Alamos researchers describe the use of a platinum-free catalyst in the cathode of a hydrogen fuel cell. Eliminating platinum the precious metal more expensive than gold, [...]

« go back — keep looking »