Jun
23
A Better Way to Make Carbon Pay
June 23, 2008 | 5 Comments
It’s been over 110 years since William Jacques, an American electrical engineer and chemist, first described the Direct Carbon Fuel Cell back in 1896 in his original patent application. The DCFC was explored over the years in efforts to overcome the problems until the 1970s when SRI International of Menlo Park California verified the original […]
Jun
20
Storing The Power Of The Wind
June 20, 2008 | 9 Comments
The wind blows at its own time and not necessarily when people need the power from the turbine. That makes energy storage for wind power production an important field. Wind turbines are going up at incredible rates worldwide and offer another problem besides the storage issue – the intermittentcy in very widely disbursed wind farms […]
Jun
19
Iowa Floods – You Might Pay More
June 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment
The flip side to food vs. fuel is that the corn crop may come up short enough to drive ethanol in part off the market for gasoline addition. Estimates are putting the price increase at 15% or nearly 60 cents per gallon. At 10% in E-10 mixes that could be high but even at a […]
Jun
18
The Riposte Worth Reading
June 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Last month the Wall Street Journal alleged Vinod Khosla was advocating subsidies for food-based ethanol. The WSJ story opined that Mr. Khosla should “take a vow of embarrassed silence,” in that Mr. Khosla has a position of claiming that ethanol is “overblown” in its role to the food price and rice and wheat shortages. Mr. […]
Jun
17
Bussard’s Machine Runs Great!
June 17, 2008 | 2 Comments
I should have read the emails sooner – last Thursday night saw Alan Boyle put up his report about his conversation with Richard Nebel at EMC2. Quoting Mr. Nebel saying, “We’re fully operational and we’re getting data. The machine runs like a top. You can just sit there and take data all afternoon.” Whew, what […]