cleantech
-
Could ammonia be the zero-carbon fuel we've been waiting for?
Ammonia would make a pretty handy, potentially carbon-free liquid transportation fuel, say engineers, and it could be produced right at gas stations using electricity from the grid, water, and air.
-
Cheap alloy could produce zero-carbon hydrogen from sunlight
An inexpensive combination of two metals common in the manufacture of computer chips can generate hydrogen from water, using only sunlight as an energy source. If the process can be made commercially viable -- and the simplicity and cost suggests it might -- it would mean yet another way to produce energy directly from sunlight, and a potential source of hydrogen for the kind of fuel cells that power both buildings and vehicles.
-
Wind power breakthrough: Carbon nanotubes make strongest, lightest blades ever
Bigger wind turbines can harvest more wind energy, but they're also heavier, which makes them less efficient. But a scientist at Case Western Reserve University figures he can solve this fundamental dilemma by throwing carbon nanotubes at it.
-
Google's open-source, wireless, smartphone-controlled lightbulb
Google continues to roll out new details about its wirelessly-controlled “smart” lightbulb, which gets around all the problems usually associated with making a home energy-aware. The latest: the company is working on open-source software that will run on the lightbulbs themselves.
-
'Skypump' let's you fill 'er up — with wind
Got an electric car? And some wind? Then this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship, if you add in the Sanya Skypump for a horsepower three-way. Sure, you might think putting a wind turbine on an electric car charging station is kind of obvious, if you are a wiseacre. But the Skypump is a […]
-
'Floatovoltaics' energize otherwise boring bodies of water
'Flotovoltaics,' solar panels that float on existing reservoirs, leads to all kinds of unexpected side benefits. At the Far Niente winery in Napa Valley, which pioneered the technology in the U.S., their floating solar grid reduces evaporation from their irrigation pond and inhibits algae growth. It also saves the winery from giving up valuable grape-growing land, even as it produces more electricity than the winery uses.
-
'Carbon recycling' makes fuel directly from air
At Sandia National Laboratories, a giant array of mirrors heats rings of metal oxides to 2,550 degrees F, allowing a beer-keg-size reactor to produce carbon monoxide or hydrogen gas out of CO2 or water. The result is known as syngas, and it can be further processed into the kind of hydrocarbon-based fuels (think gasoline and diesel) upon which our transportation infrastructure depends.
-
Solar-powered bulb brings both light and commerce to developing countries
Steve Katsaros, inventor of the Nokero solar-powered lightbulb, recently told CNN that he decided to sell his bulbs rather than give them away even though it runs counter to the traditional model of aid to the developing world.
-
Record-breaking electric car gets 1,000 miles to the charge
What's that? Could it be the whip-crack of range anxiety being dragged out back and shot?