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'Optical Battery' Discovery Could Mean Solar Power Without Solar Cells. From EarthTechling's Caleb Denison: Researchers at the University of Michigan have made a scientific discovery that is intriguing all on its own but it is the breakthrough’s potential applications in solar power generation that have them excited.

'Optical Battery' Discovery Could Mean Solar Power Without Solar Cells

According to Stephen Rand, a professor at the university and author of the paper that discusses his team’s discovery in the “Journal of Applied Physics”, the researchers found a way to make an “optical battery” which harnesses the magnetic attributes in light that, until now, scientists didn’t think amounted to much of anything. The report explains that light has both electric and magnetic components but, until now, scientists believed the magnetic field effects were weak enough that they could be ignored. Scientists use bacteria to create fuel from sunlight and CO2. Shewanella bacteria, which produces ketones that are processed into fuel(Image from 'Cultivating Bacteria's Taste for Toxic Waste') Researchers from the University of Minnesota have announced a breakthrough in the quest to create a viable fuel alternative using greenhouse gases.

Scientists use bacteria to create fuel from sunlight and CO2

The process uses two types of bacteria to create hydrocarbons from sunlight and carbon dioxide. Those hydrocarbons can in turn be made into fuel, which the scientists are calling "renewable petroleum. " The process starts with Synechococcus, a photosynthetic bacterium that fixes carbon dioxide in sunlight, then converts that CO2 to sugars.

Those sugars are then passed on to another bacterium, Shewanella, which consumes them and produces fatty acids. "CO2 is the major greenhouse gas mediating global climate change, so removing it from the atmosphere is good for the environment," said Frias' advisor, Prof. New battery technology may allow for complete recharging within minutes. Of all the criticisms of electric vehicles, probably the most commonly-heard is that their batteries take too long to recharge – after all, limited range wouldn't be such a big deal if the cars could be juiced up while out and about, in just a few minutes.

New battery technology may allow for complete recharging within minutes

Well, while no one is promising anything, new batteries developed at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign do indeed look like they might be a step very much in the right direction. They are said to offer all the advantages of capacitors and batteries, in one unit. Hydra Tower: Skyscraper Harnesses Lightning For Energy (PICTURES) New type of light-emitting material could rival existing OLEDs. The new phosphors glow in blue and orange when triggered by ultraviolet light (Photo: Marcin Szczepanski, U-M College of Engineering) Image Gallery (2 images) Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are a technology that shows great promise, as they are thinner, lighter, and less expensive to manufacture than their non-organic LED counterparts.

New type of light-emitting material could rival existing OLEDs

Despite their name, however, they are not fully organic, as small amounts of precious metals are required to make them glow. A completely organic and even cheaper alternative could be on its way, though ... researchers from the University of Michigan have created metal-free organic crystals that shine with phosphorescence – until now, only non- or semi-organic compounds have displayed this property. The crystals – or phosphors – glow white in visible light, while radiating blue, green, yellow and orange in ultraviolet light. The light itself comes from molecules of oxygen and carbon called “aromatic carbonyls.” New Energy Technologies demonstrates electricity-generating SolarWindow prototype. A miniature helicopter is powered by electricity generated by the previous SolarWindow prototype (Photo: New Energy Technologies) Image Gallery (2 images) Over the past several years, a number of companies and institutions have been developing technologies that could allow windows to double as solar panels.

New Energy Technologies demonstrates electricity-generating SolarWindow prototype

Around the world in 0.083 days: Acabion's vision for future transport. Pneumatic Futurama-style transport systems were proposed as far back as the late 1800’s following the invention of pneumatic tubes for carrying mail around buildings.

Around the world in 0.083 days: Acabion's vision for future transport

Swiss company Acabion sees such vacuum tube-based mass transport systems becoming a reality by 2100 and has conceived a vehicle capable of traveling at speeds of almost 12,500 mph (20,000 km/h) on such a platform. The company envisages a global network that would let users circle the globe in less than two hours and make transcontinental journeys possible in less than the time it currently takes to get across town. View all. Breakthrough promises $1.50 per gallon synthetic gasoline with no carbon emissions. Cella Energy CEO Stephen Voller exhibits his breakthrough technology - right shows the fuel's hydrogen microbeads under a microscope UK-based Cella Energy has developed a synthetic fuel that could lead to US$1.50 per gallon gasoline.

Breakthrough promises $1.50 per gallon synthetic gasoline with no carbon emissions

Apart from promising a future transportation fuel with a stable price regardless of oil prices, the fuel is hydrogen based and produces no carbon emissions when burned. Paper batteries recharge from moisture in the air, seemingly defy laws of nature. New Split-Cycle Engine Design Shown To Improve Fuel Economy By 50 Percent. Split cycle engines—engines that split the functions of a normal four-cycle piston into two separate but adjacent and complementary pistons—have never been able to match the efficiency and overall function of traditional internal combustion engines, but a new design could change all that.

New Split-Cycle Engine Design Shown To Improve Fuel Economy By 50 Percent

By tweaking the standard split-cycle design with new features like a compressed air tank that captures wasted energy from the system, the Scuderi Group claim not only to have matched the efficiency of the standard four-cycle engine, but to have far surpassed it. The Scuderi Group's design has drawn interest from nine major carmakers, the company says, but has yet to prove the technology in real world prototype tests. But in computer simulations that install a Scuderi engine in a 2004 Chevy Cavalier, the split-cycle engine shows to reduce fuel consumption by 25 to 36 percent, translating roughly to a 50 percent improvement in overall fuel economy. Salt water as fuel? Erie man hopes so. For obvious reasons, scientists long have thought that salt water couldn't be burned.

Salt water as fuel? Erie man hopes so

So when an Erie man announced he'd ignited salt water with the radio-frequency generator he'd invented, some thought it a was a hoax. John Kanzius, a Washington County native, tried to desalinate seawater with a generator he developed to treat cancer, and it caused a flash in the test tube. Within days, he had the salt water in the test tube burning like a candle, as long as it was exposed to radio frequencies.

His discovery has spawned scientific interest in using the world's most abundant substance as clean fuel, among other uses. Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist, held a demonstration last week at the university's Materials Research Laboratory in State College, to confirm what he'd witnessed weeks before in an Erie lab. Profile on TED.com. MIT researchers engineer viruses to split water for hydrogen. BioLite low-emission camping stove creates its own electricity. Consider the humble camping stove.

BioLite low-emission camping stove creates its own electricity

It requires fuel - perhaps some unwieldy bottle that air carriers object strongly to. Maybe it needs batteries to run a fan, or billows out smoke so you smell like smoked sweatshirt for the rest of the trip. The solution might be the BioLite stove - it's a collapsible wood-burning cook stove that uses almost any forest-found fuel and converts its own heat energy into electricity to achieve efficient combustion with ultra-low emissions. Fuel Since the BioLite will burn almost any biomass fuel; from wood, pine cones, leaves, pellets, rice husks, even dung, it means fuel need not be carried, unlike bottles for petroleum or gas burners that cannot be carried on airplanes and must be sourced at destination. Lite-On's Mobile Lamp LED bulb works even when the power is out. Solar light bulb to brighten the lives of those in developing nations.

Nokero's N100 weatherproof solar lightbulb could provide a clean, safe and affordable lighting alternative to fuel-based illumination currently used by a quarter of the world's population Image Gallery (6 images) As public consultation starts on ways to reduce and replace fuel-burning lighting around the globe, Nokero has announced a solar-powered LED solution aimed squarely at disaster areas and the developing world. High-Pressure Process Yields a Brand-New Material That Stores Massive Amounts of Energy. With lackluster battery tech one of the biggest hurdles standing between existing energy economies and those of the green, renewable future, there's a lot of pressure on researchers to come up with the next big battery breakthrough.

And pressure, it turns out, might be just the ticket. By exerting the kinds of super-high pressures found deep within the Earth on a unique compound, researchers at Washington State University's Pullman campus have created a novel new material with the capacity to store huge amounts of mechanical energy as potential chemical power. Calling the material "the most condensed form of energy storage outside of nuclear energy," the researchers created the super-battery inside a diamond anvil cell, a small chamber that can create extremely high pressures within a confined space. The team filled the chamber with xenon difluoride, a white solid usually used to etch silicon conductors. [Science Daily] Philips claims first AC-powered OLED module, points the way to cheaper, more reliable bulbs. Aachen, Germany – Scientists from Philips Research have developed the first-ever organic light emitting diode (OLED) module that can be powered directly from a mains electricity supply.

The prototype opens the door to OLED systems that can be directly plugged into standard power outlets without the need for bulky power management circuitry. This will reduce the bill of materials and simplify luminaire design for future OLED-based systems aimed at mass-market general illumination applications. OLEDs offer a completely new vision of lighting. Like LEDs, OLEDs are solid-state lighting devices that are extremely efficient light emitters – thus helping reduce the financial and environmental costs of lighting. Next to LEDs offering very high brightness in a compact shape, OLEDs emit light over an extended area. Moreover, OLEDs are fully dimmable and can produce many different colors as well as whites, including the kind of white light people appreciate from traditional light sources. Park Spark transforms dog doo into light. The Park Spark features a gas lamp fueled by dog poop Image Gallery (5 images) It’s definitely a good thing that so many dog owners scoop their pooches’ poop, but what happens to that waste after it’s been bagged and discarded isn’t so great... usually it ends up fermenting in a landfill, where it poses a health risk, attracts vermin, and releases harmful methane gas into the atmosphere.

A Quantum Leap for Solar Power?