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Non-traditional energy

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This Man Wants To Power The World With Tornadoes. Many retired men enjoy tinkering in the garage to fill the hours, working on an old Jaguar XKSS, say, or building a dollhouse for a new grandkid. And then there is Louis Michaud. Michaud, a 72-year-old grandfather and former ExxonMobil engineer, has spent his golden years trying to manufacture tornadoes--tornadoes that, he believes, could eventually power the world. All Michaud needs to do is prove it works.Michaud has built a prototype of what he calls a vortex engine--a plywood contraption just 2 feet tall and 4 feet wide that is capable of whipping up tiny vortexes. The vortexes aren't big enough to create electricity. *** Michaud has always been intrigued by alternative energy. *** To understand how artificial tornadoes could generate electricity, it helps to know how a tornado works in the natural world.

One easy way to make vortexes? "The chance of the vortex going outside the station is minimal," Michaud says. Could A Volcano Power America? In October, at the Deschutes National Forest in central Oregon, a team of scientists and engineers began pumping 11 million gallons of water underground, right near the caldera of the famed Newberry Volcano. The Northwest weather was a cool 50 degrees most days, about the same temperature as the water the engineers drove, up to 375 gallons a minute, 10,000 feet into the ground. There, deep in the earth's crust, the temperature reaches more than 600 degrees. That's what the engineers were pumping for: If everything goes according to plan, a company called AltaRock Energy will suck the super-heated water from underground and use it to spin turbines and juice the area with renewable power.

Over the next two months, the engineers would keep pumping the water, as the weather started to turn. With EGS, you create your own hydrothermal reservoirs by pouring water into the hot rock deep underground to create new fractures or deepen existing ones. But the technology isn't cheap. Soundscraper Transforms Vibrations from City Noise Pollution into Green Energy. The Soundscraper is a futuristic structure designed to transform auditory vibrations from bustling cities into a source of clean energy.

Designed by Julien Bourgeois, Olivier Colliez, Savinien de Pizzol, Cedric Dounval and Romain Grouselle, the Soundscraper is covered with noise-sensitive cilia that harvest kinetic energy while soaking up urban noise pollution. An entry in the 2013 eVolo Skyscraper Competition, the Soundscrapers would be constructed near major motorways and railroad junctions, prime locations for capturing ambient vibrations. A sound-sucking material would cover the exterior of the tower with a double-skin layer, held away from the façade on a metallic frame. For each Soundscraper, 84,000 electro-active lashes would cover the metal frame and pick up noise from cars, trains, pedestrians and passing planes.

. + eVolo 2013 Skyscraper Competition. Berkeley Lab Scientists Generate Electricity From Viruses. News Release Imagine charging your phone as you walk, thanks to a paper-thin generator embedded in the sole of your shoe. This futuristic scenario is now a little closer to reality. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a way to generate power using harmless viruses that convert mechanical energy into electricity. The scientists tested their approach by creating a generator that produces enough current to operate a small liquid-crystal display.

Their generator is the first to produce electricity by harnessing the piezoelectric properties of a biological material. The milestone could lead to tiny devices that harvest electrical energy from the vibrations of everyday tasks such as shutting a door or climbing stairs. It also points to a simpler way to make microelectronic devices. The scientists describe their work in a May 13 advance online publication of the journal Nature Nanotechnology. Additional information: NASA Invests In Satellites That Beam Power Down to Earth. As spaceborne energy-harvesting schemes go, this one seems faintly possible — an array of curved mirrors directing sunlight toward solar cells, their energy production microwaved down to Earth. It's so realistic, actually, that NASA is providing funding for a proof-of-concept study. A former NASA engineer named John Mankins, now with a company called Artemis Innovation Management Solutions, detailed his plans at a NASA innovation conference recently.

The concept is called called Solar Power Satellite via Arbitrarily Large PHased Array (SPS-ALPHA), and it would harvest solar energy from a perch in high Earth orbit. It would consist of a modular array of movable thin-film mirrors, which could be taken into space using current cargo ships and assembled piece by piece. His project, first announced last fall, is part of NASA's NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts project, under the Office of the Chief Technologist. [via PhysOrg]