Professor Cody Friesen of Arizona State University thinks he can make a metal-air battery with up to 11 times the energy density of lithium batteries at potentially half the cost.

The Metal-Air Ionic Liquid battery that Friesen and his researchers are designing will use ionic liquids as its electrolytes, instead of water-based electrolytes. Ionic liquids are salts that remain liquid in sub-zero temperatures or above the boiling point of water. Metal-air batteries have typically relied on water-based electrolytes; but they fail prematurely due to water evaporation.
Finding an ionic liquid to use instead of water would solve the problems that restrict the energy density of batteries now. Water also has a relatively low electrochemical window: it starts to decompose when the cell exceeds 1.23 volts. Because ionic liquids have electrochemical stability windows of up to 5 volts; it allows you to use much more energy-dense metals than zinc. The research team will target energy densities of at least 900 watt-hours per kilogram and up to 1,600 watt-hours per kilogram.

Read in detail at gas2.org

Researchers at Ohio State University have accidentally discovered a new solar cell material capable of absorbing all of the sun’s visible light energy. The material is comprised of a hybrid of plastics, molybdenum and titanium. The team discovered it not only fluoresces (as most solar cells do), but also phosphoresces. Electrons in a phosphorescent state remain at a place where they can be “siphoned off” as electricity over 7 million times longer than those generated in a fluorescent state. This combination of materials also utilizes the entire visible spectrum of light energy, translating into a theoretical potential of almost 100% efficiency. Commercial products are still years away, but this foundational work may well pave the way for a truly renewable form of clean, global energy.

source: http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-39807-113.html

Up to 90% charge in 5 minutes and lasting for over 10 years are the specs enough to overhaul the existing battery market.

Toshiba promises that kind of possibilities with the launch of their new batteries in March 2008. Some of the features of this revolutionary product are as follows :

Energy efficient, environ friendly, ready to fit in existing electrical fixtures can be description of the new lighting systems from ReLED which is going to replace fluorescent tubes for good.

From Gizmag

ReLED Systems has introduced a solid state replacement for fluorescent tubes which allows existing light fixtures to be simply converted to Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs), offering lower energy consumption, longer lamp life and environmental advantages over fluorescent tubes.

The Re-LT5 LED Component System fluorescent replacement consists of high brightness diodes packaged in standard fluorescent lamp formats and coupled with a low profile driver. The durable, aluminum lamp conforms to the dimensions of a linear T5 lamp and installs into fluorescent G5 base lamp holders just as easily. The user simply changes the light bulb or tube as normal and the fluorescent light is replaced by LED. The straight-forward design of the components is aimed at simplifying the utilization of LED technology into retrofit and new construction applications.

In addition to energy savings, the benefits of LED lighting technology include a 10 year service life (more than half a billion tubes disposed of each year in the U.S. alone), no UV emissions, high quality light, and cold temperature operation.”

 

From http://prakashkadam.blogspot.com

It is difficult to believe but wireless electricity will be reality very soon. Powercast, a US based startup along with more than 100 companies (of which Philips is one of the major partner) are set to launch their first device powered by electricity broadcast through the air.

The basic idea works like this. A transmitter plugs into the wall, and a dime-size receiver costing about $5 to make can be embedded into any low-voltage device. The receiver turns radio waves into DC electricity, recharging the device’s battery at a distance of up to 3 feet.

Powercast says it has signed nondisclosure agreements to develop products with more than 100 companies, including major manufacturers of cell phones, MP3 players, automotive parts, temperature sensors, hearing aids, and medical implants.

You can carry on if you don’t eat for a day, but it is difficult to go on without charging your batteries, I mean your cell phone batteries, your camera batteries, your iPod batteries, taking it to worst soon to be yours electric vehicle’s batteries. Yeah, but every problem has a solution and it’s good that in this obscure world there are people who are working hard to solve your problems, albeit at a price.

The news that a secretive Texas startup EEStor has claimed that they are developing alternative energy storage for upcoming alternative energy resources is a welcome breather. New product is a battery–ultracapacitor hybrid based on barium-titanate powders, will dramatically outperform the best lithium-ion batteries on the market in terms of energy density, price, charge time, and safety, which will replace the electro-chemical batteries of your days. According to the company it will be 10 times more efficient than the lithium-ion batteries and environ friendly .
Much like capacitors, ultracapacitors store energy in an electrical field between two closely spaced conductors, or plates. When voltage is applied, an electric charge builds up on each plate.

Ultracapacitors have many advantages over traditional electrochemical batteries. Unlike batteries, “ultracaps” can completely absorb and release a charge at high rates and in a virtually endless cycle with little degradation.

Where they’re weak, however, is with energy storage. Compared with lithium-ion batteries, high-end ultracapacitors on the market today store 25 times less energy per pound.

This is why ultracapacitors, with their ability to release quick jolts of electricity and to absorb this energy just as fast, are ideal today as a complement to batteries or fuel cells in electric-drive vehicles. The power burst that ultracaps provide can assist with stop-start acceleration, and the energy is more efficiently recaptured through regenerative braking–an area in which ultracap maker Maxwell Technologies has seen significant results.

A Scientific American Report says …Researchers in Nanotechnology have announced that they have constructed a memory circuit from molecules and nanometer-size wires that is as dense as what manufacturers expect to be building in 2020. The circuit, which stores 0s and 1s by switching clusters of molecules between two states, contains 160,000 bits jammed together at a density of 10¹¹ bits per square centimeter. Conventional microchips are at least 10 times less dense.The prototype is not yet as stable or reliable as commercial computer memory, and building it would require manufacturers to learn to harness materials other than silicon, the workhorse of computing technology. But the scale of the device dwarfs any electronic circuit previously constructed using nanotechnology.

“We’re happy the damn thing worked,” says chemist James Heath of the California Institute of Technology, whose group built the device. “Our major goal here was never to just make a memory circuit,” he says. “It was to develop a manufacturing technique that could work at molecular dimensions.”The device is “a true tour de force,” says nano researcher Charles Lieber of Harvard University, who was not part of the study. “He [Heath] has pushed far beyond previous limits of integration density and bit numbers realized previously in the field of molecular electronics.”Researchers are exploring nano-size electronics systems because silicon circuits cannot be packed with wires at increasing densities—yielding higher numbered Pentium processors—forever. Eventually, electrons will start seeping between wires and lithography techniques for stamping out silicon circuits may reach their physical limit.The Caltech group combined two approaches: molecular electronics (transistors made of molecules) and nanowire crossbars, which are perpendicular junctions of ultrathin wires. To make their device, the team laid down a tightly packed series of 400 parallel silicon wires (separated by just 33 nanometers) and coated them with a layer of barbell-shaped [2]rotaxane molecules. They created a grid of wires by covering the molecule layer with 400 more platinum wires, resulting in groups of molecules sandwiched between each node formed by the crisscrossed wires.

To switch between 0 and 1 the researchers applied a voltage across a group of molecules at a node, which toggled the molecules between two states. The [2]rotaxane molecules each contain a ring around the “handle” of the barbell. A voltage applied across the molecule caused the ring to slide up or down, changing the electrical conductivity of the molecule.The wires were so crowded that the team could not build conventional electrodes capable of electrifying only two wires at a time (those that define a node); instead they switched the junctions on and off in groups of nine.One indication that more work needs to be done is that the junctions routinely broke down after being switched more than about 10 times, says Jonathan Green, a physics and chemistry Ph.D. candidate in Heath’s lab and first author of the report published online January 24 in Nature. The molecules, he adds, spontaneously flipped back to their previous state after nearly an hour, which is another limitation for a memory device. Commercial flash memory is stable for up to years, he says.The molecules were also slow to switch between states. Green says that although this time can probably be improved, the speed of such a memory circuit would not come from switching one junction at a time. Instead it would result from switching many junctions at once. “The dominant criticism,” he says, “is this is a nice laboratory demonstration, but how will this fit into the real world.” His response: “You have to put in the science before you can get the technology.”

While the world demand for fossil fuel is slowly overpowering the world supply, driving prices skyward. A french electric automobile maker Venturi has introduced a electric vehicle in Sportscar category for the frst time in 2004.

This vehicle has some impressive and interesting specifications and statistics. A range of around 250km, battery life of about 25,0000 km and topspeed of 160 km/hrs. It takes only 5 seconds to reach 0 to 100km speed. This two seater sportscar can be recharged within 4 hours with onboard charger and within 1 hour with external charger.

Researchers are hoping to avoid the need for a hydrogen infrastructure by producing hydrogen onboard from water. While fuel cell vehicles create electricity from hydrogen, this new twist electrolyzes water to produce hydrogen only as needed.

HyPower Fuel’s H2 Reactor (H2R) can generate sufficient hydrogen to power a Volkswagen GTi, according to the company. The hydrogen would be burned in a conventional internal combustion engine, which gets around the safety challenge of storing hydrogen in a tank.

According to the company the H2R is “2 to 2.5 times more efficient” than competing methods of hydrogen electrolysis. The claim by one customer that “We no longer have any black smoke emissions coming from the smokestack on our engines…. ” seems too good to believe.

The company doesn’t say where the energy comes from to perform the electrolysis however. The PR person I spoke with didn’t know (???) and will get back to me.

HyPower is also one of several companies that sees hydrogen from water as a supplement
to diesel fuel. The company’s Hydro Power Pak injects hydrogen into a diesel engine along with the diesel fuel, which provides a cleaner more efficient burn, according to the company.

Similar technology is being developed by the University of Hertfordshire’s Sustainable Energy Technologies Centre and ITM Power in England, as well as by Global Energy Options of Australia.

Global Energy Options‘ technology is being tested in a number of vehicles in New Zealand, and the company claims that the technology can increase fuel economy by as much as 35% and reduce emissions by greater than 80%.

From what I’m reading the technology still needs to be refined to be ready for commercialization. While the cleaner burning of diesel is desirable, if the electrolysis can be performed on board safely and efficiently, why would we need the diesel fuel?

Wood science researchers in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University have developed new wood-plastic composites that are stronger and less expensive than any similar products now available – a major breakthrough for this growing industry.

Wood-plastic composites, often used for such things as outdoor decking, are one of the fastest growing components of the wood composites industry. Some projections have suggested that these products, which were used for less than 1 percent of decking in the mid-1990s, may capture 20 percent of that market by 2010.

“Composite products made from wood and plastic are highly desirable for their low maintenance and ability to resist rot,” said Kaichang Li, an associate professor in the OSU Department of Wood Science and Engineering. “But their use has been limited because of high cost and low strength, a result of inadequate adhesion between the wood fibers and plastic.”

Fundamentally, Li said, this is because wood and plastic are like oil and water, and do not mix well. Wood is hydrophilic – it absorbs water – and plastic is hydrophobic, repelling it. A “compatibilizer,” typically a polymer that bridges the interface between the wood and plastic in these products, improves stress transfer and increases their strength and stiffness.

The new wood-plastic composites use superior compatibilizers developed in Li’s laboratory, and an innovative technology for mixing wood and thermoplastics such as nylons, in which the melting temperature of the plastic is higher than the wood degradation temperature.

ith this approach, the new wood-plastic composites can use very inexpensive plastics such as those found in old carpet fibers – about 4.4 billion pounds of which are now wasted every year, going into landfills where they are extremely slow to biodegrade and pose a significant waste disposal problem.

They could also open the door for improved utilization of low-grade woody biomass from needed thinning of Oregon forests, which is increasingly being done to improve forest health and prevent catastrophic wildfire. A better “value added” use for that wood fiber could be important, experts say.

The technology may prompt a major expansion of the wood-plastic composite industry into new types of products and uses, experts say. In particular, such products may help further replace wood treated with chemical preservatives, some of which have already been banned due to health and environmental concerns.

“This new material is far superior to anything currently available in the wood-plastic composite market,” Li said. “It should become an important new product and an industry with the potential for rapid growth.” So far, the research on the new product has only been done at a laboratory scale. Findings have been published in the Journal of Applied Polymer Science and other professional publications.

Scientists now want to duplicate the findings at something much closer to an industrial scale, which they will be able to do with the contribution to OSU of a $180,000 extruder from ENTEK, a Lebanon, Ore., firm that manufactures extruders for bio-based composites.

The new wood-plastic composites are just the latest advance with new adhesives and materials from Li’s research programs. In the past few years, his research also began a revolution in wood adhesives. Inspired by the way mussels on the ocean shore cling to rocks despite pounding waves, Li found their secret – an unusual adhesive that could be mimicked by modifications of abundant and inexpensive soy protein. The modified soy protein can be used as an adhesive for production of plywood, particleboard and other wood composite panels, without giving off the carcinogenic formaldehyde fumes common with traditional wood adhesives.

That patented adhesive has already been commercially used for production of wood composite panels by Columbia Forest Products, the largest producer of decorative interior panels in the nation. All plywood plants of Columbia Forest Products have been converted to using the new technology in face of rapidly rising demand.

And one of the latest innovations, still in early research phases, is cellulose crystals from wood for use in rubber products. Products such as tires now often use silica in their manufacturing processes, which can create waste disposal concerns. The use of wood – a renewable material – might address that problem and some day have the nation driving on tires made at least partially out of trees.

Source: Oregon State University