Burning plants for fuel is greener than you think. The logic is this: Burning plants releases CO2, but growing plants locks it back up again. In essence, it’s carbon neutral. But you can’t run a car on firewood. That’s why a group of chemists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have developed a new catalyst that can turn cellulose—the stuff plants are made of—into the key component of biofuel.
The new catalyst, an ionic liquid called chromium chloride, can break cellulose down into simple sugars and then hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), a big component of fuel and plastic.
The process is ten times faster than the standard acid-based method, and can be performed at much lower temperatures (about 120 degrees C).
It’s possible the catalyst can be used to convert the waste from food crops, like corn husks and wheat chaff and stocks, into carbon neutral fuel for transport or power. That means less fossil fuel burned and less net CO2 in the atmosphere.
Link to Gizmag article
A new battery tech named STAIR (St Andrew’s Air) could store 10 times the power of a typical lithium-ion battery, yet weigh considerably less.
During discharge, the battery breathes in atmospheric oxygen, which reacts with carbon to crank out more power.
The new battery tech is being developed at the University of St Andrews Chemistry Department and is, of course, “at least five years away.”
Link to Telegraph article
Porsche 550 styling cues. Lightweight composite materials. Two electric motors with a combined 270 horsepower and 324 foot-pounds of torque. 2,000-pound curb weight. Zero to 60 in less than four seconds. Wicked green paint. It’s the BRUSA roadster, a Swiss fun-mobile that could compete with the paragon of electric performance, the Tesla Roadster. And it’s hot.
The car was built by BRUSA Elektronik in Switzerland. It features a lithium-polymer battery good for more than 100 kilometers (about 62 miles) and can be recharged in four hours via a 220-volt power outlet.
No word on whether the BRUSA roadster will actually be produced or sold, but one can hope.
Link to Autoblog article
Concrete cracks, then crumbles. It’s why we spend billions repairing buildings and walkways across the world. The newest concrete, however, can bend and heal itself.
Victor Li at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor has spent more than a decade developing the new super concrete. His latest composite material can bend like rubber and suffer only hairline cracks that repair themselves when exposed to water and air. The material uses water and air to form calcium carbonate—the same stuff seashells are made of—that seals the cracks almost instantaneously.
It costs nearly three times as much as traditional concrete, but should save builders and owners countless cash in the long run by nearly eliminating maintenance costs. The composite also eliminates the need for expensive and complex anti-earthquake equipment. Li estimates that, all things considered, the new material will make buildings and structures cheaper and more durable than ever before.
A similar material has already been used in a 60-story skyscraper in Osaka, Japan, and a bridge in Michigan.
Link to National Geographic article
Want a non-toxic battery? Ask a virus to build it. A group of scientists at MIT have genetically engineered a virus to construct the components of lithium-ion batteries without toxic solvents or chemicals. The virus, which normally infects bacteria, can build the positive and negative terminals of a battery on the molecular level.
The batteries have a the same output and capacity of current lithium-ion batteries found in everything from laptops to electric cars like the Tesla Roadster. The current prototype is a typical disc battery that can light a single LED, but the team plans to create more powerful batteries based on manganese phosphate and nickel phosphate.
The team, led by MIT materials and biological engineer Angela Belcher, tweaked the genes of the virus to coat itself with iron phosphate, then nab carbon nanotubes to create a conducting network. The resulting goop crammed into a traditional battery case and voila, vat-grown batteries.
MIT President Susan Hockfield met with President Obama to show the new technology off, and encourage federal funding for clean-energy technologies.
Link to MIT release
