Engineers at California startup Transonic Combustion say they’ve found a way to more than double gas mileage—without a hybrid system. Their solution? Supercritical fluids.
The engineers at Transonic have developed a new fuel injection system that takes advantage of an in-between state of matter called supercritical fluid. Supercritical fluids straddle the line between liquid and gas. They can diffuse through a solid like a gas, yet dissolve substances like a liquid. And—this is key—they have very low surface tension. So when liquid gasoline goes supercritical, it doesn’t form droplets and can mix with air almost instantly. That means drastically improved combustion and efficiency.
The injection system, called TSCi, has a catalyst that breaks fuel into simple hydrocarbons. The fuel is then squeezed through a heated injector that puts the fuel in a supercritical state. This reduces the time it takes to vaporize the fuel, which means it can be burned earlier and in the center of the combustion chamber. The flame burns fast and clean, and doesn’t transfer as much heat to the cylinder walls.
Transonic has a 3,200-pound test car outfitted with its TSCi system running on a dyno at 50 miles per hour. It’s getting 98 miles per gallon. In highway testing, another one of their test cars gets 64 mpg. The system also dramatically decreases emissions.
The company wants to hook up with major auto manufacturers to get its system on the road by 2014.
See that? It’s a shrimp. Swimming in a hole. Under 600 feet of ice. Twelve miles from the ocean. NASA scientists found it in Western Antarctica, and they’re totally freaking out about it.
The shrimp is a complete surprise. Scientists didn’t expect to find anything more than bacteria that deep in the ice. Instead, they found not one, but two three-inch-long shrimp. From the AP:
“We were operating on the presumption that nothing’s there,” said NASA ice scientist Robert Bindschadler, who will be presenting the initial findings and a video at an American Geophysical Union meeting Wednesday. “It was a shrimp you’d enjoy having on your plate.”
“We were just gaga over it,” he said of the 3-inch-long, orange critter starring in their two-minute video. Technically, it’s not a shrimp. It’s a Lyssianasid amphipod, which is distantly related to shrimp.
It’s in incredible discovery, and it immediately got everybody thinking about the possibility of life in other hostile habitats. If a complex animal like a shrimp can survive under 600 feet of ice, there might be life on Europa, Jupiter’s big frozen moon. Or on other planets in other solar systems.
The scientists have no idea how the shrimp is able to survive, yet. They plan to study the animal and its ecosystem to see what it eats and how ekes out a living. They have a lot of ground to cover. The Antarctic ice sheet is 14 million square kilometers and contains 30 million cubic kilometers of ice. It holds 60 percent of the earth’s fresh water.
NASA just found 600 million gallons of water in craters on the Moon’s north pole. Can you say MOON BASE?
The water was discovered by an Indian radar probe. Scientists say it could be used for fresh drinking water or oxygen. For a Moon base.
“The new discoveries show the moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational destination than people had previously thought,” said Paul Spudis, a NASA engineer who works with the Mini-SAR radar equipment.
Too bad we’ve cut funding to NASA and are abandoning the Moon. Looks like we’ll have to depend on corporate sponsorship . . .
In case you missed it, the geniuses at Stanford have created super batteries using carbon nanotube ink and silver nanowires. They basically spread the carbon nanotube/silver goop on paper and it’s ready to store energy. The paper batteries are capable of storing 10 times as much energy by weight as lithium-ion batteries and are conceivably good for 40,000 charge-discharge cycles. From the Stanford article:
“These nanomaterials are special,” [assistant professor Yi] Cui said. “They’re a one-dimensional structure with very small diameters.” The small diameter helps the nanomaterial ink stick strongly to the fibrous paper, making the battery and supercapacitor very durable. The paper supercapacitor may last through 40,000 charge-discharge cycles – at least an order of magnitude more than lithium batteries. The nanomaterials also make ideal conductors because they move electricity along much more efficiently than ordinary conductors, Cui said.
Cui says that the thin, lightweight, flexible batteries could be used in everything from consumer electronics to cars. He also says the technology is basically ready for action. Just a few refinements and the batteries could go into production.
Behold the Ferrari 599 Hybrid! Despite its wicked metallic green paint, it’s not all that environmentally friendly. The V-12 rocket ship reportedly uses a variation of Ferrari’s KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) setup used on F-1 cars. No, Gambit has nothing to do with it. The system captures energy from braking in the form of electricity. That energy can then be released with the push of a button, powering an electric motor for extra boost. The motor is mated directly to the transmission and delivers 100 horsepower. The whole hybrid system weighs about 220 pounds.
This spy shot was taken during setup at this year’s Geneva Auto Show. It appeared on Autoblog and a few other sites, but was pulled at Ferrari’s request. Because only seven people read this blog and I think the photo is damn pretty, I’m posting it anyway. Really, the 599 just looks luscious in that green, doesn’t it?
The desert planet of Arrakis, Dune, is a ball of desiccated sand, a place where water is more precious than gold. Wait, no, we’re talking about Australia. Or Dubai. The EVOLUTE toilet concept is designed for parched climates and uses 90 percent less water than conventional toilets.
The toilet ditches the conventional water tank and instead uses a rotating sphere and miserly jets of water. The sphere sits at the base of the bowl. It has a small cup to catch your stuff. Hit the flush and the sphere rotates and dumps the waste down the sewer drain. A small jet of water rinses out the cup and washes down the walls of the bowl. The whole thing is mechanical–no electricity required. It uses less than one liter of water per flush and takes up 30 percent less floor space than a conventional toilet.
It’s a clever design and should be on the market sometime in 2012. But really, I just wanted to mention Arrakis.
