Wouldn’t it be great if we could suck all the extra C02 out of the atmosphere and turn it back into fuel? Climate change would subside, gas prices would fall, and we’d have a surplus of fuel. Sounds like a dream, but researchers at UCLA might have figured out how to make it a reality.
Bioengineers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have created a cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, that can turn C02 into a fuel called isobutanol. Like plants, cyanobacteria use sunlight and C02 as an energy source to grow and prosper. The reachers tweaked a few genes in a strain of cyanobacteria to make it absorb more C02, then added some genes from other organisms to make it produce isobutyraldehyde gas. Smush the bacteria and stir the resulting sludge with an inexpensive catalyst and you get isobutanol, a liquid fuel that can be used like gasoline. Plus, the bacteria could be further modified to produce isobutanol directly without a catalyst.
The new strain of cyanobacteria uses energy from sunlight and C02 in the atmosphere to make the fuel. Researchers say they could grow the bacteria in ponds next to fossil fuel power plants to reclaim some of the emitted C02. Of course, there’s nothing stopping them from growing the cyanobacteria all over the place to help reduce greenhouse gas and provide us with ample fuel for our 1967 Camaros.
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.
Light bulbs siphon a lot of juice out of the grid, which makes them perfect targets for anyone trying to conserve power. Compact fluorescents (CFLs) have been leading the charge, armed with mercury vapor and phosphor that emits far more light per watt than hot incandescent bulbs. But they’re toxic and expensive, so engineers are looking for alternatives.
Enter LEDs, light-emitting diodes. They can be twice as efficient as CFLs and 10 times as efficient as incandescent bulbs. But they’re expensive, complex structures of gallium nitride crystals, reflectors and even sapphires. Until now. Researchers at Perdue University have figured out how to make LEDs using good-old silicon wafers. The new process could mean LEDs that compete, price-wise, with CFLs and even incandescent bulbs. And the new LEDs are efficient—between 47 to 64 percent efficient. Compare that to an incandescent bulb’s paltry 10 percent and you can see how the new lights could save a ton of electricity.
That’s not all. LED manufacturer OSRAM has developed a new LED that’s significantly brighter than existing bulbs. They’ve managed to push 500 lumens out of a single 1-mm-square LED. To put things into perspective, a 100-watt incandescent bulb puts out about 1700 lumens. The new LEDs are also extremely efficient, cranking out about 136 lumens per watt. Again, a 100-watt incandescent only manages about 17 or 18 lumens per watt. OSRAM plans to put the new bulbs on the market within a year. Possible uses include small projectors, automobile lights and interior lighting for the home.
If that wasn’t enough, the startup Vu1 is producing a new type of light bulb altogether. They’re called ESL (electron stimulated luminescence) and they use electrons to directly stimulate a layer of phosphorus on the inside of a bulb. It’s the same technology that makes the old-timey tube TVs glow. The company claims that their bulbs emit about 40 lumens per watt. The light, they say, matches incandescent light in color and quality. The bulbs should be available in September 2008 for about $12 a piece. Not cheap, but on par with the price of a dim-able CFL.
So what difference will all these newfangled bulbs make? The US uses a third of its energy for lighting. Engineers at Perdue estimate that switching out incandescent bulbs could cut US energy consumption by about 10 percent.
Turns out that your average plasma TV sucks more electricity from the grid than those fancy new plug-in hybrid cars that are coming on the market. According to officials at the Electric Power Research Institute who were quoted in a recent Associated Press article, big-screen plasma TVs drain about four times as much power as plug-in hybrids.
Why should you care? It means that the U.S. power grid is capable of handling a few million plug-in hybrids without blowing its gigantic, irreplaceable fuse. The logic goes something like this: Consumers have purchased millions of big-screen plasma sets during the past few years. They’ve all plugged them in and probably leave them on for HOURS each day. Plug-in hybrids, on the other hand, will likely be plugged in during off-peak hours, late at night while most people sleep and when the grid isn’t being taxed.
The grid may be able to handle plug-in cars, but we’ll still need to generate more electricity to meet their demands. Hopefully that energy will come from solar and wind rather than coal-fired power plants.
BMW is equipping 500 Minis with electric drivetrains for use in California. Company officials say they’re using the hip hatchback to test a few different electric powertrains. No word on exactly when the electric Minis will be available to the public, but I guarantee they’ll be a smash hit.
And still, the question hangs in the air like dirigible ready to burst into flames: Where are the Big Three’s electric vehicles? And don’t talk to me about the Chevy Volt, because there’s no way it should take one of the world’s largest car companies this long to develop a feasible electric car.
Google is great for driving directions, but not so great for bicyclists. Plug in an address and the maps app will likely funnel you through major thoroughfares choked with traffic. Take your bike and you’ll be sucking exhaust fumes, dodging taxis and delivery trucks and you might end up as a smear on the blacktop. The Google Maps Bike There Team wants to change all that. They’re petitioning Google to include a “Bike There” option that highlights bike lanes and back streets on a route. If you ever ride your bike in a big city, you’ll appreciate their efforts. Stop by and sign the petition:
A team of photochemical cooks at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland have whipped up a batch of inexpensive solar cells that could revolutionize solar energy. The “Dye-sensitized Solar Cells” use dye and an electrolyte solution to harness solar radiation to make electricity. The components are sandwiched together to form a flexible film that’s durable and long lasting.
Professors Michael Grätzel and Brian O’Regan invented the solar cells in 1991, but only recently developed an easy, low-cost way to manufacture them. So how do they work? The cells consist of a porous film of white, nanometer-sized titanium dioxide particles covered in a dark dye. The film is suspended in an electrolyte solution. When sunlight hits the dye, it injects an electron (negative charge) into the titanium particles.
Grätzel and his team have tweaked the manufacturing process, nixing the volatile organic solvents that typically make up the electrolyte solution in favor of a mixture of three salts. The bottom line: Dye-sensitized cells that can be made on the cheap without harsh solvents.
The new salt-based dye-sensitized cells have an efficiency of about 8.2 precent, a little more than half the efficiency of silicon-based photovoltaic cells. No official word on cost, but Grätzel and friends claim that their panels will be considerably cheaper than traditional solar cells. They should also last more than 10 years, says Grätzel.
San Jose powerhouse Nanosolar has improved the efficiency of their printable solar cells, made from nanoparticle ink. The company now claims it can pump out enough solar panels every year to harness 1 gigawatt of power from the sun. Still not enough to power the Flux Capacitor (1.21 GW), but it would put a considerable dent in U.S. power usage. The typical U.S. home consumes about 8,900 kilowatt hours per year.
Craig Venter etched his name into the annals of history by decoding the human genome (his own genome, in fact) in less time than it takes the ebola virus to replicate. Now he has his sights set on oil. In a recent Newsweek interview with Fareed Zakaria, Venter outlines his plans to genetically engineer bacteria that will suck up C02 and spit out ethanol or biodiesel. The bug could solve two of humanity’s biggest problems—global warming and a dwindling supply of fossil fuels. From the interview:
Zakaria: How are you going to create the fuel of the future? Venter: We think multiple fuels of the future are going to come out of biology, by manipulating the genetic code of simple organisms to convert things like sugar or sunlight or carbon dioxide into fuels that people are very familiar with, like diesel fuel and gasoline.
What would a “refinery” that uses microorganisms to create fuel look like?
They’re just large, bacteria-processing fermenters. People are familiar with this: that’s how wine and beer are made. We’re using similar processes, but ones that are designed to produce much more complex molecules than ethanol, and therefore fuels that will be much higher in energy content, and will work well with the existing energy infrastructure.
How close are you to creating an organism that can produce fuels in this way?
We think the first fuels are maybe one to two years away. We’re definitely thinking in terms of years, not decades.
It’s a must-read interview that’ll fill even the most pessimistic doomsday prognosticators with warm fuzzy optimism. Kinda like wine and beer. All hail our genetically modified bacterial overlords!
The Bloom bicycle accessory concept spews seeds as you ride, littering your local concrete jungle with tiny plantlets that will inexorably smother blacktop and pavement, turning your city into a green paradise. Or that’s the concept, anyway. The curious little attachment latches onto your bike near the rear wheel like a lamprey. You load it with water and seed-laden soap lumps. As you pedal, the soap lumps dissolve into seed-filled bubbles that bounce gleefully in your wake.
The concept is one of many from Design 21’s “Power to the Pedal” competition. It’s a neat idea, one that would likely gain traction among Whole Foods shoppers (myself included) and card-carrying members of LOHAS.
