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?

Link to Autoblog article.

What if you could turn your lawn clippings and potato peels into fuel? It sounds like alchemy, but a research team with the U.S. Department of Energy, of all places, have managed to do it—using bacteria. The Joint BioEnergy Institute (with the D.O.E.) and South San Francisco-based biotech company LS9 have engineered a strain of E. coli that can digest plant waste and turn it directly into biodiesel.

The joint research team added some genes that let the E. coli strain produce enzymes that can break down cellulose, the tough fibrous bits of plants that we usually throw out. The enzymes break cellulose down into sugars, which the bacteria use to make biodiesel.

The bioengineers also tweaked the E. coli to make it put on weight. Normally, the bacteria doesn’t hold on to excess oil, but the new strain packs on the pounds, which increases biodiesel yield considerably.

The team envisions the bacteria being used to turn corn husks, grass clippings, saw dust, wheat stalks, and virtually any plant waste into biodiesel. It’s currently perfecting the strain and hopes to make it commercially available in the near future.

Link to UC Berkeley article

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.

Link to Gizmag article

Fossil fuels are going extinct, leaving a niche that’s quickly being filled by new power-producing technologies. In Norway, osmosis is being used to generate electricity. State-owned utility Statkraft has built the first experimental osmosis power plant south of Oslo on the Oslo Fjord.

It works like this: Osmosis draws fresh water across a membrane to a tank filled with salt water. The moving water spins a turbine, which produces power. Right now the power plant only cranks out enough juice to power a coffee maker, but Statkraft plans to scale up the technology to a real-deal power plant by 2015.

Link to Reuters article

Ocean currents never stop flowing. They’re a ceaseless source of energy—if you can harness them. They’re too slow to spin turbines and the ocean tends to wreak havoc on steel and concrete. A team of engineers led by professor Michael Bernitsas at the University of Michigan, however, have discovered a way nab the energy in ocean currents despite these problems.

Their new system, called VIVACE (Vortex Induced Vibrations Aquatic Clean Energy), exploits vibrations that can tear man-made structures apart.

It all has to do with Aeolian Tones. Originally described by Leonardo da Vinci, they’re the ghostly resonating sounds that strings or cables can emit when air passes over them. The vibrations that make those sounds are caused by vortices pushing the cable back and forth. These vibrations can be extremely violent, as seen in the infamous film of the Tacoma Narrows bridge oscillating itself to bits. Engineers typically try to avoid these vibrations when building structures, but Bernitsas is using them in VIVACE. Slow-moving ocean currents crete vortices that are strong enough to push steel tubes up and down, and generate power.

The system is currently being tested and could be ready for deployment in the near future. Bernitsas estimates that the ocean currents could generate enough power for the entire world. His company, Vortex Hydro Energy, plans to have systems on the market soon.

Link to Vortex Hydro Energy

Link to Endgadget article

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

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

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

The automotive future is electric. But if we want to chuck fossil-fuel-chugging cars into the recycling bin, we’ll need better batteries. Two new developments in battery tech could make electric transportation feasible.

A team at the University of Maryland has developed a new breed of supercapacitor that could replace conventional batteries in electric cars. The new supercapacitors can store as much juice as the best batteries, but deliver that juice as quickly as a capacitor.

It’s a big deal, especially for electric cars. To get an electric car to burn rubber (accelerate briskly), you need a lot of current, quickly. Batteries can’t do it without the help of capacitors—the superchargers of the electrical world. Capacitors store energy on the surface of two plates separated by an insulator. They store and release electricity much faster than batteries.

The team at the University of Maryland joined forces with engineers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology to create a grid of nano capacitors. Their prototype contains more than 10 billion nano capacitors linked together with electrodes. And they did it on aluminum foil.

Gary Rubloff, a physicist at the University of Maryland, anodized (added a layer of oxide) a sheet of foil to create a uniform grid of nanopores. Using atomic layer deposition, the team filled the pores with three layers of material that mimic the conductor-insulator-conductor layout of a normal capacitor.

A kilogram of the new supercapacitor could deliver a megawatt of power—enough to power 10,000 100-watt light bulbs.

Whiz kids at MIT have also found a way to make lithium batteries speedier. Gerbrand Ceder, the Richard P. Simmons Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, has drastically improved the charge and discharge rate of lithium batteries by redesigning their structure.

Everyday lithium batteries store tons of energy, but they can’t absorb or discharge it very quickly. Turns out that the slow charge/discharge rate is due to a kind of atomic traffic jam. Charged ions get gummed up traveling in and out of the battery.

Ceder and grad student Byoungwoo Kang found that they could fee up the traffic jam by engineering a beltway of material around the battery. The result is a small battery that can be charged and discharged between 10 and 20 seconds. The discovery should lead to faster-charging gadgets and quick recharges for electric vehicles.

Link to NewScientist article

Link to MIT article

In its never-ending quest to create a Seussian paradise full of precariously leaning buildings, organically bulbous apartment complexes, and poofy truffula trees, the city of Madrid has approved plans to build a sparkling eco-hive convention center: the new Centro Internacional de Convenciones de la Ciudad de Madrid (CICCM).

The new building was designed by Mansilla + Tunon Architects and features a translucent gelatinous skin filled with solar cells and a design that funnels sunlight into its deepest recesses. It’s pretty neat.

Link to Gizmag article.