New Energy and Fuel Latest Blog Posts

Filled with enthusiasm, scientists at the Carnegie Institution have found for the first time that high pressure can be used to make a unique hydrogen-storage material. Led by Maddury Somayazulu, the Carnegie team found that the normally unreactive, noble gas xenon combines with molecular ...

Binod Kumar, leader of the University of Dayton Research Institute has published in the 2010 Issue 1 of the Journal of the Electrochemical Society that the group has developed the first solid-state, rechargeable lithium-air battery. Kumar is calling this a breakthrough designed to address the ...

With a little thought there is quite a list of things to be thankful for even when staying on the topic of energy and fuels. There is the physics of the universe and all its marvels, the exchange between energy and matter, reactions that release energy and the amazing array of chemicals that ...

In laboratory experiments to be reported in the journal Chemosphere , University of Utah engineer and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Andy Hong demonstrated that “pressure-assisted ozonation and sand filtration” effectively removes oil droplets dispersed in water, ...

A lot of natural gas is lost, burned off or simply too remote to get to market. Several efforts have made press releases, but most are non-scalable or not cost effective. Yet, the lure of so much fuel and energy in remote natural gas is a strong enticement. A catalyst manufactured by the ...

Barry Bruce, a professor of biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology leads a team at UT Knoxville that has found the inner machinery of photosynthesis can be isolated from certain algae and, when coupled with a platinum catalyst, is able to produce a steady supply of hydrogen when ...

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) scientists are working with Babcock and Wilcox Inc., General Atomics, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to establish standards and procedures for the manufacture of commercial-scale new uranium fuels. The team has set a new world record with next-generation ...

Starting from scratch, without trying to improve existing technology MIT’s Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering Peter Hagelstein and graduate student Dennis Wu aimed to find how close realistic technology could come to achieving the theoretical limits for the efficiency of harvesting ...

Monday Nov. 16 saw The Electrification Coalition in Washington D.C. to persuade the government to pull the financial levers for an electric car revolution. The coalition seeks a goal made with 75% of light duty vehicles to be electric powered by 2040. The group’s forecast is their goal would ...

A major potential from algae is they could change the energy source of fuels from the ancient fossil fuels to current account renewable fuels. That goal has two Kansas State University engineers assessing systematic production methods that could make the costs of algae oil production more ...

Scientists from Duke University with colleagues from Brazil led by Lucas Argueso have analyzed the genome structures of bioethanol-producing microorganisms , uncovering genetic clues that will be critical in developing new technologies needed to implement production on a global scale.  ...

From two different places the old tokamak confinement method has gotten a new lease on life. Well, its life is set by the ITER effort paid for by governments across the planet with tens of billions of dollars. It might make one cringe or celebrate, depending on one’s view towards the basic ...

An Arizona State University spin off, Fluidic Energy in Scottsdale, AZ, was awarded a U.S. Department of Energy research grant of $5.13 million at the end of October 2009. Fluidic Energy says it can develop a metal-air battery that dramatically outperforms the best lithium-ion batteries on the ...

Chemist Daniel Nocera of MIT made news by trying to mimic photosynthesis, and improve on it. The idea seems simple: split water into hydrogen and oxygen with sunlight, and then recombine them which releases the energy in a fuel cell when the power is needed. The goal is to do both these things ...

A Better Lithium Battery Dr. Stefan Koller with his team at the Institute for Chemistry and Technology of Materials Graz University of Technology has developed a new method to utilize silicon in lithium-ion anode materials. The news stories are saying silicon applied to the anodes raises ...

The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee Florida has been awarded nearly $3 million to build a novel kind of superconducting magnet that’s expected to break records for magnetic field strength, make possible new types of science and save vast amounts of energy and money. Of ...

ReVolt, a Swiss company, plans to sell small “button cell” batteries for hearing aids starting next year. ReVolt has developed rechargeable zinc-air batteries that can store three times the energy of lithium ion batteries, by volume, while costing only half as much. The company ...

Rod Adams at Atomic Insights Blog is a not to be missed weekly stop for this writer. Mr. Adams is located close to the regulatory action, conferences and has the experience and background to make sense of it all with his gift of communicating to the informed masses – that’s us. He recently ...