Category: Energy

Bigger Lithium ion batteries ….with no explosion

According to Moore’s law the processing power of a microchip doubles every 18 months. If we extend this line of reasoning to include all technologies electricity storage technology (batteries) could enable huge advances in computers and electric cars. However lithium ion battries have reached their limit of their capacity per kilogram at one hundred fifty watt-hours per kilogram.

Thin film lithium ion batteries are certainly something new. The batteries are actually composed of flat layers of pure lithium electrodes and an electrolyte bonded to a glassy surface. The batteries never lose charge, can withstand extremes of heat and cold, can charge quickly and discharge slowly or quickly an infinite number of times, can pack a ton of power into a small space, and will not explode in your lap if you dent them.

Cell Phones get Greener

Cell phones are a huge contributor to that problem of e-waste and the cell phone makers are aware of this. Now the phone makers are going to do a little something for the environment by checking what goes into their phones. The companies are looking into removing toxic chemicals and improving recycling and proper-disposal programs.

The consumer can curb the amount of energy that the cellphone uses. New cellphones will tell the user that the battery is charged and that the phone should be unplugged thereby conserving energy.

“If 10 percent of the world’s cell phone owners did this, the group’s final report said, it would reduce energy consumption by an amount equivalent to that used by 60,000 European homes per year.”

Branson Takes On Global Warming

the future of coolRichard Branson has joined the fight to reduce global warming. Branson has pledged $3 billion over the next decade. The funds will be used to promote and develop alternate sources of energy. The announcement was made at the Clinton Global Initiative, a conference put together by the former president to fight global warming and help clean up the environment. The conference is attended by political, non profit and business leaders. This year’s conference has been far more successful than anticipated. Last year’s conference generated a total of $2.5 Billion in revenue directed at combating global warming; this year’s pledges already stand at $5.7 billion with 114 contributors. The ever charismatic Branson said he hopes the funds will help to preserve the environment for future generations.

Golden (Gate) Power

In the USA municipalities are doing exactly what the Bush administration despises – trying to use sustainable energy. San Francisco is one such city that is trying to be kind to the environment and they have a really cool idea of using tidal power under the Golden Gate Bridge.

They are investing $150,000 in a feasibility study to use tidal waves to power upwards of 40,000 homes! Officials note the obvious connection between current energy use and climate change and proclaim this project to be a needed step in the development of their city.

“Ultimately, city officials hope that turbines below the bridge will capture tidal energy from the powerful flow that circulates in and out of the mouth of the bay and generate as much as 38 megawatts of power, or enough to power 38,000 homes.

The tides at the Golden Gate offer one of the best locations on the western coast of North America to generate that power, according to a study released this summer by the Electric Power Research Institute and backed by the city’s public utilities agency.”

“Invisible” Wind Turbines

Good form of power- windResearchers at MIT have found a way to get wind turbines out of shallow water. Currently wind turbines in the ocean can only handle a depth of about 15 meters or less. Which means that people living on the shore have their view obstructed by them. This new wind turbine structure from MIT will allow turbines to be located far away from shore.

Paul D. Sclavounos, a professor of mechanical engineering and naval architecture, has spent decades designing and analyzing large floating structures for deep-sea oil and gas exploration. Observing the wind-farm controversies, he thought, “Wait a minute. Why can’t we simply take those windmills and put them on floaters and move them farther offshore, where there’s plenty of space and lots of wind?”

In 2004, he and his MIT colleagues teamed up with wind-turbine experts from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to integrate a wind turbine with a floater. Their design calls for a tension leg platform (TLP), a system in which long steel cables, or “tethers,” connect the corners of the platform to a concrete-block or other mooring system on the ocean floor. The platform and turbine are thus supported not by an expensive tower but by buoyancy. “And you don’t pay anything to be buoyant,” said Sclavounos.

According to their analyses, the floater-mounted turbines could work in water depths ranging from 30 to 200 meters. In the Northeast, for example, they could be 50 to 150 kilometers from shore. And the turbine atop each platform could be big–an economic advantage in the wind-farm business. The MIT-NREL design assumes a 5.0 megawatt (MW) experimental turbine now being developed by industry. (Onshore units are 1.5 MW, conventional offshore units, 3.6 MW.)

The tethers allow the floating platforms to move from side to side but not up and down–a remarkably stable arrangement. According to computer simulations, in hurricane conditions the floating platforms–each about 30 meters in diameter–would shift by one to two meters, and the bottom of the turbine blades would remain well above the peak of even the highest wave. The researchers are hoping to reduce the sideways motion still further by installing specially designed dampers similar to those used to steady the sway of skyscrapers during high winds and earthquakes.