Cool Future Technologies

A comprehensive study into the potential for compressed air energy storage in the Pacific Northwest has identified two locations in Washington state that could store enough wind energy to power about 85,000 homes each month.

A visionary idea called STRAWSCRAPER, the first project to come out of the  business called Belatchew Labs. STRAWSCRAPER is an extension of the south tower on Södermalm in Stockholm with a new energy-producing shell covered with hairs that can extract wind energy.

Belatchew Architects want to give South tower its original proportions and at the same time explore new technologies to create the future of urban wind farming.

By using piezoelectric technology a large number of thin ribs produce electricity only through the small movements generated by the wind. The result opens up possibilities for how buildings can produce energy in the future. Surfaces on both existing and new buildings can suddenly be converted into energy producing units.

Swedish TVs show "Vetenskapens Värld" (The World of Science) Documentary about Cold Fusion and Andrea Rossi.

We get to see interviews with Andrea Rossi, Mats Lewan, Sven Kullander, Hanno Essen, Magnus Holm.

A team of IBM researchers is working on a solar concentrating dish that will be able to collect 80% of incoming sunlight and convert it to useful energy.

The High Concentration Photovoltaic Thermal system will be able to concentrate the power of 2,000 suns while delivering fresh water and cool air wherever it is built.

As an added bonus, IBM states that the system would be just one third the cost third of current comparable technologies.

Nocera, leader of the research team, explained that the “leaf” mimics the ability of real leaves to produce energy from sunlight and water. The device, however, actually is a simple catalyst-coated wafer of silicon, rather than a complicated reproduction of the photosynthesis mechanism in real leaves.

Dropped into a jar of water and exposed to sunlight, catalysts in the device break water down into its components, hydrogen and oxygen. Those gases bubble up and can be collected and used as fuel to produce electricity in fuel cells.

“Surprisingly, some of the catalysts we’ve developed for use in the artificial leaf device actually heal themselves,” Nocera said. “They are a kind of ‘living catalyst.’ This is an important innovation that eases one of the concerns about initial use of the leaf in developing countries and other remote areas.”

Free Tesla Energy is possible says Muammer Yildiz at the university of Delft, as he presents an all-magnet motor deriving its energy from magnetism

The wind turbine would convert wind to energy without any moving parts.

Digital fabrication will change the course of the future

"Digital fabrication will allow individuals to design and produce tangible objects on demand, wherever and whenever they need them."

Three-dimensional printers are already old hat to the professor. "The revolution," he writes, "is ... the ability to turn data into things and things into data. ... Scientists in a number of labs (including mine) are now working on the real thing, developing processes that can place individual atoms and molecules into any structure they want.

Unlike 3-D printers today, these will be able to build complete functional systems at once, with no need for parts to be assembled. The aim is to not only to produce parts for a drone, for example, but build a complete vehicle that can fly straight out of the printer. ... 

If it’s up to Brian Willis, we will soon quite literally be tuning in to the sun. The University of Connecticut professor has patented a technique to manufacture nanosized antenna arrays that have the capability to efficiently convert sunlight into usable electric power.In theory, these very small antenna arrays can harvest over 70 percent of the sun’s electromagnetic radiation and convert it into electric power.

NASA scientists are researching low-energy nuclear reactors that can be employed in the household.

And it does not use hot fusion, the union of hydrogen atoms into larger elements that powers the sun and stars.

Instead, a low-energy nuclear reactor (LENR) uses common, stable elements like nickel, carbon, and hydrogen to produce stable products like copper or nitrogen, along with heat and electricity.

“It has the demonstrated ability to produce excess amounts of energy, cleanly, without hazardous ionizing radiation, without producing nasty waste,” said Joseph Zawodny, a senior research scientist with NASA’s Langley Research Center.

PSA’s Hybrid Air technology is similar to current battery electric hybrid vehicles, such as the Toyota Prius, but it uses compressed air for energy storage rather than batteries. A hydraulic pump/motor unit recovers energy generated by the ICE and from braking and deceleration, storing it in a compressed air energy storage unit.

PSA says for city driving, its Hybrid Air system provides fuel savings of 45 percent and increases a vehicle’s range by 90 percent compared to conventional engines with the same power rating.

In standard body styles, such as the Citroen C3 and Peugeot 208, the company says the system achieves certified fuel consumption (combined cycle) figures of 2.9 l/100 km...

Utah State University presented a first-of-its-kind electric bus that is charged through wireless charging technology in a demonstration Nov. 15, 2012.

Researchers have come up with various electrode materials to improve the performance of supercapacitors, focussing mostly on porous carbon due to its high surface areas, tunable structures, good conductivities, and low cost.

"We were able to achieve this by employing a biomass precursor with a unique structure – hemp bast fiber," Zhi Li, a post doc researcher in David Mitlin's group at the University of Alberta, tells Nanowerk. "The resultant graphene-like nanosheets possess fundamentally different properties (pore size distribution, physical interconnectedness and electrical conductivity) as compared to conventional biomass-derived activated carbons."

Beyond the energy and cost savings, new types of lighting are now envisioned as ways to heal, soothe, invigorate or protect people.

Strapped with a special engine and scuba tank, this motorcycle is speeding its way toward a James Dyson Award.

A team of Virginia Tech researchers has discovered a way to extract large quantities of hydrogen from any plant, a breakthrough that has the potential to bring a low-cost, environmentally friendly fuel source to the world.

To liberate the hydrogen, Virginia Tech scientists separated a number of enzymes from their native microorganisms to create a customized enzyme cocktail that does not occur in nature. The enzymes, when combined with xylose and a polyphosphate, liberate the unprecedentedly high volume of hydrogen from xylose, resulting in the production of about three times as much hydrogen as other hydrogen-producing microorganisms.

The energy stored in xylose splits water molecules, yielding high-purity hydrogen that can be directly utilized by proton-exchange membrane fuel cells. Even more appealing, this reaction occurs at low temperatures, generating hydrogen energy that is greater than the chemical energy stored in xylose and the polyphosphate. This results in an energy efficiency of more than 100 percent — a net energy gain. That means that low-temperature waste heat can be used to produce high-quality chemical energy hydrogen for the first time. 

You might think that as one of the world's top oil producing nations, the United Arab Emirates would have little use for solar energy. But that hasn't stopped the Middle East state from unveiling the largest concentrated solar power plant in operation anywhere in the world. 

The 100-megawatt solar-thermal project in Abu Dhabi will power thousands of homes in the country and, it is hoped, displace approximately 175,000 tons of CO2 per year.

Access to steady supplies of clean water is getting more and more difficult in the developing world, especially as demand skyrockets.

Lockheed Martin's Perforene, on the other hand, is made from single atom-thick sheets of graphene. Because the sheets are so thin, water flows through them far more easily than through a conventional TFC.

Filters made through the Perforene process would incorporate filtering holes just 100 nm in diameter—large enough to let water molecules through but small enough to capture dissolved salts. It looks a bit like chicken wire when viewed under a microscope

The future of urban runabouts will be ultra lightweight, electrically powered and 3D-printed... if Jim Kor has his way.

Graphene, a very simple carbon polymer, can be used as the basic component of a "supercapacitor" -- an electrical power storage device that charges far more rapidly than chemical batteries.

Unlike other supercapacitors, though, graphene's structure also offers a high "energy density," -- it can hold a lot of electrons, meaning that it could conceivably rival or outperform batteries in the amount of charge it can hold.

Kaner Lab researcher Maher El-Kady found a way to create sheets of graphene a single carbon atom thick by covering a plastic surface with graphite oxide solution and bombarding it with precisely controlled laser light.

Solar House 2.0, erected this year on Barcelona's waterfront, uses time-tested passive solar techniques, but it takes a high-tech leap forward using digital ...

What is the goal? 

An always-on (24 x 7 x 365) power supply that is inexpensive to produce, can be bulk produced with readily available materials, can be manufactured in any nation using 1950′s or earlier technology, and has a working lifespan greater than 20 years.

The system consists of six main components:

Solar thermal cells for gathering energy.An insulated thermal mass for storing the energy (dirt or water).A heat radiator for disposing of waste heat.An LTD Stirling engine for generating energy.A flow controller for for fluid flow, preventing energy loss from the system, and increasing efficiency.An inverter to connect to the grid and convert DC power from the generator to AC usable in your house and power grid.

Each component is designed to be as inexpensive, modular, easily replaceable, and mass producible  as possible.

Comparing the current cost of energy at ~$100 USD per MWh to a system based on a redesign of a 100 – 200 year old technology shows that sub $20 USD per MWh energy is possible with technology available today. It also shows that renewable energy can be far cheaper than fossil fuels with a little creativity.