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Mar 19 | News
The project hasn’t reached full-scale yet, but the renewable energy research project that started out in a Nevada lab has reached demonstration stage at a water reclamation facility. The process dries sludge that is normally trucked away for disposal, converting it to solid fuel that can be gasified to produce electricity.
Mar 18 | News
Graphene—carbon formed into sheets a single atom thick—now appears to be a promising base material for capturing hydrogen, according to recent research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Univ. of Pennsylvania. The findings suggest stacks of graphene layers could potentially store hydrogen safely for use in fuel cells and other applications.
Mar 15 | News
Developed with funding from the DOE's Clean Coal Power Initiative, a new DryFining technology from NETL uses waste heat from a power plant to reduce moisture content in lignite coal and also segregates particles by density. Occurring before oxidation, this sorting process eliminates many higher density compounds like sulfur and mercury and allows greater energy extraction and lower harmful emissions.
Mar 11 | News
Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Lab are analyzing 1,000 samples of biomass at a time, finding which one, combined with the right enzyme, most eagerly gives up its sugars to be converted into biofuel. Their work is part of an effort to meet federal regulations that require the U.S. produce 36 billion gallons of biofuel by 2022.
Mar 11 | White Papers
The American Chemical Society has made public a recent study by Kuwaiti scientists in the journal Energy & Fuels that predicts world conventional crude oil production will peak in 2014. This is about 10 years earlier than other forecasts, particularly the Hubbert model, which accurately predicted peak production in the U.S. in 1970.
Mar 9 | News
Tiny marine isopods called gribbles were for centuries the bane of sailors, whose vessels were quickly devoured. Even today, piers and docks are rapidly gnawed away, and researchers have now been attracted to the enzymes in their gut, which can convert wood into sugars without the help of microbes.
Mar 9 | News
Honeywell announced that it has signed a global five-year agreement to be a Main Automation Contractor (MAC) for Shell.
Mar 9 | News
What if space held the key to producing alternative energy crops on Earth? That's what researchers are hoping to find in a new experiment on the International Space Station. The experiment, National Lab Pathfinder-Cells 3, is aimed at learning whether microgravity can help jatropha curcas plant cells grow faster to produce biofuel, or renewable fuel derived from biological matter.
Mar 9 | News
Univ. of Pittsburgh researchers have conducted the first cradle-to-grave assessment of light-emitting diode (LED) streetlights and determined that the increasingly popular lamps strike the best balance between brightness, affordability, and energy and environmental conservation when their life span—from production to disposal—is considered.
Mar 8 | News
Carbon nanotubes with a special coating of reactive fuel can, when ignited, create a thermal wave that not only spreads quickly but also pushes electrons along the tube, creating a substantial electric current. The energy created by MIT engineers far exceeds that predicted by thermoelectric calculations.