Archive for the ‘energy’ Category

Oil sands upgrader

Friday, September 19th, 2008
Oil sands are naturally occurring mixtures of clay, sand, water and extremely viscous bitumen. Such deposits in Canada alone are thought to contain 173.7 billion barrels of oil, a source of oil second in size only to Saudi Arabia.

The extreme viscosity of oil sands, though, makes them very expensive to mine, and difficult to process when they have been dug up, although the recent dramatic increase in oil prices is making extraction commercially viable.

But Steve Larter, co-director of the Alberta Ingenuity Centre for In Situ Energy at the University of Calgary, and colleagues think the process can be made much simpler.

They propose a way to "upgrade" oil sands while they are still in the ground, starting the refining process early, and making them flow more easily. Their method is to pump hydrogen and particles of a catalyst down into a well while simultaneously heating the oil sands.

That breaks the long chain hydrocarbons in the bitumen into smaller molecules that flow better and are easier to pump and store.

As well as making it easier to pump, Carter and his team say that "down-hole upgrading" reduces the amount and cost of equipment and storage facilities needed on the surface.

Read the full oil sands thinner patent application.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist consultant

Posted in energy, engineering, environment | Comments Off

Human-motion energy harvester

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
Magnetoelastic materials change their shape when zapped with a magnetic field and are widely thought of as a way to produce movement, for example in small robots. But they also work in reverse, producing a magnetic field when they are deformed.

Greg Hampikian and Peter Mullner, both at Boise State University in Idaho say this property can be used to harvest energy from human movement.

They connect the magnetoelastic material to a magnetic transducer that generates a current from changes in a magnetic field.

This approach can create energy from low-level vibrations. The inventors say that relatively small movements are needed to produce an effect, making their devices ideally suited to harvesting power from human movement. That could be useful to stretch the battery life of portable gadgets, or medical implants.

Read the full human-motion energy harvester patent application.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist consultant

Posted in electronics, energy, engineering, physics | Comments Off

Non-explosive hydrogen storage

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
Many energy researchers believe that hydrogen is the fuel of choice to replace fossil fuels for cars and other vehicles in the coming decades. Storing hydrogen gas safely, though, is a problem.

One promising approach is to chemically combine it with another element to form a solid which can later be broken down again. This can store a very high density of hydrogen in a relatively small volume. However, the hydrogen's release has to be carefully controlled when the compound is broken down or an explosion could occur.

Now Zhigang Fak, a chemist at the University of Utah, and colleagues say they have found a way to control the release of hydrogen by these breakdown reactions.

They store hydrogen by reacting it with lithium to form lithium hydride and lithium hydroxide, and can later controllably release the gas using various catalysts such as platinum.

The team says the technique could offer a safe, cost-effective and reversible way of storing hydrogen in future.

Read the full hydrogen storage patent application

Justin Mullins, New Scientist consultant

Posted in battery, energy | Comments Off

Sunny bioreactor

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
One potential source of biofuel is microalgae. The potential yield of oil refined by microalgae is thought to be many times greater than the next best crop – palm oil.

But algae need natural light to grow, and that can be in limited supply inside the chambers that act as bioreactors.

So David Bayless, professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio University in Athens, US, has designed a bioreactor fitted with optical fibres that channel sunlight into the chamber.

A cylinder 10 centimetres wide and 2 metres tall is filled with microalgae, water and nutrients. A solar collector fitted to the outside of a building then channels sunlight though optical fibres into the container. That gives the algae ample light even when the chambers are otherwise hidden from the sun.

Read the full photo bioreactor patent application

Justin Mullins, New Scientist consultant

Posted in energy, environment | Comments Off

Green tech: Faster biodiesel production

Tuesday, September 4th, 2007
Making biodiesel involves a reaction called transesterification in which the triglycerides and free fatty acids in oils from plants such as corn or linseed react with methanol to form methyl esters of 16-18 carbon atoms in length. Purified methyl esters can then be used in place of diesel fuel.

The problem is that transesterification is a slow process and currently the only way to speed it up is to cook chemicals in batch reactors at high temperatures and pressures. But having to produce fuel in batches also limits the rate at which biodiesel can be made.

Now Christian Fleisher and colleagues at Cornell University have developed a way of making biodiesel continuously, without the need to fill and empty batch reactors.

The trick is to produce the transesterification reaction as the necessary chemicals mix and flow through a pipe. The result is a system – known as a "plug flow" reactor – in which plant oil and methanol is added continuously at one end, while biodiesel flows out of the other.

Fleisher achieves this speed increase by using a catalyst, such as sodium hydroxide. So, instead of taking hours, the transesterification reaction then takes place in under three minutes. Fleisher has even set up a company called Biodiesel Technologies to commercialise the idea.

See the full continuous transesterification patent application.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist contributor

Posted in bio-diesel, biofuel, energy, environemnt, green, pollution | Comments Off