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Archive for the ‘energy’ category: Page 272

May 29, 2019

Hydrogen-power electric flying vehicle: Long road to liftoff

Posted by in categories: drones, energy

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A transportation company is betting its sleek new hydrogen-powered electric flying vehicles will someday serve as taxis, cargo carriers and ambulances of the sky, but experts say they will have to clear a number of regulatory hurdles before being approved for takeoff years in the future.

With six rotors on the roof and seats inside for five people, a passenger model of the Skai (pronounced “sky”) unveiled Wednesday near Los Angeles resembles an oversized drone crossed with a luxury SUV.

Like a drone, the vehicle from Alaka’i Technologies takes off and lands vertically. It’s one of many similar electric flying crafts in production, including prototypes from Boeing and Airbus that made successful test flights this year, according to Vertical Flight Society, an industry group.

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May 27, 2019

CERN travelling science exhibit comes to India: Here’s when and where you can catch it

Posted by in categories: energy, science

The science exhibition, which goes by the name “Vigyan Samagam”, will highlight India’s contributions to some of the world’s biggest science projects. It is a jointly-funded effort by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and the Department of Science & Technology (DST).

While in India, the CERN exhibit will be bilingual — in English and Hindi for the public to make the most of.

Accelerating Science_CERN

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May 26, 2019

Cooling wood: Engineers create strong, sustainable solution for passive cooling

Posted by in categories: energy, habitats, nanotechnology, sustainability

What if the wood your house was made of could save your electricity bill? In the race to save energy, using a passive cooling method that requires no electricity and is built right into your house could save even chilly areas of the US some cash. Now, researchers at the University of Maryland and the University of Colorado have harnessed nature’s nanotechnology to help solve the problem of finding a passive way for buildings to dump heat that is sustainable and strong.

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May 23, 2019

Seattle makes history with electric garbage truck

Posted by in categories: energy, transportation

Despite this, electric garbage trucks are still few and far between. BYD’s main competitor is Motiv Power Systems, which has sold small fleets of class 8 side-loading garbage trucks to Los Angeles and Sacramento, California. Wrightspeed, which was also making hybrid-electric garbage trucks—featured in this article from 2015—appears to have gone dormant, despite a contract to supply the New Zealand cities of Auckland and Wellington. And recently, Volvo announced a battery electric garbage truck, the FE Electric, although it appears to be limited to the European market.

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May 22, 2019

Zero-Point Energy Nanomagnet Stores Data In Small Spaces

Posted by in category: energy

The European research institution Jülich just released new information on “zero-point energy” and its effect on the stability of nanomagnets. If scientists can determine how to magnetically store data, information can be stored in extremely small spaces.

Quantum mechanics becomes important when we’re talking about small spaces, such as nanometers. Magnetic moments are difficult to stabilize, or point in designated directions. A specific direction corresponds to effectively storing data.

In order to save data, the magnetic moments of atoms in constant motion must be counteracted by energy barriers, which is dependent on the material used. Otherwise, the magnetic moments change and any information saved is then lost.

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May 22, 2019

Metal foams could provide lightweight radiation shielding

Posted by in category: energy

Radiation generally comes under the heading of “things you want to stay away from,” so it’s no surprise that radiation shielding is a high priority in many industries. However, current shielding is bulky and heavy, so a North Carolina State University team is developing a new lightweight shielding based on foam metals that can block X-rays, gamma rays, and neutron radiation, as well as withstanding high-energy impact collisions.

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May 22, 2019

Supercapacitor Rover Charges in 10 Seconds

Posted by in category: energy

So-called supercapacitors, AKA ultracapacitors, are amazing devices. While they don’t store as much total energy as a comparable battery, they can discharge this energy extremely quickly. They can also charge rapidly, as demonstrated by Mike Rigsby’s “Little Flash.” As described in his project write-up, the mini rover “runs for twenty minutes, charges in ten seconds.”

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May 17, 2019

Giant Flow Batteries Could Power Your City In The Future

Posted by in categories: energy, futurism

Watch Giant Flow Batteries Could Power Your City In The Future, an Earth video from Seeker.

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May 17, 2019

New material could unlock potential for hydrogen powered vehicle revolution

Posted by in categories: energy, transportation

Scientists have discovered a new material that could hold the key to unlocking the potential of hydrogen powered vehicles.

As the world looks towards a gradual move away from fossil fuel powered cars and trucks, greener alternative technologies are being explored, such as electric battery powered vehicles.

Another ‘green’ technology with great potential is hydrogen power. However, a major obstacle has been the size, complexity, and expense of the fuel systems—until now.

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May 17, 2019

Clean and effective electronic waste recycling

Posted by in categories: energy, health, sustainability

As the number of electronics devices increases around the world, finding effective methods of recycling electronic waste (e-waste) is a growing concern. About 50 million tons of e-waste is generated each year and only 20% of that is recycled. Most of the remaining 80% ends up in a landfill where it can become an environmental problem. Currently, e-waste recycling involves mechanical crushers and chemical baths, which are expensive, and manual labor, which can cause significant health and environmental problems when not performed properly. Thus, researchers from Kumamoto University, Japan have been using pulsed power (pulsed electric discharges) to develop a cleaner and more efficient recycling method.

Pulsed power has been shown to be successful in processing various waste materials, from concrete to waste water. To test its ability to be used in e-waste recycling, researchers examined its effectiveness in separating components found in one of the most prolific types of e-waste, CD ROMs. In previous work, they showed that complete separation of metal from plastic occurred using 30 pulses at about 35 J/pulse (At the current price of electricity in Tokyo, this amount of energy costs about 0.4 Yen for recycling 100 CD ROMs). To examine the mechanism of material separation using this method, researchers performed further analyses by observing the plasma discharge with a , by taking schlieren visualizations to assess the shock wave, and using shadowgraph images to measure fragment motion.

Images at the early stage of electrical discharge showed two distinct light emissions: blue-white and orange. These indicated excitation of aluminum and upper protective plastic respectively. After the plasma dissipated, fragments of metal and plastic could be seen flying away from the CD ROM sample.

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