Tesla may be pretty far from releasing the Cyberquad to the world, but that hasn’t stopped this YouTuber from taking matters into his own hands.
Category: sustainability – Page 441
Straubel was an early founding member of Tesla and the company Chief Technology Officer until last summer.
He officially moved to an advisory role at the company, but it is believed to have been a symbolic move to soften the blow of Tesla’s longtime technology leader leaving the company.
As we reported at the time, Straubel was already becoming less present at Tesla months prior to the announcement and spending more time on his startup: Redwood Materials.
Polestar may be a young brand, but its direction is clear: be the “guiding star” for the Volvo and Geely Car Groups when it comes to technology, performance, and sustainability.
Just last year, its debut car, the hybrid-electric two-door Polestar 1, began its initial production run to satisfy approximately 150 pre-orders. Deliveries are now underway, but Polestar – naturally – is already sailing forth towards its next phase, the all-electric five-door fastback Polestar 2.
Polestar’s latest brings the young brand’s future into sharper focus, distinguishing itself from its sibling brand Volvo while quite possibly outshining the competition, too.
NASA is investigating the potential for a tiny wind turbine to power instruments during long Martian polar night.
Reaction Engines and Britain’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) have completed a concept study into the practicality of using ammonia as a jet aviation fuel. By teaming Reaction Engines’s heat exchanger technology with STFC’s advanced catalysts, they hope to produce a sustainable, low-emission propulsion system for tomorrow’s aircraft.
Modern jet engines use a variety of fuels based on kerosene that have a very high energy density that can propel aircraft well beyond the speed of sound and carry passengers and cargoes across the globe. Unfortunately, such fuels are also derived from fossil fuels and produce significant carbon dioxide emissions, which the airline industry and many governments have pledged to reduce radically by 2050.
One way of achieving these cuts is to look at alternatives to conventional jet fuels to power airliners. The problem is that most of these alternatives have much lower energy densities than standard aviation fuels and suffer from other drawbacks. For example, present-day battery technology would require future aircraft to be very small, short-range, and with little payload capacity. Meanwhile, liquid hydrogen could be a viable alternative, but so much of it would need to be carried that planes would have to be completely redesigned and new infrastructure built.
Plants have a seemingly effortless skill – turning sunlight into energy – and scientists have been working to artificially emulate this photosynthesis process. The ultimate benefits for renewable energy could be huge – and a new approach based on ‘photosheets’ could be the most promising attempt we’ve seen so far.
The new device takes CO2, water, and sunlight as its ingredients, and then produces oxygen and formic acid that can be stored as fuel. The acid can either be used directly or converted into hydrogen – another potentially clean energy fuel.
Key to the innovation is the photosheet — or photocatalyst sheet — which uses special semiconductor powders that enable electron interactions and oxidation to occur when sunlight hits the sheet in water, with the help of a cobalt-based catalyst.
TerraVis | the Future
Posted in solar power, sustainability, transportation
TerraVis™ system — a platform for versatile and cost-effective solar power integrations for pick-up trucks. This groundbreaking innovation is the very first to combine practical, durable tonneau covers with a cutting-edge solar generation and energy storage system. This website launch marks the first release of design and application-related details.
Terravis | the future by worksport | welcome: terravis.
Circa 2017
Imagine materials strong enough to use in building airplanes or motor cars, yet are literally lighter than air. Soon, that may not be so hard to do because a team of researchers from MIT and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have developed new ultra-lightweight materials that are as light as aerogel, but 10,000 times stiffer, and may one day revolutionize aerospace and automotive designs.
Aerogels are incredibly light, so light that the record holder, aerographene, boasts a density of just 0.16 mg/cm3. Currently, aerogels are used for insulation, tennis racquets, as a means of controlling oil spills, and were used on the NASA Stardust mission to collect samples from a comet’s tail. Unfortunately, despite its seemingly ephemeral nature, its very much a solid and will shatter if pressed hard enough, so its use is limited.
The new materials developed by the MIT/LLNL team aren’t aerogels, but are metamaterials. That is, artificial materials with properties that aren’t found in nature. The idea is to structure it, so that it has the lightness of aerogel, but is much stronger. The strength of the new materials comes from their geometric structure, not their chemical composition.
In a step closer to skyscrapers that serve as power sources, a team led by University of Michigan researchers has set a new efficiency record for color-neutral, transparent solar cells.
The team achieved 8.1% efficiency and 43.3% transparency with an organic, or carbon-based, design rather than conventional silicon. While the cells have a slight green tint, they are much more like the gray of sunglasses and automobile windows.
“Windows, which are on the face of every building, are an ideal location for organic solar cells because they offer something silicon can’t, which is a combination of very high efficiency and very high visible transparency,” said Stephen Forrest, the Peter A. Franken Distinguished University Professor of Engineering and Paul G. Goebel Professor of Engineering, who led the research.
The tech entrepreneur Elon Musk on Friday showed off a pig whose brain he says has been implanted with a small computer.
“We have a healthy and happy pig, initially shy but obviously high energy and, you know, kind of loving life, and she’s had the implant for two months,” Musk said of Gertrude, the pig.
The billionaire entrepreneur, whose other companies include Tesla and SpaceX, presented during a live-stream event to recruit employees for his neuroscience startup Neuralink. He described Gertrude’s coin-sized implant as “a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires”.