Feature Channels: Energy

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Project converts dairy wastes to energy, other products.

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NIST has developed a free, online collection of data on the properties of gas hydrates, naturally occurring crystalline materials that are a potential energy resource and also may affect the Earth's climate.

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Small bits of metal may play a new role in solar power. Researchers are experimenting with polymer semiconductors that absorb the sun’s energy and generate electricity. The goal: lighter, cheaper, and more-flexible solar cells.

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Iowa State University researchers are working to understand how a catalyst allows certain plants and algae to create simple hydrocarbons that could be a new source of liquid fuels. The project is supported by a four-year, $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation's Office of Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation.

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A new ceramic material described in this week’s issue of the journal Science could help expand the applications for solid oxide fuel cells – devices that generate electricity directly from a wide range of liquid or gaseous fuels without the need to separate hydrogen.

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Worldwide, thousands of workers die every year from mining accidents, and instantaneous coal outbursts in underground mines are among the major killers. But although scientists have been investigating coal outbursts for more than 150 years, the precise mechanism is still unknown.

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An unintended consequence of crop-based biofuels may be the loss of wildlife habitat, particularly that of the birds that call this country's grasslands home.

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A newly signed law makes Delaware the first entity in the world to reward owners of electric cars with vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology for plugging in.

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Missouri University of Science and Technology's emphasis in energy research and education will soon get a big boost, thanks to a $3 million gift from a retired oil and natural gas executive and graduate of the university.

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Imagine a car that runs on hydrogen from solar power and produces water instead of carbon emissions. While vehicles like this won’t be on the market anytime soon, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are making incremental but important strides in the fuel cell technology that could make clean cars a reality.

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Could sorghum become a significant alternative fuel source? That’s what faculty from Salisbury University’s Richard A. Henson School of Science and Technology, with Solar Fruits Bio Fuels, LLC, are hoping to find out during a series of trials this fall.

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A group of ambitious Rensselaer students will soon sail up the Hudson River, propelled by pollution-free hydrogen fuel cells and a clear vision for a cleaner, greener future.

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130 National institutions highlight need to fund comprehensive education and training via climate legislation.

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A 1972 red MGB convertible that was collecting dust and leaves in the garage of an electrical engineering professor is finding new life as an electric car at the University of South Carolina's College of Engineering and Computing.

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Iowa State University researchers are working with TPI Composites Inc. and the U.S. Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories to study and improve the process used to manufacture wind turbine blades. The researchers' work is supported, in part, by a $2.1 million grant from the Iowa Power Fund.

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Using a carbon nanotube instead of traditional silicon, Cornell researchers have created the basic elements of a solar cell that hopefully will lead to much more efficient ways of converting light to electricity than now used in calculators and on rooftops.

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As Congress and the White House explore ways to encourage Americans to conserve energy, a new study by the University of Michigan shows that the average individual energy demand for heating and cooling has decreased over the past 50 years.

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Venture capital and entrepreneurship luminary Vinod Khosla will receive the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award in Entrepreneurship and Innovation from the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business tomorrow, September 9, 2009.

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For the first time researchers have run an electrical circuit entirely off power in trees. The findings suggest a new power source for wireless sensors.

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University of Utah researchers will inject cool and pressurized water into a “dry” geothermal well during a $10.2 million study aimed at boosting the productivity of geothermal power plants and making them feasible nationwide.

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Virginia Tech electrical engineers are advancing technologies that rely on the exchange of synchrophasor data among electric utility companies and other electricity entities. Synchrophasors are high-speed, real-time synchronized measurement devices used to diagnose the health of the electricity grid. With synchrophasor data, electric utilities can use existing power more efficiently and push more power through the grid while reducing power disruptions.

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Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are working to create better, brighter green LEDs, which could lead to a new generation of high-performance, energy-efficient monitors, TVs, and other display devices. The problem, however, is that green LEDs are more difficult to create than anyone imagined.

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Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will receive more than $6.8 million total over three years to advance the production of renewable power from the movement of oceans and rivers. PNNL will also lead a study looking at the environmental impacts of hydrokinetic and marine energy, which includes tidal and wave power.

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SmartSynch Inc., a smart grid infrastructure company using Internet protocol via wireless networks, is partnering with the University of Mississippi to reduce the power consumption of campus buildings while publishing real-time results for the general public on Facebook, Twitter and RSS feeds.

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New research on marine viruses could change calculations of how energy is generated in the oceans, and might someday inspire new designs for better batteries and other photoelectric energy sources.

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The century-old challenge of storing and transporting acetylene safely may have been solved in principle by a team of scientists working at NIST.

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Most of us take the electric current behind our power buttons for granted, assuming the juice will be there when we need it. But will it? Homeland Security's Science & Technology Directorate is working on a new superconducting cable to make sure it is.

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Engineers at Ohio State University have found a way to double the production of the biofuel butanol, which might someday replace gasoline in automobiles.

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Expansion of renewable energies should appreciably improve the health status of the 700,000 US workers employed in the energy sector, according to a commentary by Medical College of Wisconsin researchers, in Milwaukee. Their review is published in the August 19, 2009, issue of JAMA.

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Researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have released a new report, Cap and Dividend: A State-by-State Analysis, jointly published with the Economics for Equity and the Environment Network.

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Virginia Tech's 2009 solar house team have moved their zero-energy home from the construction site to a public site and revealed its technology online. Completely powered by the sun, other sustainable features include the use of passive energy systems, radiant heating, and building materials that are from renewable and/or recyclable sources.

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NIST and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) have published a report on the inaugural meeting of the Nuclear Energy Standards Coordination Collaborative (NESCC), a new ANSI Standards Panel, co-chaired by NIST and ANSI, to address the current and future standards needs of the nuclear energy industry.

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A highly efficient system for generating and distributing energy is lean, mean and green "“ and could be as close as the nearest farm, according to a University of Connecticut professor.

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University of Washington researchers have found a way to measure exactly how much electrical current is carried by tiny bubbles and channels that form inside nanoscale solar cells, paving the way for development of more efficient materials.

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A new public-private consortium will produce biofuels from algae. Led by Plankton Power, the consortium includes the Regional Technology Development Corp. of Cape Cod, Mass. Nat'l Guard, Woods Hole Oceanographic Inst., Marine Biological Laboratory, and Cape Cod Commission and will establish a facility to develop cost-competitive algae biodiesel.

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Diesel and gasoline fuel sources both bring unique assets and liabilities to powering internal combustion engines. But what if an engine could be programmed to harvest the best properties of both fuel sources at once, on the fly, by blending the fuels within the combustion chamber?

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The fifth edition of Virginia Tech's Green500 List shows that supercomputers continue to use less power even as their capacity soars. Computers raking in top spots a year ago are falling by the wayside to newer models.

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For the first time in the history of scientific ocean drilling, researchers aboard the riser-equipped drilling vessel CHIKYU successfully drilled down to a depth of 1,603.7 meters beneath the sea floor into an earthquake-generating zone off the coast of Japan.

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Electrical engineering researchers at the University of Arkansas and the University of South Carolina were informed this week that they will receive federal economic stimulus funds via the National Science Foundation to continue and strengthen their efforts to modernize the national power grid. The award will establish an NSF center of excellence, known as an Industry/University Cooperative Research Center.

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A new class of economically viable solar power cells"”cheap, flexible and easy to make"”has come a step closer to reality as a result of recent work at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where scientists have deepened their understanding of the complex organic films at the heart of the devices.

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The University of California, San Diego has begun producing electricity with newly installed solar panels made by Concentrix Solar that automatically track the sun as it crosses the daytime sky and concentrates sunlight onto hundreds of electricity-producing solar cells, each smaller than a shirt button.

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Thirty top wildlife scientists"”including five from Cornell"”have announced agreement on some of the highest research priorities to help America's rapidly growing wind energy industry produce much-needed alternative energy while also providing safe passage for birds and bats.

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Hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles (FCVs) can be an important part of the solution to America's energy crisis, says Dr. Andrew Goudy of Delaware State University. He is leading a research team striving to solve a key technical FCV puzzle.

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Wind power received a gust of support as the U.S. Department of Energy announced funding for 28 new wind energy projects, including an award to Tennessee Tech University for more than a quarter million dollars.

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Kansas State University students are combining engineering and nature to design a more affordable and more sustainable lighting source for those living without electricity. The solar lantern with a more affordable initial cost is geared toward people living in Sub-Saharan Africa, the least electrified region in the world.

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Burning coal and biomass to generate power while reducing emissions at the same time, Circulating Fluidized Bed (CFB) technology uses fluidization to mix and circulate fuel particles with limestone as they burn in a low-temperature combustion process. Unlike conventional steam generators that burn the fuel in a massive high-temperature flame, CFB technology does not have burners or a flame within its furnace.

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Stirling Energy Systems (SES) and Tessera Solar recently unveiled four newly designed solar power collection dishes at Sandia National Laboratories' National Solar Thermal Test Facility (NSTTF). Called SunCatchers (TM), the new dishes have a refined design that will be used in commercial-scale deployments of the units beginning in 2010.

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Drexel University will deploy a smart grid system to provide real-time measurements of the University's power usage and allow excess power to be sold back to the regional grid.

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Northeastern's new cutting-edge program in energy systems bridges the divide between new technological developments and business solutions.

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It's called a Plug-in Hybrid Retrofit Kit. It could double the average mileage per gallon. If 50 percent of the automobiles in America used it, it could save 120 million gallons of fuel per day"”globally, as much as 600 million gallons per day. It will reduce our dependence on oil. It will reduce carbon emissions and could create 2,000 new manufacturing jobs. A potential foreign market is growing daily.