FUTURE INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES
Converting
Waste Heat to Electricity
With rapid
industrialization, the world has seen the development of a number of items or
units, which generate heat. Until now this heat has often been treated as a
waste, making people wonder if this enormous heat being generated can be
transformed into a source of electric power. Now, with the physicists at the University
of Arizona finding new ways to harvest energy through heat, this dream is
actually going to become a reality. What do you think?
Costs for
Thermo-photovoltaic Cells Significantly Reduced
Thermo-photovoltaic
(TPV) cells are great for converting radiation from any heat source to power.
These cells can generate power from the wasted heat which gets released when
glass or steel is produced. Adding these TPV cells to domestic power systems
can help generate power along with heating water. TPV systems are also too
complex for everyday use. Both of these reasons have made the TPV systems
beyond industrial and domestic consumer routine set-up.
Water into
Hydrogen Fuel with Waste Energy
With
each passing day, scientists are coming out with unique solutions to lessen our
dependence on fossil fuels. They are now thinking of turning stray forms of
energy such as noise or random vibrations from the environment into useful form
of energy. They want to use piezoelectric effect for such purposes. Some
materials produce electricity while undergoing mechanical stress. This is known
as piezoelectric effect. Small piezoelectric crystals can come up with enough
voltage to create a spark which can be utilized to ignite gas.Fuel from Chicken Feathers?
If
we go by the stats, every year 11 billion pounds of poultry industry waste
accumulates annually, because we have gigantic appetite for poultry products.
They can't be stuffed into pillows. Mostly they are utilized as low-grade
animal feed. Scientists in Nevada have created a new and environmentally
friendly process for developing biodiesel fuel from 'chicken feather meal'.
Professor Manoranjan 'Mano' Misra and his team members at the University of
Nevada discovered that chicken feather meal consists of processed chicken
feathers, blood, and innards. Prof. Misra has been honored as the 2010 Regents'
Researcher by the Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents.
Waste to
Energy Continues to Gain Steam
While
new energy solutions are being discovered, refined and brought further and
further into the public light, something that does not get a lot of headlines
is waste to energy. How something like this continues to not be used in the
United States is incredible as countries like Japan have been using it for
quite some time and dramatically improving their waste disposal problems in
highly populated areas.
Converting
Water and CO2 into Fuel
Researchers
are trying to duplicate the natural process of photosynthesis. If successful,
we can use the “evil” carbon dioxide emitted by power plants and industrial
units to good use. This way, industrial units don’t have to establish new
subsidiary units for the treatment of carbon dioxide. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed a prototype machine
that utilizes the sun's energy to convert water and carbon dioxide into the
molecular building blocks that can be utilized as transportation fuels. If
researchers can make this device produce twice the energy generated by the
natural process of photosynthesis, it will do great service to environment. It
will pave the way to recycle CO2.
Waste Heat
Could Double Battery Life on Laptops, Cell Phones
When
we utilize any gadget or means of comfort we know that these devices consume
energy. But the energy is not utilized by devices. Some of the energy is lost
in the form of friction or heat. For example when we are exploiting the power
of computer processor chips, car engines or electric power plants there is a
necessity of getting rid of excess heat otherwise the equipments will not
perform at their optimal level. Now researchers are thinking about using this waste
energy. Peter Hagelstein is the co-writer of this concept and an associate
professor of electrical engineering at MIT. His paper was published in the
November 2009 issue of the Journal of Applied Physics
Turning
Wastewater into Ethanol
As
the world continues to search for alternative fuels to fuel our cars and heat
our homes, many different opportunities are being explored and there has
finally been a significant breakthrough in turning wastewater into ethanol as
an automobile fuel source. Qteros
and Applied Clean Tech have teamed up to create a biofuel
that will get us that much closer to having another true "green"
energy source. Water treatment systems are expensive to run and have presented
communities where they are located with some significant challenges. Most
notably, what they can do with the sludge that is left over once the wastewater
has been treated. Plant managers may no longer faced with the difficult task of
figuring out this problem.
Getting
Biofuel from the World’s Garbage
There
is plenty of garbage on this planet; in fact there is so much garbage that many
developed countries are trying to dump their garbage on the lands of lesser
developed countries, at a fee of course. But does dumping garbage on other
places solve the problem? On the contrary it spreads pollutions and diseases.
In fact it is more dangerous to dump garbage in the less developed countries
(because there are neither technologies available to process it nor enough
awareness). Even creating landfills wastes precious resources.
Electricity
and Desalination from Wastewater
In
most part of the world safe and clean drinking water is unavailable for daily
consumption and industrial use. Currently to desalinate water two kinds of
technologies are being used. First is known as reverse osmosis and the second
is electro-dialysis. Both of these processes need huge amount of energy. A team
of scientists from China and U.S.A are working to eliminate ninety percent of
the salts from seawater or brackish water. They are also trying to generate
electricity from wastewater. "Water desalination can be accomplished
without electrical energy input or high water pressure by using a source of
organic matter as the fuel to desalinate water," reported in a recent online
issue of Environmental Science and Technology.
Hydrogen
From Waste Materials
Environmentalists
are continuously searching for green and clean fuel. Until now they have been
putting a lot of energy and talent into hydrogen fuels because when hydrogen is
burned, the only emission it makes is water vapor. So it is a great advantage that
burning of hydrogen doesn’t produce carbon dioxide. Clearly, hydrogen is less
of a pollutant in the air because it emits little tail pipe pollution.
Engineers at the University of Leeds are working on a project keeping hydrogen
in mind. They are developing an energy efficient, environmental-friendly
hydrogen production system but with a difference. They are trying to extract
hydrogen from waste materials. These materials can be vegetable oil or the
glycerol by-product of bio-diesel. They are aspiring for the high purity
hydrogen-based fuel that could be utilized for large-scale power production.
They are also developing hydrogen cells for laptops or other gadgets. A grant
of over £400k has been awarded to the University by the Engineering and
Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) within a consortium of 12
institutions known as SUPERGEN Sustainable Hydrogen Delivery.
Nanotube Technology Transforms CO2 Into Fuel
Presence
of surplus carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has taken center stage in the environmental
science. All over the world people are worried about the excess amount of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because it’s causing undesirable changes in
the surroundings such as green house effect, global warming, melting of ice
caps on the glaciers etc. So most of the environmental scientists are trying to
minimize the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Trans-America
Journey Powered by Waste Vegetable Oil
We
love to read about different travelers and their adventures, wishing secretly
that we could be in their shoes. Here is a young traveler, Stacy Jurich, 2006
graduate of Ohio State University. She is on a 3 ½ month journey across the country,
driving her 1981 Mercedes across America. So what is new? She is driving a
Mercedes using waste vegetable oil as fuel hence promoting use of alternative
fuel. She lives in Toledo, Ohio where she shoulders the responsibility of
running a non-profit organization known as "Toledo Choose Local."
This non-profit organization promotes self sustenance using local resources.
Converting
waste into a renewable energy sources
Consider
a technology that not only keeps your surroundings clean it also produces
renewable energy at a low cost. Wheelabrator Technologies Inc., a U.S. pioneer
for municipal waste-to-energy technology, wants to make sure that your waste
doesn’t go waste. Literally. Wheelabrator's waste-to-energy facilities produce
steam and electricity by burning large quantities of municipal trash and they
have been using this proven and time-tested mass-burn technology to produce
energy for the past 100 years!
Waste as a
Renewable Energy Source
The
enormous increase in the quantum and diversity of waste materials generated by
human activity and their potentially harmful effects on the general environment
and public health, have led to an increasing awareness about an urgent need to
adopt scientific methods for safe disposal of wastes. While there is an obvious
need to minimize the generation of wastes and to reuse and recycle them, the
technologies for recovery of energy from wastes can play a vital role in
mitigating the problems. Besides recovery of substantial energy, these
technologies can lead to a substantial reduction in the overall waste
quantities requiring final disposal, which can be better managed for safe
disposal in a controlled manner while meeting the pollution control standards.
BY CREANOVA ENGINEERS www.creanovaengineers.blogspot.in
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