In what could be a major breakthrough, Joule Biotechnologies announced that it has directly produced fuel from the plentiful carbon dioxide in the air around us using highly engineered photosynthetic microbes.
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Biofuels Breakthrough: Making Fuel From Air With Engineered Microbes
Posted in November 10th, 2009
by Nick Chambers in Biodiesel, Diesel, Ethanol, joule, Joule Biotechnologies, microbes, photosynthesis, Science
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Study: Bio-Based Plastics Could Viably Replace Nearly All Plastics
Posted in November 9th, 2009
by Nick Chambers in bio-based plastics, bioplastics, celluloid, Crude Oil, Netherlands, Oil, plastics, research, Science
In many ways plastics are simply synthetic compounds that mimic and try to improve upon substances we find widespread in nature—polymers such as you might find in wood, leaves, seeds and fur. Bio-based plastics (those derived from biological sources other than fossil fuels) have been around for more than 100 years. In fact, celluloid, the first synthetic plastic ever made was invented in the mid 1800s, and—you guessed it—was bio-based.
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Metal-Air Battery With 11 Times More Energy at Half the Cost?
Posted in November 9th, 2009
by Susan Kraemer in $5.13 million research grant, 11 times energy density of lithium, Advanced Batteries, ARPA-E, battery breakthrough, cheap batteries, Cody Friesen, Electric Cars (EVs), Fluidic Energy, ionic liquid, Science
US Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu
Arizona State University professor Cody Friesen thinks he can make a metal-air battery with up to 11 times the energy density of lithium batteries at potentially half the cost. Now the US Department of Energy’s advanced research incubator ARPA-E has just given his spin-off company, Fluidic Energy, a $5.13 million research grant to try and do just that.
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Research Findings Throw Some Doubt Into Theory of Peak Oil
Posted in November 4th, 2009
In 1877 Russian scientist Dimitri Mendeelev suggested that the large deposits of oil and gas we find under the surface of the Earth could be made without the decay of long-dead organisms in a process called abiotic synthesis of methane.
Since then the theory has been relegated to the back shelf due to a lack of evidence and the prevailing conventional wisdom that all deep oil and gas deposits arise from decaying prehistoric animal and plant material.
While it’s no doubt that the decay of dead animals and plants is one pathway to the creation of Earth’s oil and natural gas deposits (potentially the largest), new research done with high-tech equipment simulating the conditions of deep earth suggests that Mendeelev’s theory is correct.
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EPA’s New Parking Lot Explores Environmentally Friendly Pavements
Posted in October 28th, 2009
by Nick Chambers in Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, groundwater, infrastructure, parking lot, pavement, permeable pavement, Policy, pollution, rain garden, runoff, Science, storm water
Without pavement and parking lots we would still be traveling cross-country in Conestoga wagons on 6-inch deep ruts and be breathing lungfulls of dust every time a vehicle drove by at the Kwik-E-Mart. Needless to say, pavement is one of the many things that makes modern life possible.
But, like everything else in our modern life, the more advanced we get in our ability to collect and analyze data, the more we realize that the good stuff always seems to have its awful consequences too. It’s the same story with pavement.
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