Lifeboat Foundation

Wireless charging roads equipped with energy storage systems are promising electric vehicle solutions by virtue of their strong advantages in time saving and reduced pressure on the existing power infrastructure, according to a paper by Cornell researchers published this month in Applied Energy.

The electric vehicle (EV) industry has experienced remarkable expansion and technical development during the last decade. It is estimated that EVs will comprise 48%, 42% and 27% of light-duty vehicle sales in China, Europe and the United States, respectively, by 2030, according to co-authors H. Oliver Gao, the Howard Simpson Professor of Engineering, and Jie Shi, a former Cornell systems postdoctoral researcher.

Integration of wireless charging roads into the existing electricity market and efficient management of the corresponding energy storage system are crucial for successful implementation of the wireless charging road systems.

A scientific article just published by four Brazilian and two American scientists reports gains in electric and thermal energy obtained when brewer’s spent grain (barley bagasse), an abundant waste produced by the beer industry, is treated with ultrasound before undergoing anaerobic digestion, a microbiological process involving consumption of organic matter and production of methane.

Pre-treatment generated biogas with 56% methane, 27% more than the proportion obtained without use of ultrasound. After purification in methane, the biogas can be used as vehicle fuel with a very low carbon footprint compared to conventional fossil fuels. Moreover, in cogenerators, the methane can be burned off by the brewery to produce electricity and heat. The final waste can be used as biofertilizer instead of mineral fertilizer. The methodology is described in detail in the article, which is published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

The innovative process was developed at the Laboratory of Bioengineering and Treatment of Water and Waste (Biotar) in the State University of Campinas’s School of Food Engineering (FEA-UNICAMP). The research group lead, T nia Forster-Carneiro, is principal investigator for a project supported by FAPESP.

A study led by UCLA researchers could help accelerate the use of hydrogen as an environmentally friendly source of energy in transportation and other applications.

The team developed a method for predicting platinum alloys’ potency and stability—two key indicators of how they will perform as catalysts in hydrogen fuel cells. Then, using that technique, they designed and produced an alloy that yielded excellent results under conditions approximating real-world use. The findings are published in the journal Nature Catalysis.

“For the sustainability of our planet, we can’t keep living the way we do, and reinventing energy is one major way to change our path,” said corresponding author Yu Huang, a professor of materials science and engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. “We have fuel cell cars, but we need to make them cheaper. In this study, we came up with an approach to allow researchers to identify the right catalysts much faster.”

Advances in low power technology are making it easier to create wireless sensor networks in a wide range of applications, from remote sensing to HVAC monitoring, asset tracking and industrial automation. The problem is that even wireless sensors require batteries that must be regularly replaced—a costly and cumbersome maintenance project. A better wireless power solution would be to harvest ambient mechanical, thermal or electromagnetic energy from the sensor’s local environment.

Typically, harvestable ambient power is on the order of tens of microwatts, so energy harvesting requires careful power management in order to successfully capture microwatts of ambient power and store it in a useable energy reservoir. One common form of ambient energy is mechanical vibration energy, which can be caused by motors running in a factory, airflow across a fan blade or even by a moving vehicle. A piezoelectric transducer can be used to convert these forms of vibration energy into electrical energy, which in turn can be used to power circuitry.

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Since 2011, the UK government has been providing a tax-payer funded discount on the sale of battery electric vehicles. Known as the “plug-in car grant”, it was designed to help persuade motorists make the switch from diesel or petrol and commit to electric driving.

But last month the grant was scrapped with immediate effect. It wasn’t exactly a surprise, given that the amount buyers were able to claim back had gradually been whittled down from £5,000 to £1,500; or that it was recently available only for new vehicles costing less than £32,000 (the average cost of electric cars is around £43,000).

Continue reading “UK’s ‘plug-in-grant’ is no more — what happened to making EVs affordable for everyone?” »

Airline company Boom Supersonic has shown off brand new renders of its Overture aircraft, which it claims will become the “world’s fastest airliner.”

The company unveiled the “production design” of the sleek jet, which includes four engines, a new fuselage, and fewer passenger seats compared to previous iterations.

Needless to say, the aircraft is fast as hell, with a cruising at Mach 1.7 over water and just under Mach 1 over land, meaning it could fly from New York to London in just 3.5 hours.

Offutt will receive three refurbished tankers-turned-nuclear reconnaissance planes in the next year.