Scientists presented at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society their new mitochondria fuel cell, that uses sugar to produce electricity. It may sound weird, but this is true! Once again inspired by nature and living organisms, scientists used in their experiments a particular compound found in organic cells (the mitochondria) that can convert sugar and fats into energy.
Fashion designer Suzanne Lee made an important step in the sustainable green-clothing industry by creating a new fabric grown by bacteria. This new bio-fabric called BioCouture could lead fashion designer to get their materials from laboratories instead of factories.
Suzanne Lee managed to create in a vat this new interesting fabric using a sugary green tea solution and a bacterial cellulose culture containing yeasts and other organisms.
Trying to come up with a solution for dusty solar panels today, researchers have presented a new technology, simply called dust-cleaning technology, able to increase solar power production.
Most of today’s solar power plants are placed in large sunny areas where rains are very rare. In these places photovoltaic panels get often covered with a layer of dust, so their efficiency decreases.
German Aerospace Center in cooperation with Lange Research Aircraft GmbH, will build world’s longest range fuel cell plane. Antares H3 will fly over 3,700 miles which is 8 times more than its successor DLR-H2, the world’s first piloted fuel cell powered aircraft. They’ll start to build the aircraft this month, and the first flight is planned for next year.
A new developed core-and-shell nanoparticle containing less platinum than today commercially available catalysts, may improve the efficiency of fuel cells by up to 12 percent.
Researchers at Brown University explained that at the cathode end of fuel-cells takes place a redox reaction that often causes an energy loss of up to 40%. “…this is a crucial step in making fuel cells a more competitive technology with internal combustion engines and batteries”, says Shouheng Sun, coauthor of the study at Brown University.
Until now, researchers only knew four types of chlorophyll used by plants in photosynthesis process. But, recently they said they found at Shark Bay on the Western Australian coast a new type of chlorophyll in ancient bacteria, that could provide new ways to grow algae (used to create biofuel) more efficiently.
The new type of chlorophyll found in stromatolites (layered structures of cyanobacteria living in shallow waters) could make a better use of available light. “That makes this new discovery the reddest chlorophyll to be identified so far…It was found deeper in the stromatolite structure, which explains why it needs the longer wavelengths of light for photosynthesis.”, said professor Robert Willows of Sydney’s Macquarie University.
The toothbrush you can see in the image was designed by Dr. Kunio Komiyama at the University of Saskatchewan and is manufactured by Shinken, a Japanese firm. It may look like an regular toothbrush but it isn’t! Soladey-J3X uses a mini solar panel at its base to produce some cleaning teeth electrons.
After working with Bluebird Aero Systems to offer the world’s first commercial long distance UAV (Boomerang), Horizon recently announced the launch of the world’s first commercial hydrogen fuel cell system for unmanned aerial vehicles. This new fuel cell system is called AEROPAK and it could be used on many UAV models, for both reconnaissance planes and surveillance planes.
Burntisland Fabrications (BiFab), a Scottish company, was named as winner of the £4M contract to build world’s most advanced tidal energy turbine. ScottishPower, the developer of this project wants to create thousands of jobs for Scotland by installing such tidal turbines, in the next few years. These turbines will provide about 10MW of tidal energy, and will be installed off the west coast of Scotland, in the Sound of Islay.
You may remember from high school that you have learned about a silvery metal, called magnesium, that burns with a white flame. Researchers say that magnesium could be considered an alternative energy source because it can store ten times more energy than hydrogen. Moreover, magnesium can be found in large amounts in seawater, enough for the next 300.000 years.
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