Energy

This web site tends not to write about new technologies until they are commercially available, but a new breakthrough from Stanford prof Shanhui Fan, reported in the Journal of Engineering seems worthy of a heads-up. It taps the frigid expanses of outer space to cool the planet.

Once its perfected, homes and buildings will be chilled without air conditioners, car interiors won’t heat up in the summer sun.

The team of researchers at Stanford designed an entirely new form of cooling structure that cools even when the sun is shining. Such a structure could vastly improve the daylight cooling of buildings, cars and other structures by reflecting sunlight back into the chilly vacuum of space.

“People usually see space as a source of heat from the sun, but away from the sun outer space is really a cold, cold place,” explained Shanhui Fan, professor of electrical engineering and the paper’s senior author. “We’ve developed a new type of structure that reflects the vast majority of sunlight, while at the same time it sends heat into that coldness, which cools manmade structures even in the day time.”

The trick, from an engineering standpoint, is two-fold.…

Tokyo, 4 MArch – Japanese scientists have developed a way to generate electricity from chemical waste – a byproduct of paint-manufacturing.

IHI Corp. envisages receiving its first order this year for a next-generation gas-turbine cogeneration system it developed that uses volatile organic compounds (VOC) emitted by chemical, paint and printing plants as fuel to generate electricity, allowing users to lower their VOC-abatement costs while cutting their fuel costs by as much as 40%.…

A few residents of the Isle of Wight,  65,000 population off the coast of England, are hoping to make half its homes energy and water self-sufficient by 2020. But they have not dropped their main technology partner ITM Power in favour of fuel cell provider Dantherm Power. (Correction: earlier versions of this story said ITM had been dropped but Eco-Island stated this was not the case.The company said: “Ecoisland Partnership CIC confirms that it has not issued any other Partnership Contract or Licence to any other Hydrogen Partner nor has it placed any other orders or contracts for the supply of hydrogen technology to the Ecoisland Project other than those it has in place with ITM Power plc.”)

Ecoisland, a Community Interest Company hopes to offer the domestic renewable energy storage solution after first testing it on a single home, believe to be that of Ecoisland founder David Green. The island’s local government has not endorsed the campaign but the term ecoisland was coined by the ex-CEO of IOW Council, Joe Duckworth during his short tenure.…

Just as the Internet was invented by the US military, in conjunction with University College London and a Norwegian research lab – so the US military are at the leading edge pf the next generation of energy production
The U.S. Department of Defense /DoD/, is the biggest single energy user in the country. It accounts for 93 percent of U.S.government fuel consumption and 30,000 gigawatt hours of electricity annually — enough to power 6ر2 million American homes.

The DoD recently embarked on a mission to source 25 percent of its power from renewable energy by 2025 and one of its latest technologies is on show today in Abu Dhabi where you can see some of the world’s leading off-grid military energy solutions at the International Defence Exhibition and Conference /IDEX this week.…