A team of University of Arkansas physicists has successfully developed a circuit capable of capturing graphene's thermal motion and converting it into an electrical current.
“An energy-harvesting circuit based on graphene could be incorporated into a chip to provide clean, limitless, low-voltage power for small devices or sensors,” said Paul Thibado, professor of physics and lead researcher in the discovery.
The findings, titled "Fluctuation-induced current from freestanding graphene," and published in the journal Physical Review E, are proof of a theory the physicists developed at the U of A three years ago that freestanding graphene — a single layer of carbon atoms — ripples and buckles in a way that holds promise for energy harvesting.
Sepp Hasslberger's insight:
While this is not a lot of energy, we are going in the right direction. Nikola Tesla's idea that we would learn to latch on to the "wheelwork of nature" is definitely coming closer, one small step at a time.
Is this the future of hypersonic transportation? Russia's version of Elon Musk thinks so.
You can't eliminate distance, but in near-space, where there's little air resistance, you can move pretty dang fast. In laymen's terms, that's the founding principle of a company that's developing a hypersonic hydrogen-powered vehicle capable of moving cargo between continents at unheard of shipping speeds.
The vehicle is designed as a hybrid between an airplane and rocket that takes off and lands horizontally from airports using a hydrogen-fed airbreathing jet engine. In this way, it will integrate with other planes when it passes through controlled airspaces. However, once a certain altitude and speed are reached, the hyperplane will switch to a cryogenic hydrogen rocket engine that will accelerate it to a hypersonic velocity.
A new surface that kills bacteria more than 100 times faster and more effectively than standard copper could help combat the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant superbugs.
The new copper product is the result of a collaborative research project with RMIT University and Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, with findings just published in Biomaterials. Copper has long been used to fight different strains of bacteria, including the commonly found golden staph, because the ions released from the metal’s surface are toxic to bacterial cells.
But this process is slow when standard copper is used, as RMIT University’s Distinguished Professor Ma Qian explained, and significant efforts are underway by researchers worldwide to speed it up. “A standard copper surface will kill about 97% of golden staph within four hours,” Qian said. “Incredibly, when we placed golden staph bacteria on our specially-designed copper surface, it destroyed more than 99.99% of the cells in just two minutes. So not only is it more effective, it’s 120 times faster.”
Importantly, said Qian, these results were achieved without the assistance of any drug. “Our copper structure has shown itself to be remarkably potent for such a common material,” he said.
Copper has been known to disinfect, meaning to kill bacteria very efficiently, but it appears that with a specially designed surface, the metal is even more effective. Hospitals, pay attention...
The Speeder’s design team said the sci-fi sky-bike recently passed flight tests. They expect it to be commercially available by 2023.
Jetpack Aviation, which already makes vertical people propellers, just announced a successful test flight of its jet-driven flying motorcycle prototype. The projected performance is Easy Rider-worthy bad-ass, and best of all, the California company plans to produce two consumer versions for everyday users.
The Speeder is an engineering feat that required Jetpack Aviation to write its own flight-control software program to monitor and adjust the thrust. The benefit of that work, which took a year and a half, is an intuitive system that functions like a typical motorcycle and automatically stabilizes the machine in flight. It can take off and land vertically from most surfaces in roughly the space taken up by a car, and it can be programmed to fly autonomously.
A little bit of progress on pushing more of our traffic into the air. More independence than cars and motorbikes, and perhaps it really is better to leave the streets to people walking and biking or skateboarding...
The graphene aluminum-ion battery cells from the Brisbane-based Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG) are claimed to charge up to 60 times faster than the best lithium-ion cells and hold more energy.
Based on breakthrough technology from the University of Queensland’s (UQ) Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, the battery cells use nanotechnology to insert aluminum atoms inside tiny perforations in graphene planes.
GMG Managing Director Craig Nicol insisted that while his company’s cells were not the only graphene aluminum-ion cells under development, they were easily the strongest, most reliable and fastest charging.
“It charges so fast it’s basically a super capacitor,” Nicol claimed. “It charges a coin cell in less than 10 seconds.”
The new battery cells are claimed to deliver far more power density than current lithium-ion batteries, without the cooling, heating or rare-earth problems they face.
“So far there are no temperature problems. Twenty percent of a lithium-ion battery pack (in a vehicle) is to do with cooling them. There is a very high chance that we won’t need that cooling or heating at all,” Nicol claimed.
“It does not overheat and it nicely operates below zero so far in testing...
This looks like some real progress in battery technology. Abundant non-toxic materials graphite and aluminium, fast charging and three times the energy density of lithium-ion.
The article describes John F Kennedy’s dream of a new energy project of awesome dimensions: the Passamaquoddy Tidal venture, which would have used huge water turbines to produce electricity for both America and Canada.
It would also have provided a model for the rest of the world.
I publish this account in the context of the Biden administration’s plan to convert huge tracts of privately owned US land to federally controlled property. On that land, relatively feeble “clean energy” technologies would replace, oil, coal, and natural gas—an unmitigated disaster.
It’s intentional. It’s part and parcel of the technocratic program to LOWER THE PRODUCTION AND USE OF ENERGY ALL OVER THE WORLD…
Thus, “saving the planet” from global warming.
Actually, not saving anything, but instead, further destroying the lives of people from one end of the world to the other, by condemning them to far less available energy.
Meanwhile, actual alternative energy innovations are suppressed...
“Powerpaste stores hydrogen in a chemical form at room temperature and atmospheric pressure to be then released on demand,” explains Dr. Marcus Vogt, research associate at Fraunhofer IFAM. And given that Powerpaste only begins to decompose at temperatures of around 250 °C, it remains safe even when an e-scooter stands in the baking sun for hours. Moreover, refueling is extremely simple. Instead of heading to the filling station, riders merely have to replace an empty cartridge with a new one and then refill a tank with mains water. This can be done either at home or underway.
The starting material of Powerpaste is magnesium, one of the most abundant elements and, therefore, an easily available raw material. Onboard the vehicle, the Powerpaste is released from a cartridge by means of a plunger. When water is added from an onboard tank, the ensuing reaction generates hydrogen gas in a quantity dynamically adjusted to the actual requirements of the fuel cell. In fact, only half of the hydrogen originates from the Powerpaste ; the rest comes from the added water.
“Powerpaste thus has a huge energy storage density,” says Vogt. “It is substantially higher than that of a 700 bar high-pressure tank. And compared to batteries, it has ten times the energy storage density.”
Sepp Hasslberger's insight:
This looks like a much needed advance in our ability to store hydrogen to be released on demand. It might get fuel cells (making electricity from hydrogen) off the ground into more widespread application.
The rechargeable batteries in your laptop, your cell phone, your headphones: all of these can be used to power your life and take you off the grid. DIY Powerwalls – rechargeable lithium-ion battery installations, made from recycled batteries – are the future of power, whether you know it or not.
We visited Jehu Garcia, a DIY Powerwall builder and enthusiast, and the folks at EV West in Southern California as well as the University of Michigan Battery Lab to see just how DIY Powerwalls can power your home, your car, and even the rest of your neighborhood.
*The video originally aired on MOTHERBOARD in 2017
In contrast, vanadium is the 20th most abundant element in the earth’s crust, and VoltStorage is also working on an iron redox-flow battery, which would have even easier-to-source materials (iron is the most abundant of the Earth’s metals). About half of the company’s 37-strong team work on R&D like this.
Batteries like these could be easily manufactured and sourced entirely in Europe, Peither points out.
“People are always discussing increasing battery production in Europe, but the fact is we don’t have the raw materials here for lithium-ion batteries. Those come from China, South America and Africa,” he says.
If Europe is really to become a powerhouse in the battery field, it will have to look to some of the alternative chemistries like this.
Sepp Hasslberger's insight:
Batteries for a home solar system that are not based on rare and difficult-to-mine raw materials ... seems like a good idea. They are too heavy for use in cars, but in a home that is no real problem.
Ben Goertzel is the Founder and CEO of SingularityNET and Chief Science Advisor for Hanson Robotics. He is one of the world’s leading experts in Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), with decades of expertise in applying AI to practical problems like natural language processing, data mining, video gaming, robotics, national security and bioinformatics.
Ben Goertzel was part of the Hanson Robotics team that developed the AI software for the humanoid Sophia robot, which can communicate with humans and display more than 50 facial expressions. Today he also serves as Chairman of the AGI Society, the Decentralized AI Alliance and the futurist nonprofit organisation Humanity+.
Sepp Hasslberger's insight:
This interview of Ben Gertzel at London Real centers around the possible future development of artificial intelligence (AI), from today's limited forms into one that is more generally "aware" and could, conceivably, outdo humans in being intelligent. One of the questions is whether AI should be in the hands of humans, in a distributed, open way, or whether it should it be locked up and under the control of large corporations. The answer to that could make the difference between AI developing into something benevolent or whether it might turn out to be a forece adversarial to humans.
Scientists have created a new class of laser beam that appears to violate long-held laws of light physics. These new beams, which the team calls “spacetime wave packets,” follow different rules of refraction, which could lead to new communication technologies.
A patent application for a new battery that uses glass as a key component has been submitted by a team headed by John Goodenough, the part winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work as co-inventor of the now ubiquitous lithium-ion battery that is the go-to power source for electric cars and energy storage.
And the new glass battery promises to accelerate the shift away from internal combustion engines because it will deliver a significant increase in storage capacity.
By “spiking” glass with either sodium or lithium to form an electrode within the battery, the researchers say the new battery technology provides three times the energy storage capacity of comparable lithium-ion batteries.
It is also neither volatile nor flammable, and does not display issues of lithium dendrite growth that plagues li-ion batteries, which can cause short-circuits and present safety hazards.
Sepp Hasslberger's insight:
This new battery technology has been in the works for some years, and it seems now there is a patent application. Things take time...
THE SAFIRE PROJECT has become a commercial venture. Based on the discoveries of the last six years, the SAFIRE team is currently developing a nuclear-plasma reactor that will have the capacity to both generate electrical power and remediate radioactive waste.
THE SAFIRE SUN is an 11-minute film designed to give potential collaborators a quick overview of the project.
PLEASE NOTE: Prior to becoming a commercial venture of Aureon Energy, Ltd., THE SAFIRE PROJECT was under Aurtas International Inc., contracted by The International Science Foundation to empirically test the Electric Sun Model. Aureon Energy, Ltd. is an independent body which has no affiliation with The Electric Universe, The Electric Sun, or The Thunderbolts Project.
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This looks like a milestone in plasma based energy production, with an added bonus, the capability to remediate, meaning to render harmless, nuclear waste materials.
The new review paper on magnetic topological materials of Andrei Bernevig, Princeton University, USA, Haim Beidenkopf, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, and Claudia Felser, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden, Germany, introduces the new theoretical concept that interweaves magnetism and topology. It identifies and surveys potential new magnetic topological materials, mentions their possible future applications in spin and quantum electronics and as materials for efficient energy conversion. The review discusses the connection between topology, symmetry, and magnetism at a level suitable for graduate students in physics, chemistry, and materials science that have a basic knowledge of condensed matter physics.
Magnetic topological materials represent a class of compounds whose properties are strongly influenced by the topology of the electronic wavefunctions coupled with their spin configuration. Topology is a simple concept dealing with the surfaces of objects. The topology of a mathematical structure is identical if it is preserved under continuous deformation. A pancake has the same topology as a cube, a donut as a coffee cup, and a pretzel as a board with three holes. Adding spin offers additional structure – a new degree of freedom – for the realization of new states of matter that are not known in non-magnetic materials. Magnetic topological materials can support chiral channels of electrons and spins, and can be used for an array of applications from information storage, control of dissipationless spin and charge transport, to giant responses under external stimuli such as temperature and light...
Yes - some real progress in understanding magnetic materials and their properties ... lends itself to myriad technological uses, including catalytic splitting of water to obtain hydrogen.
The Gouy-Chapman theory describes what happens near an electrode when it is in contact with a salt solution, but this description does not match reality. Researcher Kasinath Ojha, assistant professor Katharina Doblhoff-Dier and professor Marc Koper present a new version.
"The next generation of textbooks on electrochemistry is going to look different."
Comment by a friend: "Gee.. so maybe there is more to the nano palladium and nickel mixtures described by Andrea Rossi and other proponents of LENR/ ColdFusion."
Sepp Hasslberger's insight:
Comment by a friend: "Gee.. so maybe there is more to the nano palladium and nickel mixtures described by Andrea Rossi and other proponents of LENR/ ColdFusion."
Swiss-based Exlterra reported spectacular results after one year of decontamination in the Chernobyl zone using its safe, novel technology.
As they committed to doing last April, on the occasion of the 35th commemoration of the Chernobyl accident, the Swiss-based company Exlterra has reported spectacular results after one year of decontamination on a 2.5 acre plot of land (1 hectare), located in the radioactive exclusion zone around the plant in Ukraine.
Exlterra announced last month that radioactive pollution in the soil decreased by 47%, and in the air above the ground by an average of 37%, one year after the installation of its NSPS technology (Nucleus Separation Passive System).
The company believes total remediation of the area is “seriously conceivable within four years”—without moving any earth or using any chemicals...
Finally someone who can seriously reduce radioactivity levels orders of magnitude faster than the natural half life of those elements, and who has demonstrated in the real world that they can do so.
Using electricity to induce rain from existing clouds... crude but efficient it seems. Something similar has been done with more subtle energies, but science never caught on, so now they are down to "electroshock therapy" for the clouds...
Tensegrity (or tensional integrity, or floating compression) is really counterintuitive. These bizarre structures can be explained quite nicely with a 2D version (you know I love to explain things with a 2D versions!).
Tensegrity - or tensional integrity - a concept discovered and explored by Buckminster Fuller, whose best known structure built on that principle is the Geodesic Dome...
Powering LED light, purifying salt water, and utilizing solar power, Henry Goglau's solar desalination still is a Lexus Design Award finalist.
People living in the shanty towns of Chile’s coastline have all the water they could ever need, but they can’t drink it because it’s too salty. There’s also abundant solar energy here, but nothing to harness it.
Clean water is scarce for the 110,000 families in the area, and power comes through unreliable electric lines. Windows are often boarded up to increase privacy and security, which removes almost all natural light.
“I wanted to achieve a design which was sustainable, passive, and created a striking feature inside the dark settlement home,” writesGoglau, a New Zealander who graduated from the Royal Danish Academy with a master’s degree, specializing in architecture for extreme conditions.
“In my development process it became apparent that I could address the lack of indoor lighting and water access by creating a hybrid skylight and solar desalination device.”
Goglau’s device can purify 440 milliliters of water a day, with leftover brine being sifted into batteries made of zinc and copper where they power an LED strip for use during the night.
Sepp Hasslberger's insight:
Looks like a useful invention to make people's lives a little easier...
The meaning of Dajjal`s donkey as an hypersonic Jet aero plane. As Plane has jet engine which emit fires and people sit inside it and there are announcements made before it takes off and it travels above the cloud lines. https://rajpariwar.com/wp/antichrists-hypersonic-ride-dajjal-ki-sawari/
A few years ago multiple media outlets began to report a new development designed by a man from Zimbabwe named Sangulani (Maxwell) Chikumbutso, who claimed to have successfully created an electric powered vehicle and system which runs on a battery that has the ability to charge itself, making it the first ever electric vehicle that never needs charging.
According to Maxwell’s claims, the energy to power the battery is taken from electromagnetic waves that exist all around us and are naturally present in our environment. The vehicle had 5 normal gel batteries which were sufficient enough to start the vehicle and charge the batteries, and from there on in, the batteries are constantly charging.
Scientist Jau Tang has built a jet engine that turns electricity into thrust, which can cut carbon emissions from air travel.
This past autumn, a professor at Wuhan University named Jau Tang was hard at work piecing together a thruster prototype that, at first, sounds too good to be true.
The basic idea, he said in an interview, is that his device turns electricity directly into thrust — no fossil fuels required — by using microwaves to energize compressed air into a plasma state and shooting it out like a jet. Tang suggested, without a hint of self-aggrandizement, that it could likely be scaled up enough to fly large commercial passenger planes. Eventually, he says, it might even power spaceships.
Needless to say, these are grandiose claims. A thruster that doesn’t require tanks of fuel sounds suspiciously like science fiction — like the jets on Iron Man’s suit in the Marvel movies, for instance, or the thrusters that allow Doc Brown’s DeLorean to fly in “Back to the Future.”
But in Tang’s telling, his invention — let’s just call it a Tang Jet, which he worked on with Wuhan University collaborators Dan Ye and Jun Li — could have civilization-shifting potential here in the non-fictional world.
“Essentially, the goal of this technology is to try and use electricity and air to replace gasoline,” he said. “Global warming is a major threat to human civilization. Fossil fuel-free technology using microwave air plasma could be a solution.”
Sepp Hasslberger's insight:
Air has always been part of the "fuel" of jet engines, helped by some combustible hydrocarbon stuff. Now a Chinese professor says we could do without the hydrocarbons, by turning the air directly into plasma using electricity and microwaves. It would certainly help to make cleaner air transport technology.
The "Critical Medical Infrastructure Right-to-Repair Act of 2020" is the first time Congress has ever considered a bill that would break manufacturer repair monopolies.
Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Yvette D. Clark have introduced right to repair legislation in the Senate and the House that would make it easier for hospitals to fix medical equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is the first time that right to repair legislation has ever been introduced at the federal level and is a historic step for the movement, which seeks to break manufacturer monopolies on servicing of electronics of all types.
The Critical Medical Infrastructure Right-to-Repair Act of 2020 would protect owners from prosecution if they made a copy of service parts or broke a digital lock while repairing equipment, allow users to make their own substitute parts, and require manufacturers to provide owners access to information and tools to repair equipment.
So much of our everyday tech runs on batteries, the importance of lithium-ion rechargeables cannot be overstated. But they are expensive to produce, with difficult-to-source materials.
There is an alternative - sodium-ion batteries have the potential to be cheaper and more easily produced, if we can get past the problem of getting these batteries to work as well as the lithium-ion technology we're predominantly using. Now, we may have just gotten a huge step closer to this goal.
Researchers have produced one of the best sets of results so far for a sodium-ion battery, one that holds as much energy as lithium-ion, and performs as well as some commercial lithium-ion batteries. It's a "major development" in sodium-ion (Na-ion) battery research, the team says.
One area where Na-ion batteries might be particularly useful is in large-scale energy storage...
Batteries - for large scale energy storage - are the weak link in renewable energy. Some good research going on to substitute expensive lithium with sodium...
This is the story of Professor Yull Brown an inventor of Bulgarian origin. His original Bulgarian name is Ilia Valkov, one of the greatest Bulgarian and world chemists of all time.
He discovered Brown gas.
In his process, water is separated into its two constituents, hydrogen and oxygen in a way that allows them to be mixed under pressure and burn simultaneously and safely in a 2:1 proportion.
The proprietary process results in a gas containing ionic hydrogen and oxygen in proper mixes which is generated economically and safely and which may be compressed up to 100 psi.
The gas produced by Yull Brown’s process is a mix of the elements found in water – hydrogen, and oxygen. A mixture of these two gases, normally being highly explosive, is usually considered too dangerous to use.
But combined in exactly the same proportion as they are found in water, the gases can be used and stored together with safety. Hydrogen and oxygen can be separated from water in a proportion that ensures total combustion of the Brown’s gas and requires no regulators for the blending process.
Yull Brown spent most of his life convincing others of the commercial viability of his product. He spent 30 years of his life and was able to acquire upwards of $30 million from investors towards commercializing his product.
That is where he founded his own company Brown Energy and began producing Brown Gas generators. He sold the first to China, where to this day it’s being used to burn radioactive waste.
Browns Gas generators and some of the applications were first developed and manufactured in Australia. Production was transferred to the Peoples Republic of China at the inducement of its government, resulting in mass production of generators for national distribution.
You can find a large assortment of Brown's Gas generators for all kinds of uses on Alibaba...
Some years ago we heard that the Hydrogen economy is to be our future, but then ... fossil fuel interests made sure we forgot. Meanwhile Yull Brown's HHO technology is available, and is for sale in China.
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While this is not a lot of energy, we are going in the right direction. Nikola Tesla's idea that we would learn to latch on to the "wheelwork of nature" is definitely coming closer, one small step at a time.