Tomorrow is Today

Japan successfully Harvests Undersea Methane Ice for Fuel

Japan’s decade-long quest to produce gas from undersea methane hydrate, or “flammable ice,” paid off this week with the announcement of a successful extraction from nearly 900 feet below the seabed, the world’s first. The achievement has the potential to unlock a vast new fuel source, as the total amount of carbon in methane hydrate deposits worldwide is conservatively estimated at twice that of all other fossil fuels. The majority of those deposits are located beneath the seabed, and Japan’s Oil, Gas, and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC) says that it hopes to commercialize the extraction technology within five years.

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NASA Harnesses Weak Nuclear Force for Green, Safe Home Reactors

LENR is absolutely nothing like either fission or fusion. Where fission and fusion are underpinned by strong nuclear force, LENR harnesses power from weak nuclear force — but capturing this energy is difficult.

So far, NASA’s best effort involves a nickel lattice and hydrogen ions. The hydrogen ions are sucked into the nickel lattice, and then the lattice is oscillated at a very high frequency (between 5 and 30 terahertz). This oscillation excites the nickel’s electrons, which are forced into the hydrogen ions (protons), forming slow-moving neutrons.

The nickel immediately absorbs these neutrons, making it unstable. To regain its stability, the nickel strips a neutron of its electron so that it becomes a proton — a reaction that turns the nickel into copper and creates a lot of energy in the process.

(via NASA’s cold fusion tech could put a nuclear reactor in every home, car, and plane | ExtremeTech)

Superhydrophobic Nanoengineered Metamaterials Will Make Steam-Cooling More Efficient

There are two ways to create a hydrophobic material: You either coat it with some kind of wax (oil, grease, or some other special, hydrophobic substance); or you use nanoengineering to create a special, nanopatterned textured surface.

These nanopatterns, which are hydrophobic, take the form of little bumps or posts that are around 10 micrometers (10 micron, 10,000 nanometers) across. This kind of hydrophobic material is fairly well understood.

The MIT breakthrough being discussed today starts with a nanopatterned hydrophobic material — and then coats it in a very fine layer of lubricant, massively increasing its hydrophobicity. It turns out that the small gaps between the bumps/posts are capable of exerting just enough capillary force to hold an oil lubricant in place.

The scientists simply had to dunk the nanopatterned material into a vat of lubricant, pull it out, and the lubricant remains fixed in the material.

The nanopattern, plus the lubricant, results in a material that is 10,000 times more hybrophobic than the non-lubricated version. The pits are so small that it takes just half a teaspoon of lubricant to cover a square yard (0.8sqm) of the material. “Drops can glide on the surface,” Kripa Varanasi, the lead researcher, says. “These are just crazy velocities.”

(via MIT creates hydrophobic material that could revolutionize fossil fuel and nuclear power plants | ExtremeTech)

Algeria Joins North African Coalition to Turn Sahara Into Immense Solar Farm

The Desertec Foundation likes to point out that only six hours’ worth of energy hitting the world’s deserts is enough to power everything on the planet. For a full year.

The group’s main focus is an ambitious plan to line the northern Sahara Desert with solar installations, and send much of the power back across the Mediterranean to Europe.

Recently, Algeria joined Morocco and Egypt as partners in the effort as it tries to transition toward a renewable future. Algeria wants to install 650 megawatts of solar energy by 2015, and a stunning 22 000 MW by 2030. Toward the end of 2011, the Algerian national utility Sonelgaz signed a memorandum of understanding with Desertec to export much of that solar output, and now the country is looking to really start building it.

The energy engineering subsidiary of Sonelgaz, CEEG, has started accepting tender bids to build various solar and wind projects; Forbes reports this is part of an ongoing effort to diversify an energy portfolio that has seen steadily declining production of oil and gas in recent years.

(via Algeria Joining North African March Toward Solar Power - IEEE Spectrum)

Special Operations Drones Powered/Refueled Remotely Using Lasers

To be fair, this wasn’t a flight test. Lockheed’s Stalker was modified for indoor flight and placed in a wind tunnel under flight conditions, so the laser system didn’t have to track the moving aircraft in flight. But the outcome was extremely promising nonetheless. Under conditions akin to continuous flight, this new laser light power system created by LaserMotive Inc. delivered a constant flow of power to the Stalker, keeping it humming for far longer than even the test parameters required. The test team only terminated the trial because the Stalker and the power system had already far exceeded the endurance goals they had set out to meet.

Moreover, the Stalker’s battery ended the session with more power stored than when it began the test, suggesting that even under more stressful flight conditions that drain a bit more power from the Stalker—bad weather, perhaps—the system is capable of delivering plenty of energy to keep a craft airborne. That’s good news for the Special Ops forces who use the drone for persistent surveillance and recon.

(via Ground-to-Air Laser Power System Keeps a Plane Aloft for Two Straight Days | Popular Science)

Stanford researchers synthesize printable, electrically conductive gel

Stanford researchers have invented an electrically conductive gel that is quick and easy to make, can be patterned onto surfaces with an inkjet printer and demonstrates unprecedented electrical performance. The Jell-O-like material may have applications in areas as widespread as energy storage, medical sensors and biofuel cells. It is a kind of conducting hydrogel – a jelly that feels and behaves like biological tissues, but conducts electricity like a metal or semiconductor.

[read more] [Stanford News] [paper] [image credit: Stanfort/L.A. Cicero]

(via nextbigfuture, ht futurescope)

US Army to Focus on Wireless Charging for Wired Troops

Leaving home while carrying a phone, an iPad and a laptop might also mean lugging along several tangled power cords. Now add radios and GPS devices. Now strap them to your person and wrap the cords around your body beneath your 30-pound armored vest. Oh, and you’re on patrol in Afghanistan, which means there’s no place to plug in when your phone’s batteries start to die. This explains why the Pentagon is keen on eliminating those cables with wireless chargers, and now wants to boost the range to more than 50 feet. 

[read more] [Army News] [image credit: army.mil]

(via dangerroom, ht futurescope)

Researchers Artificially Reproduce Full Photosynthesis Cycle

Thomas Meyer came upon the solution almost by accident. Meyer, a chemist at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and director of its Energy Frontier Research Center in Solar Fuels, noticed that two separate groups of researchers working on two separate parts of the photosynthetic reaction happened to be using the same class of catalyst—ones with an atom of the metal ruthenium surrounded by organic molecules.

One group used this type of catalyst to split water into hydrogen and oxygen; the other one was splitting carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and oxygen. “Finding a single catalyst that does both was a big surprise,” Meyer says.

By combining the two steps and using the same catalyst, Meyer realized that they could reproduce photosynthesis in its entirety.

Whereas natural photosynthesis, after multiple reactions, converts water, carbon dioxide and sunlight into oxygen and energy-rich fuels such as sugar, Meyer’s version converts water and carbon dioxide into oxygen, hydrogen and carbon monoxide—and the latter can be combined with hydrogen to eventually make a fuel such as methanol.

These findings suggest that it may be feasible to take carbon emitted from, say, a coal plant and use it to make a liquid fuel such as methanol that replaces or supplements fossil fuels for transportation or electricity generation.

How would it work? Carbon dioxide-laden water from a fossil-fuel plant would pass across ruthenium catalyst membranes, which would trigger artificial photosynthesis, breaking it down into oxygen as well as constituents that can be converted to fuel. Electrical energy to drive the catalytic reaction would come from solar-power cells—although eventually researchers might be able to modify the catalyst to absorb sunlight directly. “That really would make it like photosynthesis,” Meyer says. 

(via A New Leaf: New Catalyst Boosts Artificial Photosynthesis as a Solar Alternative to Fossil Fuel: Scientific American)