Ever go to a big city and wonder how in the world you were going to get around? This happens to me, as my wife and I make several trips to Chicago every year for weekend getaways. The problem is that there are tons of cars there, traffic snarls a lack of good places to park, unless you want to pay big bucks for a 24 hour parking garage -- which is usually what we end up doing. And, Chicago is nothing compared to New York or Las Angeles.
As part of a four-part seminar held in January entitled, "Hydrogen: Hype or Hope?", Caetano Rodrigues Miranda and Francesca Baletto give a possible glimpse into the future technical challenges of a hydrogen economy, which include hydrogen production, fuel cell design, storage, distribution and transportation.
In America, we have trash, and lots of it. Remember in "Back to the Future", when Doc, played by Christopher Lloyd, grabbed garbage from a can, dropped it into the back of his time-machine and fueled its time circuitry with it? This is nothing like that. But, it is pretty cool if they can get it to work at an economically feasible price. The idea is to convert the organic parts of
Here's a great idea: ask college students to develop new and creative ways to green their campus. General Electric and mtvU have combined to sponsor this unique competition. Of the 10 finalists, two schools are taking on biodiesel projects. MIT is looking at a solar-powered biodiesel processing and filling station while Vanderbilt wants to build a biodiesel production system that is obviously visible to help educate the public. You can view video presentations and fact pages from both schools on
According to Reuters, a group of researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology are working on what they think is a more logical ethanol solution for our impending fuel crisis. Instead of using ethanol as a primary fuel or an additive, we could potentially see more realistic fuel-saving improvements across a wider spectrum if we implemented a system on cars that injected ethanol in small quantities when the engine is under heavy load.
Algae is growing in Arizona and being used to absorb carbon dioxide at an electrical generating plant. If the future holds true to the plant's potential, then algae could be converted to fuel and replace up to one-third of the natural gas needed to power the plant. So far researchers are trying to find the best strand of the single-celled plant that is most effective. Algae ingests CO2 and releases oxygen, but it's also laden with oils that can be used to make biodiesel.
We've been hearing a lot about nuclear power lately. Bush mentioned it as an ideal energy source to generate hydrogen fuel. An MIT study proposed two reactor concepts to produce nuclear hydrogen. This Derrick Y. Noh
BusinessWeek.com has just posted a colorful and engaging multi-story report on high-tech cars. The one piece covering alternative fuel called on MIT professors to give their thoughts. They believe there will be many choices because "we can't put all our eggs in one basket." The article says hybrid technology will be mainstream. Another view came from a
The Vehicle Design Summit (VDS) at MIT is a summer project involving the collaboration of about 50 students from 21 universities and 13 countries. Their goal is to design and build 5 high-mileage vehicles which include a plugin-electric, a fuel cell car, another running off ethanol and a Honda Insight conversion to full electricity.
There's a new diesel additive called Envirox that uses cerium oxide as a catalyst. That's the same metal that supports more efficient and expensive platinum in catalytic converters. A company spun off from the University of Oxford called Oxonica has discovered that by breaking the cerium down into nanoparticles of just 5 to 25 nanometers in diameter, the metal turns into a highly active cata
MIT researchers have developed a system that could potentially do away with vehicle alternators and even hybrid batteries.
As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. That can be re-interpreted, for automakers, as the more consumers want your car, the more money they’ll spend your way. And what consumers want right now is better gas mileage, as gas prices continue to climb towards that magical $3 a gallon mark.
