Centauri's Thoughts

This is potentially great news. A laptop battery with 2 hours of life could have 20, and an electric car with a 100 mile range could have 1,000. It will be interesting to see how all this develops.

Reference: NewScientist

I came across an interesting article in New Scientist today, and its something I have pondered for a while, specifically the trapping. A charged particle (electron, proton, positron, or anti-proton) can all be trapped magnetically, but an atom of anti-hydrogen is neutral.

It's a problem ATRAP and ALPHA are still working on. "Capturing antihydrogen atoms is the current frontier, and it's a challenge," says Rolf Landua, a physicist at CERN who advised on the Angels and Demons movie and is rumoured to be the inspiration for Leonardo Vetra, an antimatter scientist in the original story. "So far nobody has managed to do it, but I'm pretty sure we will." Still, encasing a smouldering chunk of antimatter in a portable antihydrogen trap as happens in the book is a quite a way off, he says.

See the entire article here

I came across this a few days ago, but its worth mentioning:

Researchers at The Pennsylvania State University have determined a way to use arrays of nanotubes in a solar-based process to convert carbon dioxide and water into methane and other hydrocarbon fuels. Their method may provide a new way to reduce carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere—rising due to our planet's heavy use of fossil fuels—as well as produce alternative fuels.

The entire article is here at physorg.com

This is great! The more processes they find to liberate hydrogen, the better.

This one uses two sets of specially formulated aluminum, one acts as a base, and one as an acid, and they break the bonds in water molecules to liberate the hydrogen.

This process happens at room temperature and without input of more energy.

Read the full details on physorg.com here.

This looks interesting:

Imagine a self-powering cell phone that never needs to be charged because it converts sound waves produced by the user into the energy it needs to keep running. It's not as far-fetched as it may seem thanks to the recent work of Tahir Cagin, a professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University.

Specifically, Cagin and his partners from the University of Houston have found that a certain type of piezoelectric material can covert energy at a 100 percent increase when manufactured at a very small size – in this case, around 21 nanometers in thickness.

I see many potential uses for this, in particular, against sound walls by the nations freeways in cities.

The entire article is here.

In a world where bigger is usually better, here is the ultimate of downsizing:

(PhysOrg.com) -- Underground nuclear power plants no bigger than a hot tub may soon provide electricity for communities around the world. Measuring about 1.5 meters across, the mini reactors can each power about 20,000 homes.

"Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world," said John Deal, CEO of Hyperion. "[The nuclear plants] will cost approximately $25 million each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $2,500 per home."

read the whole thing here.

The use of motion detectors for turning on specific lights in the house has been a resounding success.

Part of the reason for this success has been clearly thinking out where these motion detectors are placed, and when they are to be triggered. The motion detectors have a setting for a) detecting ALL motion (day or night) or b) only make detection changes at night. The difference here is one acts like a motion activated night light, and the other is a 24x7 sentry of movement.

Next to be acquired is the in-line screw-in bulb X10 module. This will be most useful for a) porchlights and b) a single bulb in a lamp tree of three.

Also on the way is a doorbell sounding chime activated on a specific code.

I'll be writing about the heyu program for unix to communicate with the CM11 module in a separate post.

I finally dug out the old X-10 stuff, and while thinking about how use of all that, and whether to use wine with the original CD, or look for linux drivers, I decided I would really rather run in native linux mode, and be able to study the source and underlying protocol. With that, I could write much more into control scripts.

One interesting ability is to get broadcasts from a device, re-direct that to the unix level, and fire scripts because of it. Thus: a motion sensor could trigger a series of events including turning on lights, sending an e-mail (with details of what triggered the e-mail), and other actions.

So far, the BEST uses have been simple, motion activated lighting in areas at night that ALWAYS need them on a temporary basis.

I'll find other uses, I'm sure.

Part of the energy problem based on hydrogen (for one) is the efficient splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen.

From PhysOrg.com:

Hydrogen will be one of the most important fuels of the future. It would be ideal to obtain hydrogen by splitting water instead of from petroleum. However, the electrolysis of water is a very energy intensive process, making it both expensive and unsustainable if the electricity necessary to generate it comes from the burning of fossil fuels. Photolysis, the splitting of water by light, is a highly promising alternative.

The basic process of electrolysis is to bring the hydrogen and oxygen ions out of the water as a gas.

The biggest hurdle to overcome in the photocatalytic splitting of water to date has been the lack of a robust catalyst that oxidizes water. In fact, the best known catalyst, which very effectively oxidizes water when irradiated with visible light, is a manganese-containing enzyme in the photosynthetic apparatus of living organisms.

An efficient catalyst could mean an inexpensive way to split water, and possibly "on-demand" splitting, which would be rather handy, as the need for hydrogen storage would be bypassed altogether.

source: Catalyst for water oxidation adopted from plants: a means for energy-efficient production of hydrogen?

Solar energy directly or indirectly provides the energy production on this planet in one way or another (save geothermal), either by the production of biomass, fossil fuel, or the driving of weather for hydro and wind power, or solar arrays.

The main problem with direct solar power is what to do about nighttime. While some battery systems might help in this step, it would be expensive to have batteries that could keep a house powered all night during the absence of light (and even moreso for the power companies).

The use of solar power is one part of this idea, and now comes the second part:

Electrolysis of water (as is done in science class) isnt very efficient, and the use of high temps to help the efficiency along doesnt make this process very cheap or safe for a home user. Also, the water usually needs to be made conductive by either adding salt or an acid or a base (none of which desirable for humans or metals).

Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT, has an interesting solution to this, namely, a new catalyst consisting of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. This can then be used to power fuel cells (which uses hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity giving only water as its byproduct).

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

Read the whole article here.