Moon Based Solar Cells Could Power the Earth

An article on Dvice reports on a truly originally inventive idea from Shimizu Corp.  to build an array of solar cells will extend along the entire 6,8353 mile lunar equator. This belt will eventually grow  to a width of  249 miles in width. 

Construction would be left to construction robots who wold be shipped to the Moon along with the supplies needed to construct the  array. Once installed, the Sun-facing cells would collect energy and store it until they were facing the Earth once more. Then laser and microwave transmitters would fire up, beaming power to their partner stations around the globe.

The microwave antennas on the Moon would be 12 miles in diameter augmented with high density laser transmitter 


Shimizu Corp's Plan

 DVice article on the solar project

Nuclear Fusion Breakes Even For the First Time!

Nuclear Fusion is without too much argument the driving force behind the Universe.   For those of you that  think they don't really have a handle on the fusion process, let me explain at the root of fusion, is a fairly simple possess.

Nuclear fusion is a nuclear reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei collide at a very high speed and join to form a new type of atomic nucleus. During this process,some of the mass of the fusing nuclei is converted to  energy  (most often photons)


Unfortunately, experiments in the lab, though capable of creating fusion, have not come to the magical energy break even point. 

Now, Researchers at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, have indeed attained the holy grail of particle physics.  Indeed, the BBC is reporting:

• The BBC is reporting, though, that during an experiment conducted in the facility during September the "amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel".

Here is a link to the Gizmodo article   and a wicked good Wikipedia article

Fusion Power in Four?

By most estimates, fusion power is at least Forty years away.  But if the folks over at Lockheed Martin skunk works have their way, a working unit the size of a semi-trailer will be producing power in as little as four years.  

Lockheed Martin's Charles Chase, in an interview with Google's Solve For X, looks for their system to take plentiful Hydrogen and fuse it into Helium and in the process provide enough energy to power a small city.  Once Lockheed Martin moves to assembly line production in 2017  their unit can produce unlimited fresh water or even engines capable of powering a spacecraft to Mars in one month instead of six months it now takes.

Instead of huge lasers or toroidal plasma containment most common in systems like the Tokamac, Lockheed's fusion system will use radio energy to heat a type of hydrogen gas inside a magnetic field that is tightly controlled. This system will create a very high temperature plasma that is much more stable than competing systems. 

Chase is being very closed mouth about any more specific technical information but he is confident that his team will have a prototype 100 mega-watt plant by 2017 and commercial 100 mega-watt plant available by 2022.  

Below, Chase speaks about this new approach to fusion power at a "solve for (x)" talk. 

Solve For X url   Dvice article

A Four Inch Fuel Cell That Could Power Your Car?!

Yes, it is possible to scale a fuel cell down to the point where it becomes small enough and economical enough to power a car and do so quite competitively.

Fuel cells have the potential to upwards of 3 times more efficient than the internal combustion tech used in vehicles today. However there is one major stumbling block. That of how fuel cells have to be fueled. Since the early days of the space program the emerging technologies surrounding the fledgling fuel cell depended heavily on hydrogen and oxygen not because they were inherently more efficient but the gasses were also used in many other systems aboard spacecraft. The downside of this was that in the public's opinion the only way to fuel a fuel cell was with these self same gases. And since hydrogen had developed a reputation of having zero pollutants it gained favor with both the public's and the appropriations committees. Now the technology is stuck in a spiral of waiting for an infrastructure to produce and distribute the fuel efficiently and at low cost. It could well take decades to create a nationwide hydrogen distribution and storage system, and to convert gas stations into a hydrogen filling station. This leads to the joke about Fuel cells being the tech of the future and always will be.

However, fuel cells do NOT have to run strictly off hydrogen to be clean and efficient. What the public has not been made aware of is that there are two types of fuel cells. Most people when they consider fuel cells think of the proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell, uses hydrogen to generate power. However there is a competing technology - the solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) developed by Professor Eric Wachsman, director of the University of Maryland Energy Research Center. The solid oxide fuel cell has a distinct advantage over the PEM type. The main advantage is that they can oxidize any fuel!

There are always trade offs, and here is the main one for the Solid Oxide fuel cell. (from the article)

• "It's the reason why the automotive companies are using PEM fuel cells. PEM fuel cells operate at around 80° Celsius [180° Fahrenheit], which allows them to startup fairly quickly. Current solid oxide fuel cells currently operate at 800° Celsius [1500° Fahrenheit], so it takes a long time to warm up to operating temperature, making them more applicable to stationary power generation."

Wachsman and his colleagues have managed though to squeeze more power out of a smaller area at significantly lower temperatures. The group has also found that stacking their new arrays they get three kilowatts of electricity per kilogram of material, more than an internal combustion engine at approximately one-third the size. Also with changes in design they will be able to reduce the operating temps to around 650 degrees which puts the cell ideal for automotive applications.

More at the articles location here

Space Based Power in a Decade?

This sound familiar? Power from orbiting space platforms, available in just a few years! Of course I remember reading about this type of tech in the 70s. Large solar arrays the size of football fields would convert the power generated to micro-wave beams that would be focused on ground stations on Earth where it would be converted back to direct or alternating current for distribution.

So what makes this program any different. This one calls for "giant solar arrays in orbit around the Earth" Oh wait, this one calls for the newest buzz word lasers, even though micro-waves uses less power. But wait! Now the arrays are upwards of 7 miles long, positions along the equator and they are back to considering micro-waves. All within a decade!

Realistically they are still saying that a more reasonable time frame is at least 30 years after covering up-front expense and a handy fleet of private launch vehicles that would be used to put them in place.

For my money it's all pie in the sky until the supply of coal, natural gas and a host of other cheaper products are available.

The Power of Poop

Now I know that in one form or another you are all familiar with gasification of waste products to generate electricity or for that matter, drawing of methane from landfills to do the same. So it seems to be a bit redundant to talk about the technology. But when Dan passed me this AP article in the BDN, I knew at the very least I would get a chance to do some lame poop jokes or something else scatological.

Artist Matthew Mazzotta, has an installation in a Cambridge MA dog park consisting of two steel, 500-gallon oil tanks painted a golden yellow, connected by black piping and attached to an old gaslight style street light. Yes, it's a poop converter called the "Park Spark".

The poop powered park presence is not meant to be a test bed of any sort. No it's goal is a bit more sublime. Mazzotta hopes the Park Spark will get people thinking about not wasting waste. Visitors and pet owners visiting the park say that they are seeing poop in a new light......

Poochie poop power projects themselves are nothing new. Several California cities tried to float poop projects of their own several years ago But in all instances the projects fizzled.

Mazzotta's poop project which is funded by a grant from MIT runs for a month

Huffingtonpost article

diamond bullets -Secret to fusion power?

Dvice blog lists an article stating that Chinese scientists say they've figured out a way to make fusion power work by using minuscule diamond bullets fired into crystallized methane.

Of course the biggest technical hump is that those diamonds will need to be fired at a speed of 2,232,000 mph to start the reaction.

The idea is to fire the diamond bullet into methane crystals. The extremely high speed would create a tremendous shock-wave, the high pressures developed would raise the temperature in the containment vessel high enough to start a nuclear fusion reaction.

So far, computer simulations agree with the scientists that this method would have a net energy gain, but work still needs to be done to develop a system to keep the reaction going once started.

Read more here

Luna Uranium Mining?

The Japanese Kaguya spacecraft has discovered that Uranium exists on the moon. This according to an article submitted by Dave Tackett from Space.com.

From the article:

• The findings are the first conclusive evidence for the presence of the radioactive element...
• The revelation suggests that nuclear power plants could be built on the moon - or the ore could possibly be used to fire plants back here on Earth.

Since Moon colonies and Earth alike will need power in the future, this finding may prove to be very lucrative. As Dave points out Heinlein would have love this!

Space.com article

New Super Laser unveiled

Tim Sayell sends in this very interesting article from Yahoo News which reports that The National Ignition Facility has disclosed information describing a new "super laser". The new laser is capable of reaching temperatures and pressures equal to that said to exist in the cores of stars. This mean that for the first time in history, this was the first demonstration of fusion ignition in a laboratory setting.

What is really impressive is the physical makeup of the laser array. a house-sized sphere can focus 192 laser beams on a small point, generating temperatures and pressures that are capable of a fusion reaction triggered by the super laser hitting hydrogen atoms. There is ever indication that this reaction will produce more energy than was required to prompt "ignition," which had been the "holy grail" of fusion researchers for more than 50 years.

Read the complete article here

HiPER Laser Fusion Project Starts

We have all heard the siren's call of Fusion Power. "Unlimited, Clean electrical energy". The problem with fusion is not that it can not be reached, because anyone with a little knowledge of history knows that fusion reaction has been achieved with spectacular effect. But controllable, clean fusion has a major drawback. It takes more energy to start and maintain than you can get out of the reaction. But that may be about to change. enter the $1.7-billion HiPER facility—High Power laser Energy Research. This facility's aim is to construct a fusion reactor that will utilize high powered lasers firing on a small sphere of deuterium and tritium with enough force to fuse the deuterium and tritium atoms together, producing harmless helium and vast amounts of energy. The method isn't new. However up to this point the major item lacking was a powerful enough laser that had a high enough firing rate to maintain the reaction. The National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California has a similar project due to start in 2009 but the lasers in use there use far more power than they can reap from the reaction. A separate approach at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in Cadarache, France, is aiming to use powerful magnetic fields to spark the reaction but this is again not thought to be terribly efficient. Researchers at the HiPER facility look to the NIF's efforts to be a jumping off point for their work. The NIF plant will be a proof of concept. But the major difference between the NIF's plant and HiPER is the NIF uses a single laser to do all the work. HiPER will use use 2 lasers in a two step process where they hope to break the efficiency boundry.


<- Telegraph.co.uk via Gizmodo ->

Researchers discover inexpensive method for spliting H2O

Shaun Saunders sends in a really exciting article concerning one of the major drawbacks to low cost solar and fuel cell power generation and storage. Up until now, the cost of storing the energy from the sun or splitting water molecules has been prohibitive. Thus pushing the tech into fringe markets. Now researchers from MIT have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy. Here is an excerpt from the article explaining the process:

• The key component in ... (the) new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity -- whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source -- runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.

• Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.

Though still in it's early stages, the implications are clear. Once implemented, cheap production of oxygen and hydrogen gases will lead to power generation at extremely lower cost which at the very least will reduce our dependence of foreign fuel supplies. Another benefit will be a much smaller carbon footprint.

<- more ->

Go off the grid with a personal nuclear reactor! REALLY!

Toshiba has developed a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks. The new reactor is only 20 feet by 6 feet and is designed to supply 200 kw for 5 cents per kh. Unlike traditional nuclear reactors the new micro reactor uses no control rods to initiate the reaction. The new technology uses reservoirs of liquid lithium-6, an isotope that is effective at absorbing neutrons. The Lithium-6 reservoirs are connected to a vertical tube that fits into the reactor core. The whole whole process is self sustaining and can last for up to 40 years. Toshiba expects to install the first reactor in Japan in 2008 and to begin marketing the new system in Europe and America in 2009.

Wow, all I need now is a flux capacitor.......

Robotic Fleas Spring into Action

A robotic flea has been developed that is capable of jumping nearly 30 times its height, rubber band power. These tiny rubber band powered micro-robots could serve as ultra-small sensors. Swarms of such robots could eventually be used to create networks of distributed sensors for detecting chemicals or for military-surveillance purposes. Early tests show that the solar-powered autonomous "flea-bots" can store enough energy to make a 7-millimeter robot jump 200 millimeters high. This flea-like ballistic jumping would enable these sensors to be mobile, overcoming distances and obstacles that would normally be a major problem for micrometer-sized bots.

Belkin's Pitstop charging table

Belkin's Pitstop charging table lets you ditch those cables. By simply placing your rechargeable item on the table top, your electronic do dad gets a much needed top off - sans wires and wall warts. How is this black magic accomplished you ask? Well by simple induction I respond, knowingly. And there is the 10 thousand dollar word - induction. Anyone familiar with electronics (ahem, like yours truly) knows that if you cause current to flow through a conductor, you can start another current flowing in any conductor that lies near the original conductor. Now to totally confuse, you don't need an original conductor or original current...you can use say a - magnet. That's how electric motors and generators do their trick. But...back to the Pitstop - Think of how radio works - you have someone playing music at a station, someone takes that sound and with the help of wires and magnets, puts that signal on the station's long wire...better known as an antenna. Now in your car, you have another long wire, (the car antenna) and through it you receive the signal. Now what really happens is that the station induces a current on the car antenna that the radio uses to make audio signals. So how does this apply to your current starved mp3 player? well, say it has a very long wire wrapped up inside the case instead of a charger? You lay it on the Pitstop's table top that is acting something like a radio station. By being close by, your player can pick up the signal that the Pitstop is putting out. Your player turns that signal into simple current that can recharge the batteries in the player. This technology is far from new. Ever since there has been a transformer (wall wart or like that big round thing hanging off the telephone pole that has wires running from it to your house) there has been induction. This is just a very clever utilization. No wires to chafe, no transformer to heat up or short out and no plugs to wear out.