05 Energy – Page 43 – Public Intelligence Blog

Producing hydrogen from water, sunlight and some catalyst-coated chips of silicon – we are getting closer to doable home electricity for the technically challenged…

‘Artificial leaf’ gains the ability to self-heal damage and produce energy from dirty water

Another innovative feature has been added to the world’s first practical “artificial leaf,” making the device even more suitable for providing people in developing countries and remote areas with electricity, scientists reported here today. It gives the leaf the ability to self-heal damage that occurs during production of energy.

Daniel G. Nocera, Ph.D., described the advance during the “Kavli Foundation Innovations in Chemistry Lecture” at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

Nocera, leader of the research team, explained that the “leaf” mimics the ability of real leaves to produce energy from sunlight and water. The device, however, actually is a simple catalyst-coated wafer of silicon, rather than a complicated reproduction of the photosynthesis mechanism in real leaves. Dropped into a jar of water and exposed to sunlight, catalysts in the device break water down into its components, hydrogen and oxygen. Those gases bubble up and can be collected and used as fuel to produce electricity in fuel cells.

“Surprisingly, some of the catalysts we’ve developed for use in the artificial leaf device actually heal themselves,” Nocera said. “They are a kind of ‘living catalyst.’ This is an important innovation that eases one of the concerns about initial use of the leaf in developing countries and other remote areas.”

Nocera, who is the Patterson Rockwood Professor of Energy at Harvard University, explained that the artificial leaf likely would find its first uses in providing “personalized” electricity to individual homes in areas that lack traditional electric power generating stations and electric transmission lines. Less than one quart of drinking water, for instance, would be enough to provide about 100 watts of electricity 24 hours a day. Earlier versions of the leaf required pure water, because bacteria eventually formed biofilms on the leaf’s surface, shutting down production.

“Self-healing enables the artificial leaf to run on the impure, bacteria-contaminated water found in nature,” Nocera said. “We figured out a way to tweak the conditions so that part of the catalyst falls apart, denying bacteria the smooth surface needed to form a biofilm. Then the catalyst can heal and re-assemble.” …

via ‘Artificial leaf’ gains the ability to self-heal damage and produce energy from dirty water.

2013/04/242013/04/24

SchwartzReport: BP Does Not Pay Out, Continues to Screw the Gulf Coast, Uses Its Own Police to Block Journalists, Local Politicians Are Collaborating with BP Agains the Public…

03 Economy, 05 Energy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, 12 Water, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement

The story has passed from the media's attention. If you listen to the mainstream media, and look at all those cozy, “come on down y'all” ads BP has put up on television, things have returned as if the oil spill never happened. As this story makes clear, it is all an Orwellian propaganda lie. I ran this story because a reader on the Gulf Coast wrote to tell me t! hat whatever I thought was going on, human lives, the coast, and the ecosystem were still devastated. This carbon energy crisis may not really be over for years; indeed, things may never be as they once were.

The Gulf Coast May Never Recover
MAUREEN NANDINI MITRA, Managing Editor – Earth Island Journal

EXTRACT:

Most people I know who have been directly affected by the spill have lost faith in the recovery process. They tried to give BP the benefit of the doubt and work with [claims czar Kenneth] Feinberg, who was tasked by BP to handle the claims after the initial claims process failed. People were asked to fill out paperwork over and over again and their claims were still rejected for reasons not made clear to them. No one seems satisfied that their elected officials fought the fight for them. Most of them don't believe any money will trickle down to them at all.

2013/04/22

SchwartzReport: Could New York Run On Renewable Energy Alone?

05 Energy, Corruption, Government

Could New York Run On Renewable Energy Alone?
MARK FISCHETTI – Salon/Scientific American

An important interview with Mark Jacobson, one of the most original thinkers in energy transition. It is well worth your time.

I consider what is being described here as extremely good news. Finally a discussion is emerging about what would really be involved in giving up carbon energy. And, it turns out, its not so scary to accomplish as one might think. You pull back the curtain, and it is the Wizard of Oz. All that is keeping us from making this transition is carbon energy's control of the American government.

Click through to see the important graphics.

Three times now, Mark Jacobson has gone out on the same limb. In 2009 he and co-author Mark Delucchi published a cover story in Scientific American that showed how the entire world could get all of its energy – fuel as well as electricity – from wind, water and solar sources by 2030. No coal or oil, no nuclear or natural gas. The tale sounded infeasible – except that Jacobson, from Stanford University, and Delucchi, from the University of California, Davis, calculated just how many hydroelectric dams, wave-energy systems, wind turbines, solar power plants and rooftop photovoltaic installations the world would need to run itself completely on renewable energy.

Read full article at source.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Could New York Run On Renewable Energy Alone?”

2013/04/212013/04/21

Eagle: Next Up: Nuclear Drills, Nuclear Lock-Downs, Nuclear False Flags?

05 Energy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

Here are some headlines that concern folks in my neck of the woods.

Shots fired at TVA Watts Bar Nuclear Plant

TVA: Suspect shoots at security officer at Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, officer shoots back

VA lockdown following security officer shooting at Watts Bar Nuclear Plant

TMI attack exercise involved intruders trying to “take over the plant”

Continue reading “Eagle: Next Up: Nuclear Drills, Nuclear Lock-Downs, Nuclear False Flags?”

2013/04/18

SmartPlanet: How thorium can burn nuclear waste and generate energy

05 Energy, SmartPlanet

How thorium can burn nuclear waste and generate energy

There’s a growing movement to make nuclear power safer, more efficient and less weapons-prone by replacing today’s uranium fuel with another element, thorium.

And within the thorium push, there are different technological ideas for how to deploy. One camp says that the best way to optimize thorium’s many advantages is to put it into liquid form in a molten salt reactor (MSR), which is a radically different design compared to today’s solid fueled reactors.

Some thorium pragmatists, however, advocate another step that would get thorium onto the power scene sooner: Put it into existing reactors.

That’s the message coming from the University of Cambridge in England, where PhD candidate Ben Lindley has discovered another potential advantage: Reactor operators could burn a thorium fuel that is mixed with plutonium and thus would provide a useful way to eliminate troubling nuclear waste.

Fabricators can already mix uranium with plutonium into a fuel called “MOX” (mixed oxide), which France uses in some of its nuclear reactors.

Continue reading “SmartPlanet: How thorium can burn nuclear waste and generate energy”

2013/04/172013/04/17

SchwartzReport: GMO Poison, Nuclear Seepage, Eat Less Die Less, Obama’s Three Failures

01 Agriculture, 03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 11 Society

BioTech Lies Exposed: Genetically Modified Corn Is Loaded With Chemical Poisons
JONATHAN BENSON – Global Research

The more I learn about GMOs (See The Great Experiment: Genetically Modified Organisms, Scientific Integrity, and National Wellness http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2812%2900222-4/fulltext) the more I am convinced that this is a vast planet wide animal study, and we are the animals. We must label the presence of these organisms in our foods. ! Sign every petition you can, donate, lobby. We are up against a very powerful corporate force, but our health depends upon our behavior

This is the latest on a slow motion nuclear accident taking place with almost no public awareness.

Seepage From an Aging Nuclear Site
GINA MASON – Consortiumnews.com

An unintended mass population experiment reveals a great deal that you may find useful in your own life. Click through to see the graphic.

The Cuban Diet: Eat Less, Exercise More – and Preventable Deaths Are Halved
JEREMY LAURANCE – The Independent (UK)

Obama has been a disappointment in many ways. The big three, in my view, are the failure to address climate change in a meaningful way; the failure to hold the corrupt financial sector accountable; and the failure to develop a foreign policy that was not just an extension of the Bush-Cheney policies.

Losing Pakistan: An Insider’s Look at How the U.S. Deals With Its Ally
OMAR WARAICH – Time

2013/04/14

Jean Lievins: P2P Energy & Metering

05 Energy, P2P / Panarchy, Resilience

Energy crisis – The path to P2P energy

This is the 1st of a 3 part series by Silvia Garcia Alonso on P2P responses to the water and energy crisis. The text is also available in Spanish on her website.

Energy is the engine of our economy. An economy based on growth that permanently demands larger amounts of energy. During the 20th century, especially during the second half of it, economic growth has come hand in hand with the easy access to fossil fuel resources, something that at that time seemed to be virtually inexhaustible.

Category: 05 Energy

Sepp Hasslberger: Artificial Leaf Self Heals Produces Energy from Dirty Water