Tag: Hasslberger

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

05 Energy, 12 Water
Sepp Hasslberger
Sepp Hasslberger

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.

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

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.

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Sepp Hasslberger: Monsanto GM Corn Nutritionally Dead, Highly Toxic — and Totally Approved by a Corrupt US Congress

01 Agriculture, 07 Other Atrocities, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, True Cost
Sepp Hasslberger
Sepp Hasslberger

Analysis Finds Monsanto’s GM Corn Nutritionally Dead, Highly Toxic

Is GMO corn nutritionally equivalent to non-GMO corn? Monsanto will tell you the answer is a big ‘yes’, but the real answer is absolutely not. And the simple reality is that they are continuing to get away with their blatant misinformation. In fact, a 2012 nutritional analysis of genetically modified corn found that not only is GM corn lacking in vitamins and nutrients when compared to non-GM corn, but the genetic creation also poses numerous health risks due to extreme toxicity.

With the recent passing of the Monsanto Protection Act, there is no question that mega corporations like Monsanto are able to wield enough power to even surpass that of the United States government. The new legislation provides Monsanto with a legal safeguard against federal courts striking down any pending review of dangerous GM crops. It is ironic to see the passing of such a bill in the face of continuous releases of GMO dangers.

Non-GMO Corn 20x Richer in Nutrition than GMO Corn

Continue reading “Sepp Hasslberger: Monsanto GM Corn Nutritionally Dead, Highly Toxic — and Totally Approved by a Corrupt US Congress”

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Sepp Hasslberger: Bladeless Wind Turbine

05 Energy
Sepp Hasslberger
Sepp Hasslberger

…sounds like an interesting development. Working with electrically charged water droplets and wind to produce energy.  3 minute video below.

Invention of the day: A bladeless wind turbine

It may look like a giant airplane window strung with Venetian blinds, but this structure, designed by Dutch architecture firm Mecanoo and installed at the Delft University of Technology in March, is a model of a machine that would convert wind to energy without any moving parts.

Any mechanical moving parts, at least: The technology, developed by the Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science faculty at Delft, uses the movement of electrically charged water droplets to generate power. How does this work? A handy video explains:

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Sepp Hasslberger: World’s largest solar power plant

05 Energy
Sepp Hasslberger
Sepp Hasslberger

Sepp Hasslberger‘s insight:

It took $ 600 million and 3 years to build this – not bad for a plant that doesn't need fuel, leaves no polluting exhaust and is extremely safe. Arabia could be exporting electricity instead of oil. Future business for desert countries?

Who needs oil? World's largest solar power plant with 258,000 mirrors opens in Abu Dhabi ~ Why Don't You Try This?

You might think that as one of the world's top oil producing nations, the United Arab Emirates would have little use for solar energy. But that hasn't stopped the Middle East state from unveiling the largest concentrated solar power plant in operation anywhere in the world.

solar farmThe 100-megawatt solar-thermal project in Abu Dhabi will power thousands of homes in the country and, it is hoped, displace approximately 175,000 tons of CO2 per year.

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Sepp Hasslberger: The Revolution Will Be (3D) Printed

#OSE Open Source Everything
Sepp Hasslberger
Sepp Hasslberger

Letters at 3AM: The Revolution Will Be Printed

Digital fabrication will change the course of the future

Michael Ventura

The Austin Chronicle, 8 February 2013

That headline has been digitally duplicated (plagiarized) from David Bjerklie's essay in Time‘s special edition: “100 New Scientific Discoveries.” Bjerklie's headline says it all.

Three-dimensional manufacturing is the making of something out of practically nothing. This technology accelerates as we speak. Bjerklie reports that there is only one retail outlet that sells 3-D printers, MakerBot in New York City. Only one, but it had sold 15,000 3-D printers by late 2012.

Every new article on the subject reports something you never dreamed of. A week ago, I didn't know that 3-D printers could make food.

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

Bjerklie writes of “a pork chop … produced by a bioprinter equipped with pig-cell ink that had been grown in vitro.” Scientists are working on “3-D printed meat” that “could lessen the environmental impact and ethical objections of raising meat the old-fashioned way.” The 3-D process would be lots cheaper than herding cows. The Great American Cowboy, or what's left of him, may ride off into the sunset for keeps.

Like most writers on the subject, Bjerklie quotes a researcher's warning. In this case, it's Michael Idelchik, vice president for advanced technologies at GE Global Research. Idelchik cautions that 3-D printing “has the potential to fundamentally disrupt” all that we take for granted.

The real eye-opener is Professor Neil Gershenfeld's lengthy essay in Foreign Affairs (Nov.-Dec. 2012). Professor Gershenfeld is not a journalist. He is a scientist, the leader of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Bits and Atoms. “Cutting edge” is a clichéd usage, but not in Gershenfeld's case. His Center is the knife point of the cutting edge. He subtitles his essay: “The Digital Fabrication Revolution.”

Here's the long and the short of it, in Gershenfeld's words: “Digital fabrication will allow individuals to design and produce tangible objects on demand, wherever and whenever they need them.”

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Sepp Hasslberger: Making Salt Water Drinkable Just Got 99 Percent Easier — Lockheed Martin Achieves a MAJOR Breakthrough

12 Water
Sepp Hasslberger
Sepp Hasslberger

Making Salt Water Drinkable Just Got 99 Percent Easier

Andrew Tarantola

Gizmodo, 15 March 2013

Access to steady supplies of clean water is getting more and more difficult in the developing world, especially as demand skyrockets. In response, many countries have turned to the sea for potable fluids but existing reverse osmosis plants rely on complicated processes that are expensive and energy-intensive to operate. Good thing, engineers at Lockheed Martin have just announced a newly-developed salt filter that could reduce desalinization energy costs by 99 percent.

water filterThe Reverse Osmosis process works on a simple principle: molecules within a liquid will flow across a semipermeable membrane from areas of higher concentration to lower until both sides reach an equilibrium. But that same membrane can act as a filter for large molecules and ions if outside pressure is applied to one side of the system. For desalinization, the process typically employs a sheet of thin-film composite (TFC) membrane which is made from an active thin-film layer of polyimide stacked on a porous layer of polysulfone. The problem with these membranes is that their thickness requires the presence of large amounts of pressure (and energy) to press water through them.

Lockheed Martin's Perforene, on the other hand, is made from single atom-thick sheets of graphene. Because the sheets are so thin, water flows through them far more easily than through a conventional TFC. Filters made through the Perforene process would incorporate filtering holes just 100 nm in diameter—large enough to let water molecules through but small enough to capture dissolved salts. It looks a bit like chicken wire when viewed under a microscope, John Stetson, the Lockheed engineer credited with its invention, told Reuters. But ounce for ounce, its 1000 times stronger than steel.

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Sepp Hasslberger: Solar Antennas 3-4 Times Leap Forward

05 Energy
Sepp Hasslberger
Sepp Hasslberger

This is a quantum leap over our current solar photovoltaic technology … if it does come into maturity and production, it might boost efficiency of solar energy capture by three or four times!

Solar Rectenna by Brian Willis

Compiled by Sterling D. Allan
Pure Energy Systems News
March 8, 2013

Solar Power Today made the following announcement on February 6, 2013:

If it’s up to Brian Willis, we will soon quite literally be tuning in to the sun. The University of Connecticut professor has patented a technique to manufacture nanosized antenna arrays that have the capability to efficiently convert sunlight into usable electric power.
In theory, these very small antenna arrays can harvest over 70 percent of the sun’s electromagnetic radiation and convert it into electric power. These are called “rectennas” due to their ability to absorb the alternating current induced by sunlight and directly rectify it to direct current. In contrast to existing solar silicon solar panels which mainly work within a specified band gap, rectennas can be tuned to harvest sunlight in the whole solar spectrum which makes it very efficient.
Brian Willis, a University of Connecticut engineering professor, was able to discover a way to manufacture a working rectenna device. The process is called selective area atomic layer deposition (ALD) and it can precisely coat the tip of the device with layers of individual copper atoms to achieve a gap of about 1.5 nanometers, a critical size because this creates an ultra-fast tunnel that enables the maximum transfer of electricity.

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