Iowa: The Wind Energy Capital of the United States

China may have overtaken the U.S. as the Saudi Arabia of wind power (got that?), but the U.S. is still home to some major wind energy powerhouses. The annual Wind Technologies Market Report tells us that four states—Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Minnesota—managed to squeeze out over 10% of their in-state energy production from wind power last year. Iowa emerged out in front with 20% of all in-state production coming from wind energy—unsurprising for anyone who has been pummeled by wind in the Midwestern state.

» via Fast Company

Battery Breakthrough Could Revolutionize Mobile Computing

Researchers at Stanford University have just made a major breakthrough that may impact the technology industry for years to come: they’ve built a better battery. The project, an attempt to use lithium-sulfur in place of the lithium-ion technology that is used in batteries today, has been in development since 2007. Recently, the scientists’ efforts were rewarded when they created a battery that lasts four times as long as its lithium-ion counterparts while also having the benefit of being “significantly safer” than today’s batteries which occasionally explode after short-circuiting.

Although still a ways off from commercial viability (and availability), the lithium-sulfur batteries promise advances like 80% more capacity, 10 times the power density and, theoretically, the ability to last four times as long as modern batteries.

» via ReadWriteWeb

The Campus as Living Laboratory

Like all organizations, colleges and universities need to eliminate their direct contributions to unsustainable practices. More importantly, students must experience sustainable living first hand and be involved in helping their schools become powerful role models of sustainable practices for the rest of society. As Michael Crow, President of Arizona State University (ASU), has said of the U.S. higher education sector: “We may only have 2% of the carbon footprint, but we have 100% of the education footprint.”

» via Fast Company

emergentfutures:

Perfect Insulator Could Eliminate Heating Bills

A new material developed by MIT scientists perfectly reflects heat and absorbs none of it.

abcsoupdot:

Uranium Is So Last Century — Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke

After it has been used as fuel for power plants, [thorium] leaves behind minuscule amounts of waste. And that waste needs to be stored for only a few hundred years, not a few hundred thousand like other nuclear byproducts. Because it’s so plentiful in nature, it’s virtually inexhaustible. It’s also one of only a few substances that acts as a thermal breeder, in theory creating enough new fuel as it breaks down to sustain a high-temperature chain reaction indefinitely. And it would be virtually impossible for the byproducts of a thorium reactor to be used by terrorists or anyone else to make nuclear weapons.

Weinberg and his men proved the efficacy of thorium reactors in hundreds of tests at Oak Ridge from the ’50s through the early ’70s. But thorium hit a dead end. Locked in a struggle with a nuclear- armed Soviet Union, the US government in the ’60s chose to build uranium-fueled reactors — in part because they produce plutonium that can be refined into weapons-grade material. The course of the nuclear industry was set for the next four decades, and thorium power became one of the great what-if technologies of the 20th century.

Wired Magazine

What Fish Can Teach Us About Wind

A trio of CalTech students released a paper today arguing that wind farms could yield much greater power density if they were modeled on formations of fish. The most widely used wind turbines have a propeller-like horizontal axis of rotation that converts more than half the energy of the wind it is exposed to, but these turbines must be kept far apart from their nearest neighbors to be effective.

Instead, the Caltech researchers propose closely bunched vertical-axis turbines modeled after schools of fish, which save energy by swimming in offset rows and allowing the vortices created by the two neighbors swimming ahead of them to carry them forward. (It’s a similar principle to the idea that jumbo jets could save on fuel costs by flying in a V formation, like migrating geese.) They discovered that staggered rows of freestanding turbines alternately rotating clockwise and counterclockwise creates similar vortices, accelerating the wind and increasing energy capture. Their findings could reduce infrastructure expenses associated with setting up wind farms and make wind power more viable for countries that have lots of wind but not much space, like Japan.

» via Fast Company

abcsoupdot:

World’s Smallest Solar-Powered Sensor Could Run Forever - Inhabitat

It’s easy enough to find a solar-powered charger for iPods, cell phones, and other gadgets, but this ultra-tiny solar-powered sensor system is smaller than anything else on the market — 1,000 times smaller than standard systems, in fact. Developed at the University of Michigan, the 2.5 x 3.5 x 1 millimeter system is the smallest in the world, and it can harvest energy from its surroundings almost perpetually.

Norway’s Turbine City Concept Should Be The Future of Energy and Tourism

Norway already boasts the world’s first floating wind turbine, and is apparently the windiest coastline in Europe, making it perfect for even more turbines. Or a turbine city, like On Office’s proposal which shows a stunning vision of the future.

» via Gizmodo

hiten:

[CES 2010] RCA Airnergy Charger Harvests Electricity From WiFi Signals

Uranium Is So Last Century — Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke

Named for the Norse god of thunder, thorium is a lustrous silvery-white metal. It’s only slightly radioactive; you could carry a lump of it in your pocket without harm. On the periodic table of elements, it’s found in the bottom row, along with other dense, radioactive substances — including uranium and plutonium — known as actinides.

Actinides are dense because their nuclei contain large numbers of neutrons and protons. But it’s the strange behavior of those nuclei that has long made actinides the stuff of wonder. At intervals that can vary from every millisecond to every hundred thousand years, actinides spin off particles and decay into more stable elements. And if you pack together enough of certain actinide atoms, their nuclei will erupt in a powerful release of energy.

To understand the magic and terror of those two processes working in concert, think of a game of pool played in 3-D. The nucleus of the atom is a group of balls, or particles, racked at the center. Shoot the cue ball — a stray neutron — and the cluster breaks apart, or fissions. Now imagine the same game played with trillions of racked nuclei. Balls propelled by the first collision crash into nearby clusters, which fly apart, their stray neutrons colliding with yet more clusters. Voilè0: a nuclear chain reaction.

Actinides are the only materials that split apart this way, and if the collisions are uncontrolled, you unleash hell: a nuclear explosion. But if you can control the conditions in which these reactions happen — by both controlling the number of stray neutrons and regulating the temperature, as is done in the core of a nuclear reactor — you get useful energy. Racks of these nuclei crash together, creating a hot glowing pile of radioactive material. If you pump water past the material, the water turns to steam, which can spin a turbine to make electricity.

» via Wired