Obama’s Hydrogen Fuel Cell Budget Cut Doesn’t Stop Researchers
filed in Hydrogen Power on May.27, 2009
Although Obama’s recent budgeting won’t be allowing more than 40% of what’s been allowed until May 9 for fuel cell research, others don’t find his decision to quit financing this technology as easy as he or his administration does. Furthermore, there are people and institutions actively searching for other investment resources to pursue the fuel cell business and dream. [Read the rest of this entry...]
If you ever had a diesel car, you know that it’s more fuel efficient than the gasoline counterpart. That’s because diesel engines use compression to ignite the fuel, and gasoline engines use a spark to do that. Practically, diesel engines could work without any electricity - at all.
The economical crisis is the best moment for auto industry’s ruling players to fuse their forces and/or technologies, for increasing profit on everyone’s side. 
In our thirst for energy we gladly accept anything not done before, or old methods improved to work with new technologies. Still, we have to take into account all the possibilities these new ways of generating energy open for us, or close for other species or for our entire planet’s ecosystem. 
Have you ever held a heavy piece of iron or lead in your hand? How much could you hold - 10 or 20 kg, maybe? Iron is dense enough to be considered “heavy”. But what if I told you scientists are about to create a material denser than the Sun’s core? The material is called “ultra-dense deuterium”, and a cube with 10 cm sides made of it would weigh no less than one hundred and thirty (130) tons. 
I was glad when I read an article last night describing how Norway opened up a 560 km “hydrogen highway”, and inaugurated it with a hydrogen car rally between Oslo and a North Sea oil hub, Stavanger. The cars were regular Ford Focuses, Priuses, and other well-known, converted either into burning hydrogen directly in their classic internal combustion engine, or using fuel cells to convert hydrogen to electricity (probably the case of the Prius). 
I have heard about cars running on electricity, on biofuels, and other kinky stuff, but this one surpasses them all. Two brothers, Petru and Gheorghe Bordeianu, from Bacau, Romania, have invented an engine that runs totally on a combination of vinegar, water and a certain “soft drink”. 
I know my opinion doesn’t matter to those who matter, but it rather matters to me and probably to you, my reader. Since I saw what electricity could mean to the car industry and how it can revolutionize the way and what cars consume energy, I totally changed my mind about biofuels and other burnable liquids or solids. They are here, are working, but not for long - at least I hope so. 
We are used to throwing our garbage in the bin, dispose it, and then forget it (and pay the monthly garbage collecting tax). What we often hear is that piles of garbage have saturated square kilometers in big cities, and that by making us comfortable, the garbage company (and, indirectly, us) pollutes the soil and the environment on a very large scale. 
I always like battery news, because they are so different every time. We have all the power we need, and besides capturing power from nature we also need to store it somewhere to use it. Chemical batteries are the best option nowadays, but have a downside: they’re heavy, thus having a bad energy density.
Printed solar panels are now a reality due to special dyes. But who ever thought of printed batteries? Research in the field of supercapacitors has brought this innovation into question, and, with the help of the almighty carbon nanotubes, printable supercapacitors have now been realized. They perform just as well as other supercapacitors, but excel in lightness and flexibility.Thus, researchers from UCLA and Stanford, have devised a fabrication method that is both simple and cheap. They use “dirt-cheap technologies,” says George Grüner from UCLA. He was helped by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford. 
I guess I don’t have to emphasize the importance of batteries in an electric car economy of the future. I also don’t have to tell anyone that many manufacturers pursue making ultracapacitors for their ability to quickly charge, discharge, and store a huge amount of energy - the perfect combination for an on-the-fly highway recharging. 
The world’s most expensive and exotic experiment was thought to be CERN. Few people know that the EU, US, China, and Japan have invested billions of dollars to construct the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) that would use nuclear fusion instead of fission, like all nuclear power plants do today. 
Who said that the nuclear age is over is not quite right. Nuclear weapons exist all over the world since WW2, and they are being stored in all kinds of places, including submarines. These nuclear supplies could give us extra energy at a price similar to oil, if not better. 
Although they provide us with clean electricity, nuclear power plants are often criticized, among others, for their residues after the primary radioactive material is spent. Normally, they are buried in depleted uranium mines, and thus their impact is minimized, but there are lots of situations when things could get dangerous as the radioactive material could infiltrate deep inside the earth, and pollute the underground springs. Chances for that to happen are minimal, but it’s imperative that maximum precautions are to be taken. 