Chalk up another reason to make the switch to high efficiency LED lighting: Scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a graphite foam that extends the life of LED lights. The foam is used as a passive cooling element, which plays a critical role in the lifespan of LED components. The breakthrough could help lower the cost of LED’s and make them more attractive in the mass market.

A wholesale switch to high efficiency LED technology could be part of the solution to the conundrum posed by the coming wave of new electric vehicles, which is how to manage overall energy consumption (and carbon emissions) when millions of new electric car owners start charging up their vehicles.

Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have discovered that cleanliness is next to cheapliness. They have developed a simple one-step method, based on wax and soap, that will enable researchers to develop a wide variety low-cost materials for use in lithium-ion batteries.

The high price of lithium-ion batteries is a big roadblock to mass commercialization of electric vehicles, so any success in bringing down costs at the research and development end could have a significant impact on the consumer market and help the way for introducing electric fleets into more businesses.

There’s something about defecation that seems to both fascinate and revulse humans at the same time. In other words, there’s just something funny about poop and I can’t explain it. I will however, direct your attention to a poop-powered VW Bug built by some enterprising Brits.

GENeco has streamlined a process that allows this VW Bug to run on methane. This has been done before, but many methane vehicles had decreased performance because the fecal fuel wasn’t “clean” enough. GENeco seems to have solved this problem, and the Bio Bug as it is being called, is being hailed as a breakthough in poop-power.

Solar is great if you have a good roof. But what if you don’t? Why not make kilowatt-hours in your basement? Small residential Combined Heat & Power (CH&P) boilers that run on natural gas can effectively cut the greenhouse gas emissions in half, because these boilers don’t just make hot water, they also make electricity.

A few companies are now introducing residential-sized CH&P units that are about the size of a clothes dryer, and make from 1 KW to 6 KW of electricity, just the amount of power needed in an average home using from about 300 kWh a month to about 900 kWh (you’d need to look at your bill to see your monthly usage, but most of us are in this range.)

Then the hot water produced is more than enough to supply the needs of average homeowners. And great for homeowners in cold climates who want to do radiant heating as well as hot water (as well as get the electricity!)

A simple, cheaply produced thin plastic film placed on top of solar panels that could boost their power by 10% has just passed extensive testing by the NREL. The light-bending film was developed by researchers focused on innovative applied optics and light ray management at Genie Lens Technologies in Colorado, and the company would license the production of its FUSION film through a subsidiary, SolOptics.

In tests performed by NREL at its Golden, Colorado research campus, the film delivered conversion efficiency gains ranging from 10% to 12.5% depending on testing conditions, on a variety of solar panels, at a cost of under 10 cents a watt.

A team of researchers has discovered that graphene can be stretched to create tiny nanobubbles in which electrons generate the same energy levels that otherwise would require an extremely strong magnetic field. The discovery provides a clue to the manipulation of electrons in graphene, which in turn could lead to a new generation of ultra-small, ultra-efficient electronic devices.

Like it or not, the global tide of electronic gear appears to be only at the beginning of a long and unstoppable rise, creating an enormous obstacle to the delivery of enough sustainable energy to meet the growing demand. One solution is to create a new electronics platform that is far more efficient than anything currently in production, and that’s where graphene comes in.

If you’ve ever blown up a balloon and let it go flying across the room, you’ve got the basic idea behind a new technology for storing energy from wind power: use compressed air.  ARPA-E, the federal agency charged with providing seed money for transformative energy technology, is so impressed with the concept (minus the hilarious fart noise that a ballon makes when it goes flying across the room) that it has awarded a grant worth up to $750,000 to a startup called General Compression, to assist the company in speeding up commercial scale development of the technology.

Of course, the technology for managing large volumes of air is fairly complicated, one factor being the tendency of a gas to heat up under pressure.  The company has trademarked its system as General Compression’s Advanced Energy Storage (GCAES), and in an interesting twist, has partnered on the project with ConocoPhillips.

The U.S. Department of Energy recently announced $9 million in funding for research into the use of algae that occur naturally in seawater to produce a sustainable twofer: renewable algae biofuel and algae fodder for cattle, too.  Hey, make that a threefer: studies have found that an algae diet can reduce methane emissions from cows, which is a major source of greenhouse gasses.

The funds will go to a Hawaii-based group called Cellana, LLC Consortium.  The use of naturally ocurring algae is an interesting twist on current research, much of which is focused on engineering new strains of algae for biofuels. It’s also interesting because the consortium leader, Cellana, is a joint venture of renewable energy startup HR BioPetroleum and oil industry giant Shell – yes, that Shell.  I guess biofuels makes strange bedfellows but if it gets the job done, let’s do it.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin are hot on the heels of a discovery that could more than double the efficiency of solar cells. The trick is to use tiny nanoscale crystals called quantum dots to capture more of the available energy in sunlight, including energy at the high end of the scale.  The researchers estimate that the use of high energy sunlight could boost efficiency from its present rate of about 31% for conventional solar cells, up to a whopping 66%.

Update: A team from The University of Minnesota initiated this research.

What this all means is the potential for solar energy to become cost-competitive with fossil fuels at an increasingly rapid pace.  Paired with next-generation flywheels and other new energy storage technologies, intermittent sources such as solar and wind can provide an energy stream that is every bit as steady and reliable as oil, coal, or natural gas.

Quantum Dots and Solar Cell Efficiency

We are always on the lookout for sustainable new developments in the burgeoning field of wastewater recycling, so of course this item from New Zealand caught our attention.  A PhD project by a Victoria University student is undergoing commercial development as a means of reclaiming water, high-pressure steam, fertilizer products, and acetic acid from wastewater.

The  project offers a sustainable management solution for wastewater and runoff from dairy farms, wineries, and meatworks in New Zealand, which as Lord of the Rings fans know has some spectacular environments worth protecting as well as lots of sheep.  Here in the U.S. there is a similarly motivated push by the EPA and Department of Agriculture to promote methane biogas production in the dairy industry.  It’s the high pressure steam and acetic acid  that give the New Zealand venture a new twist.

Students at Northeastern University in Boston are working on a process that breaks down recycled plastics to create fuel, providing enough energy to run itself with some left over, too.  Because it vaporizes plastic rather than burning it, the process also creates less emissions than conventional combustion.  The students and their professor, Yiannis Levendis, envision utility-scale versions of the process, which could be installed at plastic recycling facilities.

The world is awash in plastic waste of all sorts that could be converted to fuel, to say nothing of emerging renewables such as wind and solar energy.  In the not too distant future the world can wash its hands of the practice of creating widespread environmental damage for the sake of harvesting virgin petroleum, merely to burn it.

About 24 municipal buildings in Southern California are about to help ease the strain on the grid created by the peak need for air conditioning on hot California afternoons. Over the next few weeks, a consortium of municipal utilities in California will begin retrofitting government offices and commercial properties with systems that use ice made at night using cheap surplus wind power to replace air-conditioning that they would have required during the afternoon.

The first cheap energy storage cooling units housed at distributed sites on the buildings will be networked, providing utilities with a resource that can be dispatched as needed to help manage demand on the grid.