Wireless energy transfer

New research is bringing energy transfer into the wireless world. Soon, a central hub could be charging your batteries, laptop, televisions, electric cars, right through the air.

Over the past few years, a number of companies have been racing to put wireless energy on the market. In 2007, researchers at MIT revealed a project that powered a light bulb remotely. The physicist and project leader Marin Soljacic (winner of a MacArthur “genius grant” Fellowship) went on to found the start-up WiTricity.

In the 2007 expeiment they powered a 60W light bulb across a room. At the Nikkei electronics conference in Tokyo in October 2009, they were able to power a 1,000-watt klieg light from across the room. WiTricity’s record so far is 3,000 watts – enough to fully charge an electric car, so long as it’s in the same room (or garage).

The basic underlying principle for transmitting power wirelessly goes back more than a century to the work of Nikola Tesla and other pioneers of electricity, but the MIT team invented a way of making the process far more efficient and practical.

The system works by creating a strong electromagnetic resonance between the sending and receiving coils – similar to the way a tuning fork can start vibrating when exposed to a sound of exactly the right frequency, or the way a radio antenna can be tuned to just the frequency of a single station out of the hundreds that are simultaneously broadcasting their signals. In this case, the magnetic resonance between the two coils is unaffected by objects in between the coils, and by the same token objects between the coils – including people – are not affected by the magnetic fields.

Several concerns, even initially from WiTricity CEO Eric Giller, have been raised about the potential health risks as magnetism from MRI machines can disable pacemakers. But, MRI magnetism is about 10,000 stronger than that in WiTricity and the Institute of Physics in London has found WiTricity’s magnetic field “has no detrimental effects on the human body.”

Already, companies focused on a special application of wireless electricity have broken into the retail market with force. Powermat, and soon WiPower, provide “wireless charging” stations for home electronics. Instead of plugging in your mobile phone or handheld video game, you just strap a receiver on it, and place it on a charging mat. This “drop and charge” innovation is set to make a big impact in retail sales (Powermat sold more than 750,000 products in just two months) and could be the first step to the wireless electricity revolution that changes the way we power our lives.

Gieler of WiTricity mentioned at the TED 2009 conference that the technology can conceivably still get a lot better. We could use a similar method of coupling to power objects from a meter away or farther. At that distance, we could power electric cars while they were still on the road, or create homes without plugs.

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GreatPoint Energy Hydromethanation

Burning natural gas made from coal in a modern power plant generates about 60 percent less in greenhouse-¬gas emissions than burning coal directly and eliminates almost all other pollutants. Converting coal into natural gas has long been too expensive to implement on a large scale. But, GreatPoint Energy has developed a process called catalytic hydromethanation, which can economically convert coal (or petroleum coke or biomass) into pure natural gas while removing and capturing most of the carbon.

The Company’s cost of production is expected to be significantly lower than current prices of new drilled natural gas and imported liquefied natural gas (LNG), and the natural gas it produces, called bluegas™, meets all high-grade natural gas quality specifications. It can be transported through the thousands of miles of pipelines already in place around the world and can be used interchangeably with drilled natural gas for all applications, including power generation, residential and commercial heating, and the production of chemicals. SynGas produced by Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) cannot be distributed in this way.

Currently natural gas provides about 24% of the world’s energy needs.

Original article: Andrew Perlman. Technology Review. September 2009. Read article here…

Sustainable petroleum product

In the early 1990’s an Australian engineer had an idea: ‘What if we can stop consuming oil and better use the resources we have without compromising quality and reliability?’ Many years of research and development later, this idea has transformed into Hydrodec Group plc.

The company provides advanced oil and chemical process technology, products and services to industry. Their advanced technology specialises in environmentally sustainable, small carbon footprint chemical processing and high performance oil refining, in a closed loop, de-minimus emission process.

Hydrodec’s key technology application allows Transformer Oils to be re-refined an indefinite number of times into Superfine™ transformer oil, which has specifications equivalent to or better than that of new transformer oil. This allows the electricity industry to reduce its exclusive reliance on new oil supplies without having to make compromises in quality and performance. The annual global demand for transformer oil is about 5 billion litres and the production thereof emits about 20 million tons of CO2. Each tonne of transformer oil refined through the Hydrodec system represents a direct saving of several tonnes of CO2 emissions. With the prevalence of low levels of PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl) in used transformer oils, each ton of transformer oil refined through the system represents significant reduction in the background emission to atmosphere of PCB, PCB like chemicals and Dioxin.

Hydrodec also owns patented and unique processes that enable ‘re-manufacture’ of hazardous persistent organic chemical materials, wastes and by-products into valuable products. This breakthrough creates a paradigm shift in the sustainable management of many hazardous chemicals, both at the source of production and in the environment.

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Future of Organic LEDs

OLEDs are solid-state devices composed of thin films of organic molecules that create light with the application of electricity. OLEDs can provide brighter, crisper displays on electronic devices and use less power than conventional LEDs or Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) used today.

The plastic, organic layers of an OLED are thinner, lighter and more flexible than crystalline layers in LED or LCD. It is also possible to use it on flexible substances such as clothing.

In March 2008, researchers at General Electric proved that it is possible to make OLEDs using a newspaper-printing like roll-to-roll process. Commercial applications in lighting require low manufacturing costs, and this demonstration is a major milestone on the way to developing low cost OLED lighting devices. This is interesting because OLEDs, like normal LEDs, could potentially be used for lighting in most conditions in the near-future without the downsides of inefficient incandescents and fragile CFLs that contain small amounts of mercury. They also last much longer than even the best fluorescents.

Barry Young, president of the OLED Association, reviewed a few of the benefits of OLED technology, including that the power consumption, form and image are better than LCDs. In addition, they can be made about 1 mm thick. That means a completed TV set can be as thin as about three credit cards.

OLED displays are already widely used in cell phones from companies like Nokia, Samsung, Sony and LG. The technology is starting to get used on a larger scale. Kodak has already launched it’s expensive OLED digital photo frame. OQO is coming out with a netbook this year with an OLED screen. And we can also expect to see a 14.1” notebook screen come out. But it will be about 2 to 3 years before it really starts to compete with LCDs, and about 5 years before these displays will be manufactured on the same scale as LCDs.

Original article: Jaymi Heimbusch. TreeHugger. 26 February 2009. Read more..