Innovation

Backpack Power Plant offers hydroelectricity on the move

Hydroelectric power specialist Bourne Energy has developed a human-portable hydroelectric generator which can create clean, quiet power from any stream deeper than four feet.
The “Backpack Power Plant”, which joins the company’s Riverstar, Oceanstar and Tidalstar designs, is aimed at bringing cheap, practical energy technology to remote areas.

Bourne Energy has developed two [...]

Tags: Backpack Power Plant, hydroelectric generator, hydroelectric plant, hydroelectric power, integrated power, oceanstar, quiet power, riverstar
Posted in Cutting-edge Research, Innovation, Innovation Needed, Project Energy, gizmag | No Comments »

MIT developing self-assembling computer chips

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Tags: computer chips, photolithography process, self-assembling computer chips, tiny circuits
Posted in Cutting-edge Research, Innovation, Shape of Things to Come?, gizmag | No Comments »

Sunshine is free, so can photovoltaics be cheap?

Image via CrunchBase

Here’s how to make a solar cell from silicon: take one solid block of doped silicon, saw it into thin wafers, layer said semiconductors beneath a panel of transparent glass, connect them to a metal electrode that can channel away the electrons knocked loose by incoming photons and turn [...]

Tags: advanced research projects agency, arpa, doped silicon, electricity generation, photovoltaic device, photovoltaics, renewable electricity, solar cell, solar photovoltaic, solar power, thin film solar cells, thin wafers
Posted in Cutting-edge Research, Innovation, Innovation Needed, Project Energy, Scientific American, Startups | No Comments »

Generating hydrogen fuel from waste energy

We recently looked at a breakthrough in using sunlight to create hydrogen but now scientists have found a way to use ambient noise to turn water into usable hydrogen fuel. The process harvests small amounts of otherwise-wasted energy such as noise or stray vibrations from the environment to break the chemical [...]

Tags: electric charges, hydrogen fuel, hydrogen gas, nanofibers, nanoscale, piezoelectric effect, ultrasonic vibrations, waste energy, water molecules
Posted in Cutting-edge Research, Innovation, Innovation Needed, Nanotech, Project Energy, environment, gizmag | No Comments »

NoMix toilets make a splash in European study

If you’ve ever considered the humble urinal, you might have noticed that it uses much less water than a toilet. It only makes sense – since they don’t receive any feces, urinals don’t need all the water necessary to carry such solid waste through to the sewer line. When you use [...]

Tags: nomix, sewer line, solid waste, toilet, toilets, urinal, urinals
Posted in Innovation, Innovation Needed, Startups, environment, gizmag | No Comments »