Renewable Propane-Our Gabbage Could Produce Renewable Fuel.

Propane is a relatively clean-burning alternative to fossil fuels such as gasoline and diesel. But drilling for propane can damage the environment and in the end adds to the atmosphere’s carbon content.

Converting Waste Biomass & Garbage Into Propane

The US propane market has been in the news over the past several years as its supply and price have been very unstable, with shortages having a negative effect on some sectors of the economy. Coming up with a renewable form of propane for use in furnaces, outdoor grills and to make liquefied natural gas would be a major breakthrough as it would increase overall supply and significantly reduce carbon emissions.

Creating Next Generation Biofuels

Researchers at Imperial College and the University of Turku are developing a renewable form of propane that is created through microbial biosynthesis using the “fermentative butanol pathway.” Until now scientists have not been able to find natural metabolic pathways for renewable biosynthesis.

The process involves using E. coli bacteria, Escherichia coli, derived from human intestines and fatty acid synthesis. Now researchers are working to make the process scalable for commercial production.

Papers on the process have been published in the Journal of Biotechnology for Biofuels and the Journal of Nature Communications. According to the papers, genetically engineered bacterium could also be used and possibly ready for commercial-scale production within the next decade.

One obvious application of renewable propane would be to supply it to automobiles equipped with CNG or propane retrofits.

New Aluminium Battery Can Recharge in Just 60 seconds.

We were all happy to see rechargeable Lithium-ion batteries replacing the heavier and single use alkaline type batteries. But these Li-ion batteries are already struggling to meet ever-increasing power requirements. Smartphone users know that it can take hours to charge a lithium-ion battery.

Stanford University has developed a new type of aluminum-ion battery that is much cheaper, longer lasting, and also offers super-fast recharging as compared to a Li-ion battery. The battery can be recharged in just one minute.

It is a much safer alternative to conventional Li-ion batteries as well. Since it is made of aluminum, it won’t catch fire and has high-charge storage capacity.

Like any other battery, an aluminum-ion battery has two electrodes: a negatively charged electrode made of aluminum and a positively charged cathode. So far, different kinds of materials for the cathode have been tested unsuccessfully in search of the right material.

But Stanford scientists have discovered a simple solution using graphite. Graphite has given a great performance after repeated cycles of charging and discharging. The scientists placed the aluminum anode and graphite cathode, along with an ionic liquid electrolyte, in a flexible polymer coated pouch for testing.

The ultra durable aluminum battery developed by Stanford was able to withstand more than 7500 cycles without any loss of capacity as compared to 1000 cycles for a standard Li-ion battery.

This Engineering Design Could Make Living in Mars a Reality.

For years, people have speculated about the likelihood of life on Mars due to the planet’s proximity and similarity to Earth.

To kill the curiosity, NASA’s $2.5 billion Mars rover Curiosity landed on Mars in August 2012 to find if Mars ever supported primitive life.

But if we are able to send people to Mars one day, what kind of homes will they inhabit?

NASA and MakerBot recently hosted a competition which asked entrants to make a 3D-printed model home suitable for the Red Planet. Participants were asked to take into account the extreme weather conditions, lack of oxygen and dust storms when designing their Martian abode.

Noah Hornberger’s modular beehive won the MakerBot Mars Base Challenge

The winner ‘Queen B’ concept home offers future architecture if humans successfully colonize Mars some day.

The ‘Queen B’ concept home is a space-saving and modular honeycomb design that’s flexible and compact. The hexagonal modules of this home.

The ‘Queen B’ features all the modern home comforts like a fully functional apartment.
It has a kitchen, two bathrooms, a garden, laundry room and even a 3D print lab…all fitted inside 16 ft diameter hexagons. Each of the 10 hexagonal modules is arranged around a central lounge area that contains a couple of couches, a TV and a charging station.

The average temperature is around -80ºF (-60ºC) which makes it really really cold on Mars.
An underground electric heater or an exothermic chemical reactor will be used to heat an underground water container. This would provide heat to the base camp. Excess steam could be used for steam power generators to supplement solar power.

New Way to Print Silicon for electronics could help make elctronics recyclable.

Printed electronics have opened up applications—flexible circuits and rollable displays, to name two—that were impossible with conventional electronics. Usually, printed electronics are created using organic or metal-oxide inks whose electronic properties often pale in comparison to silicon. Now scientists have discovered a new way to print silicon, potentially ousting its erstwhile usurpers.

The ability to print silicon onto substrates has existed for some time, but producing solid silicon from liquid polysilane ink required exposing the silicon to temperatures upwards of 350 degrees Celsius—far too hot for many of the flexible surfaces onto which one might want to print. The new technique, from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Ishikawa, completely bypasses this step. The collaborators detailed their findings in the 21 April online edition of the journal Applied Physics Letters.

First, the researchers coated paper with liquid polysilane by skimming the fluid onto the surface with a blade in a virtually oxygen-free, water-free environment. They next transformed this ink into polycrystalline silicon with a blast from an excimer laser, a tool commonly used for manufacturing smartphone displays. The laser pulse only lasted a few dozen nanoseconds, leaving the paper completely intact.

The final silicon film, which is about 200 nanometers thick, required “baking” at a maximum temperature of only 150 °C. The researchers found that the thin-film transistors they created using this new strategy performed on par with conventional polysilicon devices and far better than other ink materials.

The researchers say this work could lead to low-cost, high-speed, flexible, biodegradable, recyclable electronics that could show up in wearable electronics, solar cells, RFID tags, edible devices, and trillions of Internet of Things sensor nodes.

Ramshackle Infrastructure in US.

According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, the United States is currently ranked 19th in the world for the quality of its infrastructure coming in behind Spain, Portugal and Oman. The US problem is so big that in just one city, Pittsburgh, there are over 4,000 bridges serving 9 million passengers a day to keep track of.

According to an Associated Press analysis of over 600,000 bridges, more than 65,000 were deemed “structurally deficient” and over 20,000 as “fracture critical” or in imminent threat of collapse.

According to a recent report by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) the United States gets a D+ to reflect the current state of the country’s infrastructure. Seemingly oblivious to the need for critical infrastructure investment, the US House recently submitted a budget cutting funding for transportation programs by $51 billion or 93%. In short, the US Federal Fund for road and bridge repair has gone broke.

To complicate matters, a large number of US lawmakers have not accepted the idea of “climate change”. According to scientists it is likely that the old and decrepit US infrastructure will fare far worse due to the expected increase in coming years of extreme weather events that will further compromise the roads, bridges, water pipes, levies and other critical infrastructure.

To be fair, ASCE reports that 90% of the $267 billion earmarked for public sector construction spending is for building schools, highways and waste disposal facilities at the state and local level so that the funds must be allocated by state and local governments.

ASCE reports that by 2020, the US will lose 700,000 jobs, and if no improvements in infrastructure, 1.4 million jobs by 2040. Both foreign and domestic businesses will assess infrastructure, taxes and other factors in the US versus other destinations and begin making decisions to offshore new businesses.