Our World and Everything in It

If you didn’t get a chance to watch EchoTech, here’s an outline of the show, which was an hour long.  The program started out by asking, “How do we survive in a world that is heating up, and running out of oil? It went on to show some pretty remarkable things for the near future. It’s on again tonight at 9:00 pm, on the Science Channel. I’m not going to say it is a rerun of last night because I don’t know. I just caught on TV that it will be on again tonight.

The show presented a Dr. Angela Belcher first, who figured out a way to isolate the proteins that make a seashell and whether they could work with other types of elements. She picked viruses and looked for those that would bond with electro magnetic materials. She made a virus battery. It explained in detail how the virus made a battery; a lithium rechargeable ion battery made of very, very thin clear material. This inexpensive battery is also extremely lightweight.

Next up was Dr. Nyet Ming Chang who is working on a plug in hybrid that will get 150 mpg. He looked at a class of organic materials called olivines, with which to make a battery. He added metals to this material and created a new generation of lithium ion batteries. His batteries discharge energy fast for speed. It is 10 million times more conductive then the present lithium battery. His battery was used on a racing bike in a quarter mile strip. The bike went 0-60 mph in 1.4 seconds but the battery discharged so quickly it burned up the engine. His own plug in car gets 150 mpg. 

Then there is the company that is producing fuel from the thick-trapped grease of restaurants. It’s the sludge that goes down the drain. The process the company uses is called Centia, which stands for I Crudus Potentia, or green energy or the power of crud. The question then was who rounds up this crud? And there was RWA, a company that collects and transports the greasy crud, while employing the homeless and unemployed. Restaurants generate 4 billion lbs. of leftover grease annually so they have quite a job, and this company has quite a future. Buy stock when it’s offered, because the other company has perfected their Centia process. They have jet fuel that is indistinguishable from the real thing that they sell for $2.23 cents a gallon. The company will be mass-producing this fuel by the end of 2008. It produces much less CO2 and uses all of our waste grease.

This was just the beginning. There was a guy named Jerry that discovered how to make hydrogen on demand. The problem with hydrogen has always been storage. It is volatile stuff. His invention will have us buying a tank of pellets that transform into hydrogen when needed.

Another, Dr. Daniel Nocera, studies photosynthesis and hopes to use solar energy to makes hydrogen fuel. If humans could do what the leaves do, we would have an unlimited supply of energy

In 2 seconds the sun releases enough energy to fuel 1 millions cars for a year.

There was a segment on cellulosic ethanol. Corn ethanol is not good. It means one man’s transportation, for another man’s food staple. Whereas, cellulosic ethanol comes from woody materials, stalks, stems. This inventive group used e-coli bacteria to convert the woody stuff into ethanol. They predict that three quarter of a million new jobs will be needed in the bio fuel industry in the near future.

And yet another ingenious man, Bob Schneeveis, is looking at motion without fuel altogether. He has created several inventions that run on totally clean energy. He is like another Ed Begley. This man creates robots with solar energy. His robot speed-walks as a human.

The final segment was about big, fast and powerful, the reason cars use 1/3 of a percent of their fuel energy to move. They found that the biggest fuel savings come from the racecar industry with its use of carbon fiber for car bodies. It’s too expensive for regular cars, so they reinvented the process that produces carbon fiber. The fiber car is made of 14 parts that snap together. Tires are made out of stiffer material. This car will be out in 3-5 years and will get over 100 mpg. A fuel-efficient car has extra energy. As a plug in, the extra energy will get you a credit on your electric bill, so this new car produces energy. This all looks like good news for our world in the near future.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 at 7:26 pm and is filed under Alternative Energy Sources, Eco Tech, Environment and Jobs, Environmentalism, Global Warming, Science, Solar Energy, The Science Channel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.