Combining breakthroughs in self-healing materials and artificial arms, University of California, Los Angeles researchers created such muscles that can generate electricity. The research could be used to make walking robots and develop better prosthetics that juice your iPod. Part of the technology is already being used in Japan to charge batteries using ocean waves.
Artificial muscles that are currently prevalent are made of metal-based film that often tears resulting in muscle failure. The new artificial muscle developed by the University of California researchers is made of carbon nanotubes as electrodes. The carbon nanotube seals the region around it once it fails preventing the fault from spreading to other regions.
The researchers used flexible carbon nanotubes as electrodes instead of metal-based films that fail after repeated use. If an area of the carbon nanotube fails, the region around it seals itself by becoming non-conductive preventing the fault from spreading to other areas.
This muscle conserves about 70 percent of the energy you put into it.
3/24/08
Artificial muscles Can Generate Electricity to Charge an iPhone
3/23/08
How To Transform Your Window Into Solar Panel
In 2007 Traditionally, solar panels for buildings have predominantly been stand alone systems mounted to roofs in order to capture sunlight.
A new transparent building integrated photovoltaic technology is being funded by National Institute of Standards and Technology which would allow windows and other building integrated applications to get converted into solar panels which will capture sunlight directly and convert them into power.
Silicon Solar Cells With Liquid
A company of California developing a ultra low-cost thin-film solar power modules based on a propriety silicon-ink process, has developed crystalline silicon solar cells with liquid.
This company essentially creates silicon nanoparticles, inserts them into a solvent, and then pours the solvent on a substrate. The solvent is then extracted. What is left can sort of be analogized to a snowflake or a large sugar cube: a highly organized structure made up of tiny parts.
Crystalline solar cells have higher efficiencies than thin films. Commercial crystalline panels can convert up to 22 percent of sunlight into electricity, without concentrators. CIGS makers are initially shooting for the mid to low teens. The catch is that making crystalline solar cells is expensive. The patterning and other processes is similar to what is used in making LCD panels. Innovalight says it could conceivably cut the production price by around 50 percent or more. Many start-ups, however, had hit bumps in bringing new (albeit different) manufacturing techniques for solar cells to market.
If it is so energy-efficient why no other companies have tried to produce them? Well, making crystalline solar cells is expensive. In fact the patterning and other processes is similar to what is used in making LCD panels.
The company has just raised $28 million from Convexa Capital Apax Partners, ARCH Venture Partners, Harris & Harris Group, Sevin Rosen Funds (Burke is a former Sevin Rosen partner) and Triton Ventures, among others. Part of the money will be used to build a 30,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Silicon Valley.
Innovalight hopes to start selling solar cells in the second half of 2009. By 2010, the company hopes to be cranking out "tens of megawatts" worth of solar cells from the facility.
Low-Cost Organic LED Production-OLED Technology
It is not just the fact that modern green technologies and solutions aim at producing ways of harnessing energy from the renewable and clean energy sources, but they also are focusing on the conservation part of energy. They are working on the simple principle that energy saved is energy produced and in this regard, LEDs have played a very important role in the past few years. When it comes to making sure that lighting technologies are conserving energy, they have made a quantum leap from the traditional sources and methods.
LEDs (or Light-Emitting Diodes) will slowly become the lighting standard over the next decade. But light bulbs won’t be the only products to take advantage of their efficient properties. A variety called OLED (or Organic Light-Emitting Diode) are thin, organic materials sandwiched between two electrodes, which illuminate when an electrical charge is applied. This technology is behind all those cool flexible displays and electronic ink displays we’re always seeing. They’re so thin, that they could be applied to rooms as a type of wall paper to glow at the touch of a finger or when someone enters the room.
The challenge in producing these OLEDs is that they also have to have potential to be made at a very low cost, because they can be printed “roll-to-roll” like a newspaper. GE recently demonstrated the first OLEDs to be made in this manner. Apparently, the researchers worked for four years on this project. The project still has a long way to go before making sure that the OLEDs are ready for commercial use.
The process of commercially manufacturing OLEDs has remained expensive. However, a recent breakthrough from GE hopes to lower the cost-barrier and show that OLED can be created “roll to roll”.
Fuel-Cell Powered Cargobike - Hydrogen bike
We’ve seen motorbike concepts powered by small fuel cells, but this is the first time in my memory that a full-scale commercial test of such technology has actually gotten off the ground.
Clean Air Bike is the result of a joint-venture between Masterflex and German bike maker Hawk. It is claimed the Cargobike can handle loads up to 150 kg and one fuel cell lasts for 250 kilometres powered by only 90grams of hydrogen within a 2.2kg storage unit.
With a motor rated at 250 watts it's exempt, just like a ‘normal' bike, from European vehicle registration laws .Potential uses include postal delivery services, city cleaning divisions, large industrial site transport and tourist applications.Masterflex say that not only does the fuel cell technology provide sufficient power for the motor but that there is enough surplus for secondary functions such as lighting or cooling for transporting temperature sensitive goods. Potential uses include postal delivery services, city cleaning divisions, large industrial site transport and tourist applications.
Hydrogen powered fuel-cells have often been talked up as one of the solutions to the problem of global warming caused by transport CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. The technology uses compressed hydrogen gas to produce emissionless power at the point of use. But debate has centred around how best to extract and store hydrogen from the natural world. One of the greenest methods, but one that is still being developed, is to extract the hydrogen directly from sunlight without using any fossil fuels in the process, potentially delivering a totally green transport fuel.
Of course, practical use of this vehicle is limited to the nearest hydrogen station — but manufacturers are confident such infrastructure will become available once companies latch onto the advantages of fuel cell technology.
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Sun Energy Clean Up Your Water Sources
Driveway Solar Light
There are many solar products on the market today, one very popular item is solar lights, either for a driveway or walkway.
In the crucial phase of power-crisis, it’s interesting to know that more and more products are flushing in the markets that just use solar energy to operate. Latest in this series is ‘Solar Walkway Lights’. In the daytime, these lights soak up sun energy and light up when the night wears on. Interestingly, these walkway lights are strong enough to bear heavy weight of a vehicle, even. Therefore, having it on the both sides of driveway or walkway is, indeed, an energy-efficient way to add to the safety and beauty of our surroundings.
In my opinion this solar light it is a very good product.This solar light will be all over the driveways.