Power and Electrical Engineering

Spiraling glass fibers provide new way to control behavior of light By twisting fiber optic strands into helical shapes, researchers have created unique structures that can precisely filter, polarize or scatter light. Compatible with standard fiber optic lines, these hair-like structures may replace bulky components in sensors, gyroscopes and other devices. While researchers are still probing the unusual properties of the new fibers, tests show the strands impart a chiral, or

To become the world’s most competitive powerhouse, Europe must lead the transition of the micro-electronics sector to the next generation of nano-electronics, with co-ordinated public and private investments of at least €6 billion per year. This is the message from a report drawn up by CEOs of leading companies and research organisations and presented today to European Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin and Enterprise and Information Society Commissioner Erkki Liikanen. Smarter and smaller elec

A strain of yeast developed at Purdue University more effectively makes ethanol from agricultural residues that would otherwise be discarded or used as animal feed, and the first license for the yeast has been issued to the biotechnology company Iogen Corp.

Purdue’s genetically altered yeast allows about 40 percent more ethanol to be made from sugars derived from agricultural residues, such as corn stalks and wheat straw, compared with “wild-type” yeasts that occur in nature.

In the June 2004 issue of Mechanical Engineering, a publication of ASME, the magazine reports on a fuel cell that cleans domestic wastewater while producing electrical energy.

This new type of microbial fuel cell, which is in the early stages of research at Pennsylvania State University, takes the high concentration of organic matter found in wastewater and coverts it to energy. “Where a typical fuel cell runs on hydrogen, a microbial fuel cell relies in the anaerobic oxidation of organic ma

Marriage of quantum well, quantum dots could produce white light

A wireless nanodevice that functions like a fluorescent light – but potentially far more efficiently – has been developed in a joint project between the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories.
The experimental success, reported in the June 10 issue of Nature, efficiently causes nanocrystals to emit light when placed on top of a nearby energy source, eliminating the ne

The University of North Dakota (UND) Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) has begun a demonstration project to determine the economic viability and environmental advantage of generating power using a 30-kilowatt microturbine fueled with sour (impure) natural gas often produced along with oil.

The project is being demonstrated at an oil field in Newburg, North Dakota, operated by Amerada Hess Corporation, an international petroleum company with 461 active wells in North Dakota. A Cap