Power and Electrical Engineering
This topic covers issues related to energy generation, conversion, transportation and consumption and how the industry is addressing the challenge of energy efficiency in general.
innovations-report provides in-depth and informative reports and articles on subjects ranging from wind energy, fuel cell technology, solar energy, geothermal energy, petroleum, gas, nuclear engineering, alternative energy and energy efficiency to fusion, hydrogen and superconductor technologies.
New reactor puts hydrogen from renewable fuels within reach
The first reactor capable of producing hydrogen from a renewable fuel source–ethanol–efficiently enough to hold economic potential has been invented by University of Minnesota engineers. When coupled with a hydrogen fuel cell, the unit–small enough to hold in your hand–could generate one kilowatt of power, almost enough to supply an average home, the researchers said. The technology is poised to remove the major stumbling block to the “hydrogen economy”: no free hydrogen exists, except what is ma
Los Alamos leading fast-paced reactor research to power planned journey to Jupiter’s icy moons
A proposed U.S. mission to investigate three ice-covered moons of Jupiter will demand fast-paced research, fabrication and realistic non-nuclear testing of a prototype nuclear reactor within two years, says a Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist.
The roots of this build and test effort have been under way at Los Alamos since the mid-1990s, said David Poston, leader of the Space Fission Power Team in Los Alamos’ Nuclear Design and Risk Analysis Group.
NASA proposes using u
A strong European technology partnership to move towards the hydrogen economy
European Commission President, Romano Prodi, today launched the “European Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology” Platform, whose Advisory Council includes key players of the European hydrogen sector, at its first assembly in Brussels. The Platform has the task of drafting a blueprint to smooth the EU’s transition from a fossil fuel-based to a hydrogen-based economy. The creation of this platform follows the presentation of a report by an EU high-level expert group on June 16, 2003, and the inclusion of
Snezhinsk breakthrough
The first Russian power system based on a solid-oxide fuel cell is tested in Snezhinsk. By importance, this event is comparable with the first automobile construction.
The first Russian power system based on a solid-oxide fuel cell had been tested in the All-Russia Research Institute of Technical Physics (Russian Federal Nuclear Center, Snezhinsk, Chelyabinsk oblast). In this system, hydrogen is obtained from natural gas, and oxygen – from the air. For the first time, such a system ha
Nanostructured sensors for the United States’ company NanoSonic
A research team from the Department of Electric and Electronic Engineering at the Public University of Navarre has designed nanostructured optical sensors and instrumentation to monitor these sensors, for the United States’ company NanoSonic, which has begun to market the product.
The optic fibre sensors are human hair-sized devices. The Public University of Navarre has developed a humidity sensor and a light source for applications with optic fibre sensors. Moreover, the Navarre team has
Tiny heaters may pave way for easier tissue engineering, medical sensors
Tiny microheaters that can prompt chemical changes in surrounding material may provide the means to more easily grow replacement tissue for injured patients and form the basis for medical sensors that could quickly detect pathogens, according to researchers at the University of Washington who are the first to demonstrate the process.
The key to the technique, according to Associate Professor Karl Böhringer in the UW’s Department of Electrical Engineering, lies in temperature-driven cha