article thumbnail

Sandia progressing to demo stage with supercritical CO2 Brayton-cycle turbines; up to 50% increase in efficiency of thermal-to-electric conversion

Green Car Congress

MPa enable the system to operate with very high thermal efficiency, exceeding even those of a large coal-generated power plant and nearly twice as efficient as that of a gasoline engine (about 25%). The S-CO 2 system is also very compact, meaning that capital costs would be relatively low. Final Report ( INL/EXT-06-01271 ).

article thumbnail

INCITE supercomputing grants awarded to 56 projects; sustainable energy to next-gen materials

Green Car Congress

The INCITE program issued its first awards in 2004, when three projects received an aggregate five million core hours. Electrochemical energy-conversion devices, such as fuel cells, could, in theory, provide continuous power to a wide range of portable, residential, and transportation devices. Today’s collective allocation of 5.8

Grant 150
article thumbnail

Energix Research Successfully Tests Micro GTL Process

Green Car Congress

Energix Research executed the GTL process via the syngas and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis route at a high conversion rate (87%) and selectivity rate (99%). Energix expects to develop affordable, micro GTL plants to monetize underutilized resources, such as abandoned natural gas fields, coal bed methane (CBM) fields, flared gases, etc.

article thumbnail

Plug-In Hybrids (or Plugin Hybrids)

Tony Karrer Delicious EVdriven

Plug-In Hybrids Are Cleaner (Even on a Coal Grid) [ to top ] This entire section is finally obsolete -- because we now have a definitive study by the Electric Power Research Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council. A PHEV with only a 20-mile all-electric range is 62% lower (see printed page 95 in the 2004 study ).

Plug-in 61
article thumbnail

Report from the REFF-Wall Street; Themes in Renewable Energy Finance

Green Car Congress

Biofuel projects are going to have trouble getting financing from Wall Street this year because all of them have questions about the long term pricing of petroleum; most of them have concerns about the pricing stability of their feedstocks; and many of the cellulosic projects have concerns about the conversion technologies.

Financing 150
article thumbnail

DoD Researchers Work to Increase the Production of Higher Chain Hydrocarbons from CO2 Using a Traditional Fischer-Tropsch Catalyst

Green Car Congress

The focus of this work, reported online 25 June in the ACS journal Energy & Fuels , is to attempt to improve the production distribution toward higher chain hydrocarbons (HCs) and increase conversion rates using conventional Fischer-Tropsch catalysts (Co-Pt/Al 2 O 3 ). Dorner et al. Dorner, Dennis R. Hardy, Frederick W.

article thumbnail

SUTD team proposes low-temperature thermionic converter with graphene cathode; about 45% efficiency

Green Car Congress

Although the majority of the work with TICs was then related to space exploration, the focus of that report was the use of TICs with coal combustion. Stanford University, for example, has a thermionic energy conversion research effort underway as part of its Nano-electrochemical Systems (NEMS) group. 1 ), and excellent conductivity.

Convert 150