Electric Car Blogging

As the price of gasoline fuel soars, and concerns grow about the impact of car culture on the environment, a team of scientists have come up with a hydrogen-powered car, which they believe is a significant step forward in creating a mass-produced green machine.

In an advance toward introduction of an amazing new kind of internal combustion engine, researchers in China are reporting development and use of a new and more accurate computer model to assess performance of the so-called free-piston linear alternator (FPLA).

Iowa State University’s Song-Charng Kong and his students are working to reduce emissions in diesel engines, develop a computer model of a gasoline engine and optimize new engine technologies. The results could be cleaner, more efficient engines in our cars and trucks.

Researchers are helping to develop new rechargeable batteries that could improve hybrid electric cars in the future. For hybrid cars, new materials are crucial to make the batteries lighter, safer and more efficient in storing energy.

Hydrogen may well be the new gasoline. But where’s the nearest “gas” station where you can pull up and refuel your energy-efficient vehicle? Will hydrogen stations be strategically convenient — located on street corners and travel-stop locations around the globe? In a new study, RIT professor James Winebrake and Patrick Meyer consider the number of barriers to overcome before the hydrogen-fuel infrastructure becomes efficient, affordable and publicly accepted.

Bacteria found in compost heaps able to convert waste plant fiber into ethanol could eventually provide up 10% of the UK’s transport fuel needs, according to new research.

Researchers from the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory report changes in the melting temperature of solid nitrogen at pressures up to 120 gigapascals and temperatures reaching 2,500° Kelvin. These results, plus observed changes in the structure of solid nitrogen at high pressures, could lead to new high energy nitrogen- or hydrogen-based fuels in the future. Hypothesized nitrogen polymers could form materials with higher energy content than any known non-nuclear material.

In experiments, sweet potatoes grown in Maryland and Alabama yielded two to three times as much carbohydrate for fuel ethanol production as field corn grown in those states, scientists report. The same was true of tropical cassava in Alabama.