Brammo To Make Electric Motorcycles That Feel More Like Gas-Powered

Today, electric motorcycle makers Brammo revealed that the company will add new electronic transmission technology, and a redesigned motor, clutch and gear shift to its lineup, that will make its motorcycles perform more like their gas-powered predecessors.

The first incorporation of this technology into the company’s product lines will be into Brammo’s new, not-yet-in-production Engage and Encite dirt bikes and racing bikes.
The electric transmission was created by SMRE srl, an Italian engineering company, which agreed to give Brammo an exclusive, global license on this technology earlier in the week according to Brammo chief executive officer Craig Bramscher.

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Hybrid Solar Panel Generates Hot Water and Electricity

While solar-thermal flat panels are proficient at delivering hot showers, their ability to keep the lights on has been a little dim.
Currently, solar-thermal flat panels absorb sunlight to heat water and generate thermal energy, but they don't produce much electricity.
However, researchers from Boston College and MIT recently reported that, by introducing two innovations, they were able to increase the efficiency of solar-thermal flat panels by seven to eight times, as well as generate a sizable amount of electricity.

First, the team created a better light-absorbing surface made from a nanostructured material. Second, they placed the material within an energy-trapping, vacuum-sealed flat panel.
By combining the two innovations, the scientists were able to enhance the flat panel's electricity-generating capacity, said Boston College Professor of Physics Zhifeng Ren, co-author of a report published in the journal Nature Materials.
"We have developed a flat panel that is a hybrid capable of generating hot water and electricity in the same system," said Ren. "The ability to generate electricity by improving existing technology at minimal cost makes this type of power generation self-sustaining from a cost standpoint."
These new advances potentially promise more cost-effective solutions for converting solar energy into electricity. According to Ren, this should greatly impact the rapidly expanding residential and industrial clean energy markets.
"Existing solar-thermal technologies do a good job generating hot water. For the new product, this will produce both hot water and electricity," said Ren. "Because of the new ability to generate valuable electricity, the system promises to give users a quicker payback on their investment. This new technology can shorten the payback time by one third."

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Salty Solution for Energy Generation, Green Energy

The difference in salinity between freshwater and saltwater holds promise as a large source of renewable energy. Energy is required to desalinate water, and running the process in reverse can generate energy. Now a novel approach based on a conventional battery design that uses nanomaterials could provide a way to harvest that energy economically.

The new device, developed by researchers at Stanford University, consists of an electrode that attracts positive sodium ions and one that attracts negative chlorine ions. When the electrodes are immersed in saltwater, they draw sodium and chlorine ions from the water, and the movement of the ions creates an electrical current. The electrodes are recharged by draining the saltwater, replacing it with freshwater, and applying a relatively low-voltage electrical current, which draws the ions back out of the electrodes. When the freshwater is drained, the electrodes are ready to attract more ions from the next batch of saltwater.
"It is the opposite process of water desalination, where you put in energy and try to generate freshwater and more concentrated saltwater," says Yi Cui, a materials science and engineering professor at Stanford University and the study's lead author. "Here you start with freshwater and concentrated saltwater, and then you generate energy."
Cui's group converted to electricity 74 percent of the potential energy that exists between saltwater and freshwater, with no decline in performance over 100 cycles. Placing the electrodes closer together, Cui says, could allow the battery to achieve 85 percent efficiency.
A power plant using this technology would be based near a river delta where freshwater meets the sea. Drawing 50 cubic meters of river water per second, Cui says, a power plant could produce up to 100 megawatts of power. He calculates that if all of the freshwater from all of the world's coastal rivers were harnessed, his salinity-gradient process could generate 2 terawatts, or approximately 13 percent of the energy currently used around the world.
Such wide-scale use, however, would seriously disturb sensitive aquatic environments. "I think you would only be able to utilize a very small fraction of this or it would be an ecological disaster," says Menachem Elimelech, director of the Environmental Engineering Program at Yale University. Elimelech says it would be necessary to pretreat the water to remove suspended material including living organisms. Such processing would require energy, add costs, and itself seriously disturb the ecosystem if done on a large scale.

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Pint Sized Energy Harvester Captures Big Vibrations

If good things come in small packages, then an energy harvesting device smaller than a penny must be really great.
Electrical engineers at the University of Michigan think so -- they've built a device that can harness energy from vibrations and convert it to electricity with five to ten times the efficiency and power of similar devices in its class. And it can fit on the end of your thumb.

One of the system's developers and chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Khalil Najafi said in a university press release, "In a tiny amount of space, we've been able to make a device that generates more power for a given input than anything else out there on the market."

Specifically designed to covert the cyclical motions of factory machines into energy, this new vibration energy harvester will be used to power wireless sensor networks that will, in turn, monitor machines' performance and alert operators about any malfunctions.
Sensors currently used to do this job, although they are considered "wireless" because they transmit information over a wireless network, are still tethered to a power source plug or battery, drastically increasing their installation and maintenance costs.
Researchers say the device's self-contained, truly wireless power system will help cut those costs and increase its longevity.
"To be able to use the energy you harvest you have to store it in a capacitor or battery. We've developed an integrated system with an ultracapacitor that does not need to start out charged," said Najafi.
The packaged system operates at a vibration frequency to that which you might feel if you placed your hand on top of microwave oven while warming-up leftovers. When exposed to those kinds of vibration, the new harvester can generate more than 200 microwatts of power.
These devices, in theory, could be left in place for 10 or 20 years without regular maintenance. "They have a limitless shelf time, since they do not require a pre-charged battery or an external power source," said Erkan Aktakka, one of the system's developers.

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lifetime costs and footprint of commercial frying

This week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued Energy Star ratings for large vat commercial fryers. These appliances are used by high-volume dining establishments — like fast food chains, institutional cafeterias and full-service restaurants— to make french fries, hush puppies and anything else Paula Deen would promote, in bulk.
Encouraging the industry to upgrade to more energy-efficient fryers could help reduce the overall environmental (if not health) impact of kitchens in the U.S. catering to the collective appetite for fried foods, an appetite that seems pervasive, and permanent here. One Texan cook, Mark Zable, has even invented a method to make deep-fried beer.

According to a press statement and calculations by the EPA:
” If every large vat fryer in the [country] met the new Energy Star requirements, energy cost savings would increase approximately $81 million per year and reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to the emissions from nearly 95,000 cars.”
The lifetime costs and footprint of commercial frying goes beyond the electricity and gas that it takes to run kitchen equipment, of course. Certain vegetable oils are more sustainable than others. Spent grease, and even vegetable oil, can become a pollutant unless disposed of properly.
Many food businesses are opting to give or sell their spent grease to biofuel producers, these days, thankfully.
Bon Appétit Management Company — which provides sustainable food in cafes at SF Giants stadium, eBay, Oracle, Google and college campuses including U-Penn, Duke and MIT — has been doing this for years, in collaboration with local biofuel companies like Kelley Green Biofuel for example.
This month (as Tilde Herrera reported for Greenbiz.com) U.S. Foodservice went so far as to acquire a “grease diesel” company, WVO Industries. The foodservice business will begin to power its truck fleets with their own spent cooking oil, allowing them to avoid the rising costs of gasoline here.
Ultimately, foods that are sautéed, boiled, toasted, roasted or prepared raw will prove better for the body and planet than deep-fried with rare — no pun intended — exception.
There is no official carbon footprint label for food here, but a sustainability blogger and small business owner in Germany, Peter Graf (not to be confused with Peter Graf, chief sustainability officer at SAP) has shared some rough calculations via his blog Ecofriendly-Company.com. He wrote:
“The path from potato to french fry takes 9 steps.The potatoes are…
1. Steamed and peeled,
2. Cut
3. Blanched
4. Dried
5. Par-fried
6. Cooled
7. Frozen
8. Transported
9. Stored frozen
Then, they’re fried in hot oil in the canteen and served. All this transforms a single kilo of potatoes (140g CO2) into a real climate-killer (5700g CO2).”

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