Archive for the 'Energy' Category

Jan
31

If it wasn’t Tim O’Reilly who announce it I won’t believe it sincerely. Yet another media coverage on Energy innovation and new technologies in Energy engineering, but this time in a O’Reilly conference. Tim announced that energy innovation conference won’t be only computers related, but very general. A business oriented conference in my opinion won’t tell nothing, it will just confirm for example that Biodiesel is a renewable energy, strange that it become very obvious to professionals.

At O’Reilly, we like to think we’re focused on early adopters. But two New York Times articles yesterday, Tech Barons Take on Energy Policy and Silicon Valley Rebounds, Led by Green Technology, suggest we’re right in the middle of a tidal wave with our new Energy Innovation Conference. I’m a bit nervous with all this investor focus that some of the worldchanging approaches to energy generation, storage, distribution, conservation, and use that might emerge from non-commercial players might be overshadowed by hype and hungry VCs.

Welcome to the Energy world Tim ! :) I’m not sure if this have something to do with these super-hero series.

Dec
28

There is a new post on Slashdot titled Newest Energy Source on the usage of algae as a source of biodiesel. I was surprised, maybe worried, that everybody seems to welcome this new source without any problem, after all you can get 10,000 gallons per acre for algae compared to 75 to 125 gallons for canola or 50 to 60 gallons for Soybeans. Well, the usage of algae as source of energy isn’t new at all for energetists and bio-energetists, and when the news sources talk about environmental benefits I have to stop there and understand what they mean but benefits. Thought I’m not understanding what is this all about.

Biodiesel is known also as alky1 ester4 in chemistry, it’s properties are close to petroleum diesel fuel as shown in the figure below :

biodiesel.png

Continue reading Algae, Biodesel and Environment