In a recent article in Popular Mechanics, editor Mike Allen declared himself a fan of ultracapacitors for hybrid cars. He explains how he visited Honda's development facilities 15 years ago and found himself testing a mild hybrid that used an ultracapacitor to store energy. However, we all know that current hybrids don't use ultracapacitors. Instead, they have powerful batteries, which have a higher power density and a price that is going down.

Nevertheless, Allen predicts that once ultracapacitors can be made successfully at a competitive price point, conventional hybrids will use them because of the "capacitor's longer life span and lower internal resistance, as well as its deep-discharge tolerance. While a battery pack can be damaged by being discharged completely, capacitors simply don't care." On the other hand, he foresees that plug-in hybrids will always need batteries for their main battery pack, while using capacitors to reclaim energy while slowing down and to provide high-current acceleration. EESTOR must be happy.

[Source: Popular Mechanics]

Popular Mechanics has done a bit of a follow up on a little scooter from the labs of MIT we originally told you about back in the beginning of January. In a good news/bad news story with enough new detail to make it worth the read, we learn, among other things, that the the scooter is "going to make it" but that, contrary to its name, "it's not very robotic". So, although you could one day find yourself whizzing through downtown traffic on this little machine you just rented from your neighborhood scooter vending rack, you are still going to have to steer it with traditional handlebars. It won't fold itself back up and put itself away once you reach your destination and it won't talk to and protect you from the evil ones a la Johnny Five either.

But, on the upside, it will feature a handy, removable li-ion battery (no mention of the specific chemistry) and should be available in Asian markets in about a year. The delivery date of the first working prototype from MIT Smart Cities group to Taiwanese scooter maker, SYM, is April 1st.

[Source: Popular Mechanics with a h/t to Matt S.]

Do you think the future of green engines is just flex-fuels, hybrids or fuel cells? Can you imagine a future with engines that have ethanol turbo-like injection or use steam super-heated by hydrogen? These engines are in the lab today. The video above is a look at a hybrid ethanol injection engine developed at MIT and it could improve mileage by 30 percent.

Below the fold is video of a water-powered car. "Oh, no, not another water car," you say? No, this one is different because it uses a H.A.W or "hydrogen air water" mix and involves super-heating steam to move a piston, says this web page. According to one translation of the video, the Japanese government is looking into it.

[Source: YouTube and tipster Brien]

The video above is of a BAE Systems' electric-powered military vehicle. According to one of video description, BAE Systems has made military vehicles with "electromagnetic hub mounted wheel motors from MST." The military is very interested in the silence and efficiency of electric vehicles because of the tactical advantages of stealth and long ranges. Below the fold you will find a video of MIT's concept electric city car. The car stacks in a row, which allows for a better use of space and the car at the end of the stack to recharge. The cars can even be customized to match the drivers preferences. Watch it change colors in the video.

[Source: YouTube]

The Curie Brothers team (MIT students Paul Abel '08, Shakeel Avadhany '09, and Vladimir Tarasov '08) won third place in the MADMEC, MIT's Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Dow Chemical Company's energy contest, for a device that gets power from the vertical motion of cars. The team's design goal was "to harness the energy lost due to the vertical motion of a car. An automobile's struts and springs do a substantial amount of work by smoothing out the this vertical motion, and a great deal of energy is lost in the their compression and extension, as is evidenced by the heating of the shocks during driving."

Here's how MIT describes the system:

[They had] several designs ideas in mind such as using hydraulic actuation to move rare-earth magnetic materials through inductive wire coils, employing ferrofluids to act as the damping medium of the shock absorber, and using turbines and generators in various conformations to convert the energy of pumped car suspension fluid. The ability to regenerate electricity from the vertical motion of a car would best serve gas-electric hybrid and full electric automobiles. Hybrid cars would be able to rely more on their electric engines for power and improve their fuel efficiency, and electric cars would be able to travel further on a single charge because of their ability to regenerate part of the energy that they lose while driving.

First and second place in the contest went to a device that generated electricity from biomass and a biogas digester. Finalists included a wind turbine with no moving parts and a refrigerator that requires no electricity. The contest challenged students to "design and build a prototype device that harvests, stores, or exploits alternative energy sources through principles of materials science and engineering." First price was $5,000 second $3,000 and third $2,000.

[Source: MIT News Office]

Science often looks to nature for inspiration on how to improve a concept which is already used. Just as flippers help a swimmer or diver to move through the water, the same principle could replace the propeller that is normally used in submersibles. Specifically, the bluegill sunfish is being studied by researchers from MIT as a way to make better unmanned submersibles. Apparently, the bluegill has a distinctive swimming motion which is optimal for producing forward thrust. They cite military needs as a reason for the technology. The team is using a new polymer which conducts electricity to mimic the fish. When an electric current is applied to the polymer, it changes shape. By changing the polarity of the current, the team can force the "fin" to make the necessary movements to induce forward thrust. This technology allows for a system with no motors, which keeps the noise and vibrations to a minimum.

In the future, you might need to watch where you cast that fishing line...

[Source: Physorg]

A pair of MIT graduate architecture students are proposing a novel, almost carbon-free way to generate electricity. In crowded buildings and malls when thousands of people are walking around, every step they take puts mechanical energy into the floor. They want to harness that energy by building in a generating system tied to the vibrations of the floor. As people move around the individual energy is small but when aggregated it could potentially produce a significant amount of power.

A system like this wouldn't be practical to retro-fit but if built into new buildings it could reduce the amount of outside power required. Perhaps if they had parking spaces with plugs tied the system, shoppers could recharge their vehicles while they shop.

[Source: MIT]

Three decades before Porsche and Volkswagen collaborated on the Cayenne/Touareg, they got together to create a little mid-engined sports car called the 914. Now a group of engineering students has taken a 914 provided one of their professors and created their answer to the Tesla Roadster. Mechanical engineering Professor Yang Shao-Horn and her husband, Quinn Horn bought a 914 on eBay and made it available for the students to do the conversion.

Valence Technology provided eighteen lithium phosphate batteries along with a management system. The team of students led by Emmanuel Sin gutted the powertrain of the Porsche, assembled a battery pack with the battery management system and installed it in the car along with an electric motor. Now that the car is assembled they will be starting performance testing. The electric drivetrain should generate about 50-60 hp which should move the little car up to a top speed of 70-100 mph. The students estimate that the lithium phosphate battery pack should yield about 100 miles of range with a four to five hour charge time.

[Source: MIT, thanks to Bobby and Linton for the tip]

As a blogger, we often live on our electronic gadgetry like laptops, cell phones and digital cameras, and I am absolutely certain that many of our readers use the same devices and more in their everyday life. So, I am sure that you will agree with me that you would love to cut all the cords that tether these mobile devices into power outlets. Ever tripped on a laptop cord? I've seen many damaged laptops that hit the deck after the cord was tripped on! Researchers at MIT, using funding from the Army Research Office (Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies), National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy might have come up with a solution to this problem.

Imagine the possibilities of this system for a moment. The automotive applications are obvious, imagine not needed cell phone adapters and the like in your car. But, imagine for a moment an electric recharging station where all you had to do was drive up into a designated spot, turning on the wireless charging. The researchers are certainly not suggesting wireless electric car charging at this point, but it would certainly be cool if that were possible. I'll take a wait and see attitude with this new technology, as I do with most. But I am extra hopeful that this turns out to be commercially feasible.

[Source: MIT via Engadget]

This information will not come as a shock to our readers, but I thought that I would go ahead and share the story with you anyway. As you are well aware, turbocharging an internal combustion engine can lead to higher power output by adding additional oxygen into the engine. This has been used to great effect on street and race cars for a long time now. I'm sure you are also aware that raising the compression of an engine also has the effect of raising the engine's power output. One hardship to overcome with turbocharging an engine that already has a high compression is the octane level of the gasoline. As the power output of the engine increases, and additional gasoline and air (fuel) are burned, the heat generated raises as well. In extreme cases, the fuel will ignite before intended, causing what many refer to as knocking. Pretty normal stuff here, I know. Anyway, by using what is known as direct injection, the chances of knocking are reduced. Audi and Volkswagen have been doing this as of late on their gasoline engines. Diesel engines have also been making use of this technology.

Here is where the information gets a bit more interesting. Regular readers may remember some of our past articles related to the performance potential of ethanol. Because ethanol burns cooler than gasoline, the compression of an engine designed to run solely on ethanol can be raised. By combining this characteristic with direct injection and turbocharging, researchers at MIT have been able to vastly increase the power output of small engines. The engines use gasoline through standard fuel injection, with a separate direct injection system for the ethanol. The benefits include saved weight over a comparably powerful, less advanced engine, and possibly lower cost. Check the article out here for more information.

Overall, the concepts introduced in this article are not new. Combining them into a single working engine may be, however. I can't specifically recall the use of direct ethanol injection into an engine running on normal gasoline. If you are aware of anything similar, why not let us know about it in the comments?

[Source: Technology Review via Edmunds Inside Line]

Ever go to a big city and wonder how in the world you were going to get around? This happens to me, as my wife and I make several trips to Chicago every year for weekend getaways. The problem is that there are tons of cars there, traffic snarls a lack of good places to park, unless you want to pay big bucks for a 24 hour parking garage -- which is usually what we end up doing. And, Chicago is nothing compared to New York or Las Angeles.

Researchers at MIT think that they have a solution to this problem. Rather than designing a futuristic new type of car, they are scaling everything back. Not that the vehicle is not high-tech, mind you, because it is. One researcher, Ryan Chin, referred to it as "a big mobile computer with wheels on it," Chin said. "This car should have a lot of computational power. It should know where the potholes are." The car is built on a foldable, stackable chassis made possible by centralizing the electric drivetrain, suspension and steering components into each of the four wheels. The vehicle can turn in circles due to each wheel being steerable and powered.

General Motors is a part-sponsor for the program and uses programs such as this one to motivate their own designers to come up with new ideas. MIT hopes that GM will showcase the vehicle at an auto show in the coming years, and hopes to make them crash-worthy for use on city streets as well.

[Source Boston Globe via Tree Hugger]

As part of a four-part seminar held in January entitled, "Hydrogen: Hype or Hope?", Caetano Rodrigues Miranda and Francesca Baletto give a possible glimpse into the future technical challenges of a hydrogen economy, which include hydrogen production, fuel cell design, storage, distribution and transportation.

As has been noted too many times to even try linking, experts and developers are debating whether the so called hydrogen economy will ever come about. There are many challenges, not the least of which is the distribution of the gas in a very high pressure form. As is par for the course in these types of discussions, Miranda and Baletto disagree on whether hydrogen will be the replacement that is necessary for our current use of fossil-fuels or not.

[Source: MIT News]

In America, we have trash, and lots of it. Remember in "Back to the Future", when Doc, played by Christopher Lloyd, grabbed garbage from a can, dropped it into the back of his time-machine and fueled its time circuitry with it? This is nothing like that. But, it is pretty cool if they can get it to work at an economically feasible price. The idea is to convert the organic parts of trash into alcohol, specifically methanol and ethanol. Both have uses as fuels. The waste products apparently are turned into some sort of glass product that is safe to dispose of. I make no claims to understand how this happens, I am merely passing on the information I read to you, dear readers. But, here goes an explanation of the technology based on this page.

Using technology which was developed at MIT and at Batelle Pacific Northwest National Labs (PNNL), in Richland, WA. A spinoff company, Integrated Environmental Technologies (IET), also based in Richland, WA, has taken over. The process "vaporizes organic materials to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide, a mixture called synthesis gas, or syngas, that can be used to synthesize a wide variety of fuels and chemicals. The waste is heated in a 1,200° C chamber into which a small amount of oxygen is added to partially oxidize carbon and free hydrogen." Some organic material becomes char, which is gasified using some sort of plasma, and toxic wastes are discarded. "The next step is a catalyst-based process for converting syngas into equal parts ethanol and methanol."

Again, according to the article, enough ethanol and methanol could be created from the available amounts of garbage that they could replace 25 percent of the gasoline in the U.S. If this is possible, it sure sounds better to make ethanol using this procedure than to use corn, and they claim it is cheaper to do as well. One potential problem the article suggests is that landfills may fight for their share of garbage, which they sometimes make gas from, as they have money to make as well. Gee, bury the trash underground or reuse it in a meaningful way? Toss-up, right?

Other people have tried turning trash into fuel too, and MIT has a program dedicated to it. If possible, why not? Any comments?

Here's a great idea: ask college students to develop new and creative ways to green their campus. General Electric and mtvU have combined to sponsor this unique competition. Of the 10 finalists, two schools are taking on biodiesel projects. MIT is looking at a solar-powered biodiesel processing and filling station while Vanderbilt wants to build a biodiesel production system that is obviously visible to help educate the public. You can view video presentations and fact pages from both schools on the the ecocollegechallenge Web site.

The Vanderbilt project is also designed to operate without electricity from the grid, noting that coal plants generate power to the university. On an interesting note, MIT's annual energy bill is $50 million. That alone should prompt alternative fuel research at the school. Some of the other top-10 finalist projects include holistic composting, solar-powered trash compactor and a human power plant. The winning team gets a $25,000 grant and exposure on mtvU.

[Source: ecocollegechallenge.com]

According to Reuters, a group of researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology are working on what they think is a more logical ethanol solution for our impending fuel crisis. Instead of using ethanol as a primary fuel or an additive, we could potentially see more realistic fuel-saving improvements across a wider spectrum if we implemented a system on cars that injected ethanol in small quantities when the engine is under heavy load.

The idea is to run a smaller, more fuel-efficient engine in your car while maximizing the usage of the higher octane ethanol so as to not impede performance. The group estimates gas mileage improvements of about 20 to 30 percent and Daniel Cohn, senior research scientist at MIT, says that adding the ethanol injection system would roughly add $1,000 to a vehicle, considerably undercutting the premium for a gas-electric hybrid.

It seems like a novel use of ethanol, since the renewable fuel's limited supply is often the first argument used against its sustainability. The source article is rather short, though. When discussing how the system works, they only state that it would be used on a turbocharged ICE and that the ethanol would be injected when knock is likely to occur. They don't discuss the turbo in any level of detail, but one might consider that it may make sense to incorporate a system that would advance the timing and increase the boost pressure when the ethanol is in use like that of Saab's biopower system. As for the amount of ethanol required, Cohn doesn't offer an estimate, but says that it would only have to be refilled about every three months.

[Source: Reuters via ABC News]