Paul MacCready's Gossamer Condor was a wonder. I still remember the first time I saw the film of a man peddling to fly. The idea that a plane could be so efficient that a human could power it is... astonishing. That was not enough for Paul. He followed the Condor with solar-powered planes with NASA. Then solar-powered cars.

He teamed with GM to make the Sunraycer. It won a race with a 50 percent lead over the second place finisher. GM was so impressed they made the Impact electric car concept. The Impact became the EV1, which changed everything. You could say Paul inspired the interest in electric cars we see today.

Ever seen those remote control planes in Iraq? That's Aerovironment's work. Paul founded that company. Yeah, pretty much anything cool, Paul did it. Rest in peace Paul. You will be missed. You were a true pioneer. Check out the video about the Condor. It won Academy Award for Best Documentary. Paul had a knack for winning.

[Source: LA Times]

This week at the Piper Jaffray Alternative Energy Symposium, which focused on industry and investment trends in solar, cleantech and biofuels, DuPont Biofuels Vice President and General Manager John Ranieri said that DuPont is well on its way to commercializing their biofuel technologies. These technologies include some of the lesser talked about fuels, such as biobutanol and cellulosic ethanol. They are doing this in cooperation with Pioneer, which is a subsidiary of DuPont.

These fuels are considered "next generation" biofuels, and hold promise of higher yields than the current corn-based ethanol that plants are achieving. New feedstocks are being researched to find which ones produce the most "bang for the buck", so to speak.

According to Ranieri, "From our strong seeds and crop protection products offering for biofuels today to significant transformative opportunities in new biofuel technologies, I am confident in DuPont's capabilities to meaningfully increase the use of renewable feedstocks with smaller environmental footprints in place of petroleum."

DuPont also features other alternative energy solutions such as their solar cells on a separate part of their website, which I also found to be of interest. Check it out here.

The whole of the Press Release is after the break, and is worth reading.

[Source: Earthtimes]

While was researching the article about DuPont that will be available tomorrow on our site, I ran across these videos on Pioneer's site. Pioneer is a subsidiary of DuPont, and is involved heavily with agriculture and ethanol production. I am sure that there are other processes for creating ethanol, and this one is based solely on what DuPont and Pioneer are doing, but it may be of interest anyway.

Tour an Ethanol Plant by clicking on the links below. Each of these videos will open in a separate window, and they are all in .wmv format.

• 1. Dry Milling
• 2. Liquefaction
• 3. Saccharification
• 4. Fermentation
• 5. Batch Fermentation
• 6. Distillation
• 7. Molecular Sieve
• 8. Distillers Grain

Remember, these videos are by DuPont. If you would like to visit their site, click here. Hope you enjoy the videos!

[Source: Pioneer]