A Possible Breakthrough in Energy Storage?

The Institute of Mechanic Engineers says that turning air into liquid may provide a solution for energy storage. At present most energy is stored in batteries, but battery production and disposal is an extremely messy and polluting affair, and so experiments are underway to look into this alternative.

One of the problems particularly with renewable energy sources is that energy is produced at times when it is not needed. The system cannot just be turned on or off, so this excess energy must be stored. Scientists believe that with improvements the liquid energy solution could be 70% efficient, less than batteries but at a much lighter cost to the environment.

To give you an idea of how the process works, it follows a number of stages:

“Wrong-time electricity” is used to take in air, remove the CO2 and water vapour, which would otherwise freeze solid.

The remaining air, mostly nitrogen, is chilled to -190C (-310F) and turns to liquid – this provides a compact storage medium that can later draw energy in the form of heat from the environment.

The liquid air is held in a giant vacuum flask until it is needed.

When demand for power rises, the liquid is warmed to ambient temperature. As it vaporizes, the expanding gas drives a turbine to produce electricity – no combustion is involved.

One particularly interesting thing about this development is that it comes out of a garage in England.

Peter Dearman in his garage

Inventor Peter Dearman in his garage lab

Peter Dearman made the discovery while looking for a way to power his car using air. I have written about these types of experiments before in my Health of the Planet series. Take a look at this video on Youtube to see Dearman at work. Real Chitty Chitty Bang Bang stuff.

The BBC also has an article in its Science and Environment section that you can read here.

One conclusion to draw is that world changing technological innovation has to start somewhere, and it is not always in a sterile lab. Sometimes it is in a garage behind a house in Hertfordshire.

Are smartphone battery life improvements on the way?

We all want a little more power. Smartphone manufacturers have catered to this desire, as they’ve continually pumped out increasingly powerful devices.

This year we’re seeing many quad-core devices with 1.5GHz processors, powered by 4G LTE networks, and with vibrant high-resolution displays. Yet these high-powered devices are about to hit a wall if we don’t see some critical changes in battery efficiency. Without adequate battery life, even the most powerful smartphone is useless.

Thankfully, there are a few reasons to believe that we’ll see appropriate improvements in the near future. Here are three reasons why we will see smartphone battery life improve in the coming months and years. It will be a great boon to consumers, who will be able to use their phones heavily for longer.

1. Consumer disappointment

Earlier this year, Motorola made something of a bold move. In a world of thinning smartphones, it actually released, and heavily marketed, a smartphone that is considerably thicker than many of its other models.

This only worked, however, because with the increased thickness came greater battery life. By most reasonable tests, the Droid RAZR MAXX lasts nearly twice as long on a single battery charge than most of its competitors.

The rationale behind this marketing campaign was simple. People love their smartphones, but get frustrated when they can’t last on a single charge throughout a day. Again, a powerless smartphone is a useless smartphone.

You can stuff all the features in the world under the hood of a phone, but if people need to constantly recharge in order to use those features there’s not a lot to be gained. Improved battery life will simply become a necessity that manufacturers cannot ignore.

2. Changing energy trends

The way we consume energy is always changing. The recent technology revolution will change it yet again. Most of our modern computing devices employ DC power, but our wall sockets deliver AC power. That leads to a few inefficiencies, since the difference requires a converter of sorts, whether that’s in the device or in the power source itself. We might see that change in short order.

As Technology Review notes, there is a growing demand for DC current source. It is possible that we could see power companies start to deliver DC power to our outlets in the next few decades, which should make the whole charging and powering process more efficient. The lack of conversion could make that big a difference.

Yet, given our consume-driven culture, it probably won’t make as much of a difference as my next point.

3. Apple’s doing it

It seems that whatever Apple does, other companies copy. Apple has long been an iconic force in technology, and their iPad and iPhone empire has helped solidify its spot at the top.

What they do with the iPhone 5 could again change the smartphone industry. As GigaOM’s Kevin Tofel notes, Apple could focus on battery life with the new iPhone, rather than creating another thinner model. He cites the increased battery capacity of the new iPad, which seems reasonable enough.

Improving smartphone batteriesIf Apple does indeed create a thicker smartphone that focuses on battery life, others will be pressed to follow suit. Remember, Apple essentially tells consumers what they want. Perhaps they wanted it previously – and plenty of customers have demanded better battery life from smartphones – but Apple does have the definitive word.

It’s hard to explain, but it’s clearly the case based on how the smartphone industry has developed. If Apple goes for battery life, we can expect others to jump on the bandwagon too.

Battery life has become a pressing issue for the future of smartphones. Manufacturers have created devices that are as powerful as full-sized computers of recent memory. Now they need adequate power for them.

Since a powerless smartphone is a useless smartphone, expect companies to jump on the better-battery bandwagon soon enough. Apple could get things kick-started this year. Things will likely develop rapidly from there.

What is Synthetic Biology?

In my work I write about nanotechnology and synthetic biology and over the next couple of weeks I would like to describe what is happening in these high technology fields. I start with synthetic biology. I am not a scientist and cannot give any form of technical description of how they do what they do. I can present a kind of sketch though of what they are doing and their aims.

The first question then must be what is synthetic biology? Well it is something that can be described as engineering, biology, genetics or nanotechnology, the most common description is that of applying the concept of engineering to biological organisms. But what does that actually mean?

Well, synthetic biology aims to design and engineer biologically based parts, novel devices and systems as well as redesigning existing, natural biological systems. Practitioners use a systems approach, an organism is seen as a whole, or a system, and can therefore be engineered, very much like a machine.

you see, kid's stuff

The system is reduced to biological parts (bioparts) whose function is expressed in terms of input/output characteristics. Once these parts have been described in terms of their function, isolated, standardised and syntheticaly reproduced, they can then be combined to from new organisms, very much in the way that an engineer would build a machine using standard devices built from standard parts. It is just that they are parts of a living organism.

These standard parts are defined by their DNA, and this can be manipulated in order to make the perfect part for the perfect device. Parts of the DNA can be removed and synthetic pieces used to replace them. Create the right part that does the right job, put in it a carrier cell (known as chassis) and Bob’s your Uncle, you can start to construct your organism.

The Biobricks Foundation is a not for profit organization that aims to keep a register of these standard parts, maintaining open access and promoting technical standardization, something that is seen as holding the key to the further development of synthetic biology.

Obviously to do all of the above you require technical expertise, the process requires computational modeling in order to analyze the complexities of biological entities and to predict system performance. You require DNA sequencing in order to describe the genome and then of course DNA synthesis, to re-produce either part of or the entire genome itself.

But what are the potential areas of application for this technology, and what can they actually do now?

One of the main fields is undoubtedly medicine. Drugs can be produced that are more effective or have fewer or even no side effects, as the genomes of their active components can be adjusted and synthesized. An example is the development of a synthetic version of the anti-malarial drug Artermisinin that could be industrially and cheaply mass produced, and in the near future antibiotics could become much more efficient.

Another existing application is water that changes colour when in contact with different polluting agents making them instantly recognizable. Switches already exist that react to certain types of input. An example could be a cell that is part of a person’s body that reacts to the stimulus of a certain chemical that in turn stimulates the production of another. Imagine for example a device that reacts to a chemical produced by a cancerous cell. This input causes a reaction that produces another chemical to counteract this presence. All working naturally using the body’s energy to function.

Other developments involve the energy sector, the production of plants for bio mass that are not as wasteful as those used today and even the development of synthetic aviation fuels.

In other fields a synthetic form of the silk produced by the Golden Orb spider is under development. This is an extremely strong, fine and lightweight material that could lead the way towards new specialist engineering materials.

They are even working on living computer memory, and  this article describes breakthroughs and results in DNA computing.

Well this is nothing but reasonable, my memory lives in my brain and the memory of my ancestors in my DNA, and now they have the technology to read it and even change it, so why not use it in a computer?

I have written several articles on this and other related topics on the Bassetti Foundation website, and as I said I am no scientist, so all comments and criticism invited and accepted.