Tag Archives: science

Nanotechnology Energizes Solar Panels

Something very small [nanotechnology] is happening in the world of solar panels, but it promises big changes. It cuts to the heart of solar panel engineering, and the big dream solar aficionados have harbored for decades……thin film technology that is both cost effective and practical.

With nano-solar technology, the panels themselves change as well, their manufacturing becoming more like a film making process than adhering silicon-like materials to glass substrates. The use of customized nano particles has the ability to make the cells better able to capture incoming solar radiation, thereby increasing panel efficiency; and also enabling a cheaper manufacturing process. To give you a sense of the scale, a nanometer is equal to 1 billionth of a meter.

Konarka

Check out a photo below of Konarka’s, plastic, organic, thin film material, and visit them to see their typical product performance spec sheet. Konarka Technologies is located in Lowell Massachusetts, and was originally founded in 2001 by a team of researchers at UMass at Lowell, including Mr. Howard Berke, who now serves as Konarka’s Chairman and CEO.

Nanosolar, is now marketing their nanosolar panels, boasting a 15% panel efficiency. On a thin piece of aluminium, the company adds a nanoparticle ink, at a rate of printing 100 feet of solar cells a minute. They can produce panels [containing many solar cells] for 60 cents per watt, retailing them for about $1.00 a watt when production is full-scale. A fully installed Nanosolar panel system would cost about $2.50 a watt, much lower than the $6-8 a watt today with conventional solar panels. You can see an interesting video of their panel making operation and also via this photo below.

Nanosolar was founded in 2002, recently benefiting in 2010 from a revamped team of management talent with experience in growing technology companies into potent billion dollar organizations. The new team is headed by Mr. Geoff Tate, Chairman and CEO, and located in San Jose, CA.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory has teamed up with Microcontinuum Inc. and the University of Missouri to develop a very interesting nanoantenna which can capture up to 80% of the sun’s mid-infrared rays. Spiral nanoantennas, 1/25th the width of a human hair, do the work. These little babies can also harvest energy after the sun goes down! See photo below, and check out this website and fascinating video. Since these arrays absorb infrared radiation, they also absorb the sun’s infrared energy reradiated by the earth after dark. Similarly, they also take in heat from industrial processes. This opens up a whole series of applications for absorbing waste heat and reradiating it as electricity, effectively cooling buildings, computers, equipment, etc. … without air conditioning. This could be revolutionary in just a few more years. From tiny nanotechnology, big new applications grow.

Microcontinuum was originally founded in 1998 by a former team of Polaroid scientists and engineers. Dr. W. Dennis Slafer is currently President and CFO, Cambridge, MA.

New Energy Technologies, Inc. says it’s come up with a patent-pending method of spraying windows with a nano-thin photovoltaic material. The spray is an organic semitransparent material that converts sunlight to electricity. Using this technology the company will produce its SolarWindows, equipped with a nano film 1/1,000th the thickness of a human hair. Researchers found that its super small solar cells can harness more artificial light than other solar cells “under normal office lighting conditions, without the benefit of outside natural light from windows.” Check them out!

Mr. John A. Conklin is President and CEO of New Energy Technologies, located in Columbia, MD.

Editor’s Deep Dive

Thomas Edison was a big fan of solar energy … “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

Time ® is a registered trademark of Time Inc.

Thomas Edison’s e-mail to Steve Jobs- Sent from the “Cloud”

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Early one morning, when Steve Jobs arrived at his desk at Apple *, he noticed an e-mail on his laptop screen and had the uncomfortable feeling that it would not be his typical day. It was from Thomas Edison and it read …

Dear Mr. Jobs:

Congratulations on your Mac, iPad and iPhone devices. My buddies and I, up here in the “Cloud”, really love their simplicity of operation. For quite some time I have been watching your company, impressed with the speed of your product development.

My early work in telegraphy and later recorded sound and motion pictures was pretty primitive compared to Apple products. I still have lunch with Ben Franklin and Alexander Bell on occasion and we are shocked at how fast wireless phones have taken over.

How you pack recorded sound, motion pictures and all sorts of other visual and communication things [I think you call them Apps] into your portable devices! That is what invention is all about, pulling a multi-disciplined team together, being the first to do something everyone says is impossible and then selling it profitably.

I hear technology companies have difficulty finding good talent. I had that problem too and even composed a special test for new potential hires to take [take the test yourself here]. Maybe Apple could partner with my friends at the Edison Foundations [www.ThomasEdison.org]. They have been working with teachers to bring the excitement of invention, problem solving, entrepreneurship and green technologies into the classroom.

I miss my “muckers” R&D team and all the great inventive times we had. I loved failing the most, because we learned so much and that just intensified the search for answers. I adopted this motto for the “muckers” to live by…… “Fail your way to success.” Judging from what I observe, you already are well aware of how invention, teamwork, leadership and some failures along the way, work to Apple’s benefit. [Our Apple stock is doing fine, helping to grow our 401k’s up here very nicely—thank you!]

Stop by my recently renovated lab in West Orange, NJ and have a look around. I would like to see an Edison-Apple Innovation Center, right next to my West Orange digs. Buffet, Gates and even Zuckerberg will be envious.

Let’s have a face-to-face real time call when you are free. I just received an iPhone 4-G and am itching to use the Apple Face Time App.

Sincerely,

* Apple, Mac, iPad, and iPhone are Trademarks of Apple, Inc.

Giveaway: Take your family on a tour through Thomas Edison’s Glenmont, New Jersey home … ON US!

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Are you looking to take a trip this winter? How do you feel about taking a trip into history with Thomas Edison. Take a walk through the halls where he imagined some of his most fantastic inventions, climb the staircase to his private office, walk through his kitchen, imagine yourself having tea with his wife in his dining room, look out the stained-glass windows out onto his greenhouse, and see first hand some of his original inventions. Tom’s Glenmont home has something for everyone: art, glorious architecture, science, history, interior design and more.

If you would like to tour this historic and amazing Glenmont, New Jersey house – for free – entry is as easy as 1, 2, 3 …

How to enter:

Leave a comment here on this post telling us what you love about Tom
Follow @edisonmuckers on twitter and retweet about this contest
Become a fan of EdisonMuckers on Facebook

PS> That means you have THREE chances to win!! Remember, you only have to do ONE of these things to enter, but if you do all THREE you have more chances to win.

* The contest provides entry and a guided tour into Thomas Edison’s home for two adults {children under 16 are admitted free}. Transportation to and from the site are the responsibility of the contest winner. There will be five winners chosen. The contest will end on Friday, January 31, 2011 at 10pm. The winners will be announced the following Monday. Good luck to all! and remember …

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”

Desalination and Clean Water from GE and MIT

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Hands down….chemistry was Thomas Edison’s favorite subject. So enamored with its seemingly magical processes, he once said….“I believe that the science of chemistry alone almost proves the existence of an intelligent creator.” Were he here today to see what is being done with chemistry, especially reverse osmosis and its application to desalination, Edison would be very happy indeed.

We think nothing of it every day as we routinely open the sink faucet and draw a glass of water. It is just another aspect of our high standard of living. However, the availability of clean, fresh drinking water is a problem for over one billion people on our planet, a serious impediment to economic development. Sadly in Africa alone, over 50,000 people a year die because they ingested contaminated water.

GE engineers are helping to remedy this problem and have implemented a high-tech desalination plant in Algeria. Using reverse osmosis, a technology stemming directly from GE’s pioneering work in the 1950’s with membrane based water purification technologies, the Hamma Desalination Plant is completely functional, providing millions of gallons of clean, fresh water. Take a look at the recently operational GE Hamma Desalination Plant below, a 53 million gallon per day facility, and enjoy the short video about GE’s work. GE chose reverse osmosis technology because it is energy, cost, and space efficient compared to other desalination methods.

The technological magic of reverse osmosis occurs along the length and cross-section of the long, white tubes pictured here below. This is a typical reverse osmosis stage in a desalination plant. After the salt water enters the tubes, high pressures are applied to it. This forces the fresh water through openings in a special membrane filter that inhibits the passage of dissolved salt and other minerals in the raw sea water—so only fresh water is collected on the other side. The clean water flows out of the center of each tube assembly and is then collected and stored. [see Editor’s Deep Dive below]

The central electric generating stations and distribution systems originally envisioned by Thomas Edison in the 1880s is what today provides the large amounts of electricity needed to operate desalination plants. Now as the world looks toward natural energy sources like the sun and wind, we will no doubt see desalination plants powered by solar panels and maybe even land and offshore wind turbines. Clean water, courtesy of the sun.

Speaking of the sun, an MIT team just announced a design [below] for a solar-powered reverse osmosis desalination system that could be rapidly deployed in crisis situations to produce drinking water; or used in small scale applications like farms, villages and remote hamlets in developing countries.

A prototype built by the Departments of Mechanical and Aeronautics and Astronautics can produce 80 gallons of water a day in a variety of weather conditions. A larger version is estimated to be able to provide about 1,000 gallons of water per day. The MIT team envisions such units delivered in quantity via large transport planes.

Tom Edison would like all this innovation a great deal. He always felt the sun’s power should be tapped; and he believed that…. way back in 1929.

Editor’s Deep Dive {Links & More}

Click here for a r eally simple animation of reverse osmosis
Refer to this more specific animation to see more on the tube-like equipment discussed above
Check here, if you really want to get into the nitty-gritty of reverse osmosis technology

“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” – Thomas Edison