One Step Beyond the Flux-Capacitor

This story from Fast Company combined with this markup of a very low friction magnetic bearing from UC Berkely highlight a new technology that may leapfrog the current Lithium Ion batteries currently being used for energy storage in electric and hybrid vehicles.



We will continue to highlight new technologies that may be game changers in the automotive economy. It is an exciting time to watch as each of these new designs vie for positioning in the highly profitable auto industry. Sometimes the ideas may be utilized in another field first, but with all of the new pieces floating around surely someone will be able to combine them in just the right construct to bring economical and green tech to the cars we will be driving around every day. It seems the Jetson's may be closer than we might think.



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Auto Heat Exchanger

Part of the excitement in an era of fast-change auto technology is the interim steps within the process. I am sure you have heard the least common denominator American mantra "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". What we are finding now is that turn of the century internal combustion engine technology has huge areas of unexplored efficiency gains. One such improvement comes from the field of Thermodynamics. It seems that using heat for conversion into electricity is a widely used technology that has never really been applied to the automotive industry.

This article in today's Sciencedaily.com discusses the potential in capturing this underutilized wasted heat and turning into free cooling or storing it for use in an electrical process (can you say hybrid?). While it won't be as easy as bolting on the pictured device, we can surely work out the details well enough to create an under-hood converter that could tap into this wasted resource and do "something". Like most technological leaps, it typically takes one person to ask the question in a different way and then others to take the new line of reasoning and invent the breakthrough device. Hopefully today's article has gotten the wheels of thought rolling in a young genius engineering student who will change the way we use wasted energy in automobiles. I don't think cars are going away. Let's just continue to make them better and more efficient. Maybe someday in the near future you will be buying this thermo-electric generator from us.

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Garbage In / Hydrogen Out

Although I doubt we will see a plasma car anytime soon I do believe there are some possibilities for municipalities to solve several of their problems with this one solution. Plasma Waste Incineration is an idea that has been around for a while. The process involves creating an extremely high temperature plasma arc (contained obviously) that would quickly burn tons of waste being fed into one end. The byproducts would be a glass like substance that could be used as a building material and a gaseous hydrogen / carbon monoxide mix that could be used as fuel. The result would be a process that creates more energy than it uses, produces a sell-able product, and could also be used to fuel municipal buildings and vehicles while eliminating waste. With new fuel cell technology coming out every day, this seems to be an idea that needs to be put into production... sooner rather than later.

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