Lifeboat Foundation

Turntide’s basic innovation is a software-controlled motor, or switch reluctance motor, that uses precise pulses of energy instead of a constant flow of electricity.

Sometimes the smallest innovations can have the biggest impacts on the world’s efforts to stop global climate change. Arguably, one of the biggest contributors in the fight against climate change to date has been the switch to the humble LED light, which has slashed hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions simply by reducing energy consumption in buildings.

And now firms backed by Robert Downey Jr. and Bill Gates are joining investors like Amazon and iPod inventor Tony Fadell to pour money into a company called Turntide Technologies that believes it has the next great innovation in the world’s efforts to slow global climate change — a better electric motor.

Continue reading “Firms backed by Robert Downey Jr. and Bill Gates have funded an electric motor company that slashes energy consumption” »

Global battery recycling industries are a new beginning for old energy storage.

When your kid looks at you with those big, innocent eyeballs and asks, “Where do lithium ion electric car batteries go when they die?” Without hesitation—because kids that age still believe you know everything—you read them this article:

Continue reading “Where Electric Car Batteries Go When They Die” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=m3Hm0PGQb0I

On March 28, 2021 NASA’s Mars Helicopter Ingenuity took vertical position (upright) under Perseverance Rover at Helipad. Helicopter release system unlocked yesterday. Today ingenuity made one more step to be deployed from Perseverance. As for now, NASA’s rover prepares to unlock Helicopter’s landing legs and put it on the Mars’s surface. Flight scheme is known. Solar panel charges Lithium-ion batteries, providing enough energy for one 90-second flight per Martian day (~350 Watts of average power during flight). Atmospheric weather relates to conditions such as air density at flight time, which affects the thrust that can be produced by the rotor and could result in adjustments of flight parameters. Temperature and wind profiles during the day are used to estimate the energy required to operate heaters. Winds at the time of the flight are tied to risks associated with takeoff, landing, and flying in high winds or very gusty conditions. All the things that a pilot on Earth would care about too!

Credit: nasa.gov, NASA/JPL-Caltech, NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Continue reading “Mars Helicopter Ingenuity takes vertical position under Perseverance Rover” »

Unfounded fears about nuclear technology may be undercutting the fight against climate change.

Nuclear power could be a big help in the fight against climate change. Learn why more environmentalists are starting to endorse it.

3% of sunlight reaches Earth, while satellites in space could gather energy for 99% of the year.

Capturing the sun’s boundless light in space could revolutionize how we distribute energy around the world.

A new type of 3D-printed battery which uses electrodes made from vegetable starch and carbon nanotubes could provide mobile devices with a more environmentally-friendly, higher-capacity source of power.

A team of engineers led from the University of Glasgow have developed the battery in a bid to make more sustainable lithium-ion batteries capable of storing and delivering power more efficiently. The battery’s design and fabrication is outlined in a paper published in the Journal of Power Sources.

Lithium-ion batteries provide a useful combination of lightweight, compact form factors and the ability to withstand many cycles of charging and discharging. That has made them ideally suited for use in a wide array of devices, including laptops, mobile phones, smart watches, and electric vehicles.

Plastics are one of the world’s largest polluters, taking hundreds of years to degrade in nature. A research team, led by YSE professor Yuan Yao and Liangbing Hu from the University of Maryland, has created a high-quality bioplastic from wood byproducts that they hope can solve one of the world’s most pressing environmental issues.

Efforts to shift from petrochemical plastics to renewable and biodegradable plastics have proven tricky — the production process can require toxic chemicals and is expensive, and the mechanical strength and water stability is often insufficient. But researchers have made a breakthrough, using wood byproducts, that shows promise for producing more durable and sustainable bioplastics.

A study published in Nature Sustainability, co-authored by Yuan Yao, assistant professor of industrial ecology and sustainable systems at Yale School of the Environment (YSE), outlines the process of deconstructing the porous matrix of natural wood into a slurry. The researchers say the resulting material shows a high mechanical strength, stability when holding liquids, and UV-light resistance. It can also be recycled or safely biodegraded in the natural environment, and has a lower life-cycle environmental impact when compared with petroleum-based plastics and other biodegradable plastics.

Amid population growth and a changing climate, we meet the food producers doing more with less.

Check out VICE News for more: http://vicenews.com.

Continue reading “Visiting the Farm of the Future” »

Musk’s tweet offering guidance on timing for an anticipated increase in Tesla’s market cap has since been deleted, but screenshots were widely shared on Twitter.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has clashed with Musk and Tesla over the CEO’s unfettered use of Twitter before.

In the third quarter of 2018, Musk faced securities fraud charges from the SEC after he tweeted to his tens of millions of followers then that he was planning to take Tesla private at $420 a share, and had secured funding to do so. Tesla’s stock price jumped more than 6 percent that day.