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When the motor runs above a certain speed, the shaft rides on a magnetic cushion, not on bearings, eliminating the metal-on-metal wear all together. The motor produces no heat but runs at ambient temperature.

Rubloff and his colleagues have developed an energy storage device that improves on the performance of electrostatic capacitors - a device that stores energy as electric charge. The tiny capacitors consist of a layered structure of metal-insulator-metal thin films. The devices are fabricated in massive arrays using minute holes at a density of 60 billion per square inch.

UN looks into metals recycling, copper in particular

"Finnish headquartered metallurgical group, Outotec ,has been awarded a contract by Tongling Non-Ferrous Metals Group for the design and delivery of a new copper smelter to be built in Jinchang in Anhui province, China. The contract value is approximately EUR 15 million."

Meanwhile, it provides the latest market information for scrap metal, plastic scrap and waste paper every day; and updates on supply and demand including daily waste rubber, waste electronic/electric equipment, waste glass and waste leather.

The source of endless energy for all humankind resides just off Government Street in Burnaby, British Columbia, up the little spit of blacktop on Bonneville Place and across the parking lot from Shade-O-Matic blind manufacturers and wholesalers. The future is there, in that mostly empty office with the vomit-green walls -- and inside the brain of Michel Laberge, 47, bearded and French-Canadian. According to a diagram, printed on a single sheet of white paper and affixed with tape to a dusty slab of office drywall, his vision looks like a medieval torture device: a metal ball surrounded on all sides by metal rods and bisected by two long cylinders. It's big but not immense -- maybe 10 times as tall as the little robot man in the lower right corner of the page who's there to indicate scale.

A team of researchers at Rice University have discovered a way to improve the efficiency of lithium-ion batteries: use carbon-nanotube/metal-oxide arrays as electrode material.

Various departments at a car manufacturing plant are suffering from regular process outages due to voltage dips. These dips are causing production losses in the Metal Operation, Spray Coating, and Assembly departments that directly affect the productivity of the plant. The cost of those losses is directly related to the profile of the voltage dip (duration and depth). Various options to reduce these costs are investigated, with particular emphasis upon the Spray Coating and Assembly departments. The following conclusions can be drawn: 1. The number and type of dips occurring at the point of connection of the plant is regular. It is similar to what is monitored at other medium voltage stations that have the same grid structure. 2. A detailed analysis of the spray coating process reveals that installing a 'restart on the fly' system on the large conditioning fans substantially reduces the related voltage dip losses. 3. A detailed analysis of the Assembly department shows that there are two main bottlenecks that determine the restart time after a dip (the 'Drive' sub-process and the 'Cockpit', 'Marking', and 'Transport chain' users). These bottlenecks can be removed by installing a Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR), which results in a payback time of 1.4 years. * 1 Introduction

Japan's Daihatsu Motor Co Ltd said it has developed a technology to make fuel cells without platinum, the precious metal used in the electrolyte process in existing hydrogen-based fuel cells. By using alkali, instead of acid, anion exchange membranes, Daihatsu's fuel cell can work with less costly metals which are less resistant to corrosion than platinum, such as cobalt or nickel, Daihatsu said in a statement, Reuters said

Environ Sci Technol. 2003 Dec 1;37(23):5414-6. Global sustainability and key needs in future automotive design. McAuley JW. Basell USA Inc., 912 Appleton Road, Elkton, Maryland 21921, USA. john.mcauley@basell.com Abstract The number of light vehicle registrations is forecast to increase worldwide by a factor of 3-5 over the next 50 years. This will dramatically increase environmental impacts worldwide of automobiles and light trucks. If light vehicles are to be environmentally sustainable globally, the automotive industry must implement fundamental changes in future automotive design. Important factors in assessing automobile design needs include fuel economy and reduced emissions. Many design parameters can impact vehicle air emissions and energy consumption including alternative fuel or engine technologies, rolling resistance, aerodynamics, drive train design, friction, and vehicle weight. Of these, vehicle weight is key and will translate into reduced energy demand across all energy distribution elements. A new class of vehicles is needed that combines ultra-light design with a likely hybrid or fuel cell engine technology. This could increase efficiency by a factor of 3-5 and reduce air emissions as well. Advanced lightweight materials, such as plastics or composites, will need to overtake the present metal-based infrastructure. Incorporating design features to facilitate end-of-life recycling and recovery is also important. The trend will be towards fewer materials and parts in vehicle design, combined with ease of disassembly. Mono-material construction can create vehicle design with improved recyclability as well as reduced numbers of parts and weight.

Oh, it can be done. There are no scientific laws that say you can't run a car on water. In fact, a Japanese company is the latest to claim they have pulled it off. See the video here: Water-fuel car unveiled in Japan However, what you can't do is run a car on water without energy inputs greater than you get from splitting the water.

The incandescent lightbulb that wastes 90% of the electricity as heat is dying, we all know that. But a new breakthrough in solid state lighting might also kill compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) faster than some expected. Scientists at Purdue University have figured out how to manufacture LED solid-state lights on regular metal-coated silicon wafers (more details below). What this means is: much lower costs.

The future market for hybrid-electric vehicles, at least those that are affordable, isn't necessarily paved with lithium. Researchers in Australia have created what could be called a lead-acid battery on steroids, capable of performing as well as the nickel-metal hydride systems found in most hybrid cars but at a fraction of the cost. The so-called UltraBattery combines 150-year-old lead-acid technology with supercapacitors, electronic devices that can quickly absorb and release large bursts of energy over millions of cycles without significant degradation. As a result, the new battery lasts at least four times longer than conventional lead-acid batteries, and its creators say that it can be manufactured at one-quarter the cost of existing hybrid-electric battery packs.

Sunset technologies tend to be resilient against reports on their demise. But eventually, they have to go - cf carburators, word processors, ... But some of us have a chance to retire before the lead-acid battery does.