Technolgies useful for Indian problems

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 05 Jun 2008 10:12

Want solar power from space? How about making large solar arrays from thin fabrics?

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea ... y?id=52653

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/scienc ... index.html

http://www.universetoday.com/2008/06/01 ... rom-space/

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 10 Jun 2008 11:10

A printer which uses regular paper:

http://www.tctmagazine.com/x/guideArchi ... l?id=10328

Might not sound so extraordinary, until you see that it's a 3D printer!

http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/mco ... _paper.php

http://www.rapidtoday.com/mcor.html

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 10 Jun 2008 11:45

VR Glasses, to watch TV or surf the net while you're on the bus, or train, or plane:

http://www.likecool.com/Myvu_Crystal_70 ... -Gear.html

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 11 Jun 2008 05:45

I'm sure there are plenty of local manufacturers which could make and sell products like these:

http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/06/10/arc ... -turbines/

They could not only cut India's energy costs, but they could bring power to areas lacking transmission wiring infrastructure.

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 14 Jun 2008 10:18

the Light Electric Vehicle:

http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/06/10/lig ... tra-motor/

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 15 Jun 2008 05:39

Here's the Indian site for Ultra Motors:

http://www.ultramotors.co.uk/india/index.aspx

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 17 Jun 2008 11:26

http://www.kilian-nakamura.com/catalog/ ... p-140.html

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 21 Jun 2008 16:26

Electric power generator runs on trash:

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1778/70/

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 22 Jun 2008 11:32

http://cleantechnica.com/2008/06/20/ver ... ind-energ/

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 25 Jun 2008 04:39

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9975926-54.html

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 25 Jun 2008 09:07

http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20080624 ... more-14881

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 30 Jun 2008 09:45

Cheaper Solar Power

By TR Editors

New solar arrays from SolFocus generate more power than conventional solar panels but use just one-thousandth as much expensive semiconductor material. The arrays' curved mirrors focus sunlight onto one-square-centimeter solar cells, concentrating the light 500 times and improving the cells' efficiency. SolFocus's first power-producing installation will be generating 500 kilowatts of electricity by the end of the summer. The company expects that by 2010, electricity from its arrays will be about as cheap as electricity from conventional sources.

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 05 Jul 2008 13:12

Sharp Unveils Solar-Powered TV

For the 1.6 billion people living in areas without utility-supplied electricity, Sharp has designed a TV that can get 100% of its power from the sun. The company plans to exhibit the 26-inch LCD prototype at the Hokkaido Toyako Summit, or G8 Summit, in Hokkaido, Japan, on July 7-9.

sanjaychoudhry · Post by **sanjaychoudhry** » 06 Jul 2008 02:21

Alternative to plastic bags: DRDO technology on offer

www.hindu.com/2008/07/06/stories/2008070656350100.htm

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 11 Jul 2008 10:15

Thursday, July 10, 2008
A Better Solar Collector

A more efficient way to concentrate sunlight could reduce the cost of producing solar power

Also see:

http://www.physorg.com/news134917794.html

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 11 Jul 2008 10:44

Anyone know about this

Quantum Computing Crib Sheeet

Anywork in India on this?

Yugandhar · Post by **Yugandhar** » 12 Jul 2008 08:32

ramana

Prof. Anilkumar at IISc physics dept works on that. He is retired officially, but most people retain labs and continue work till funds/students dry up.

http://sif.iisc.ernet.in/anil/res.htm

Maybe there are few others at RRI, TIFR etc

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 13 Jul 2008 08:21

From the IEEE journal:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/jul08/6439

the first electric cars may actually be trucks

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 13 Jul 2008 11:52

The Velib:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/world ... paris.html

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 13 Jul 2008 11:58

Another electric truck:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/a ... 72875.html

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 13 Jul 2008 13:54

Here's another good article on the new dye-based solar concentrators:

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/new ... 35BE286A11

Scientists in the US have shown how to multiply the power output of photovoltaic (solar) cells by up to ten times using organic dyes to concentrate sunlight. They say that their work could be scaled up to make solar cells competitive with fossil-fuel power generation.

This could really help to boost solar power in India, as the dyes could easily be manufactured in large quantity.

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 14 Jul 2008 11:34

'Breakthrough' in malaria fight

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 16 Jul 2008 09:15

India Modifies Wankel Rotary Engine to Meet Its Needs

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 19 Jul 2008 12:41

deleted+-

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 20 Jul 2008 07:15

Here is an article featuring Brazil's best-designed products:

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/07 ... /index.htm

If you look at them, I think you'll see that some of these products might be particularly well-suited for India as well.

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 21 Jul 2008 07:41

Start-up Wakonda promises 'breakthrough' solar cells

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 22 Jul 2008 10:01

Businessweek - Best Product Designs of 2008:

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/07 ... ners/1.htm

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 23 Jul 2008 09:29

Wednesday, July 23, 2008
A Concrete Fix to Global Warming

A new process stores carbon dioxide in precast concrete.

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 24 Jul 2008 10:09

Diesel-powered flight
Whirlybirds go green

Jul 23rd 2008
From Economist.com
Diesel engines could make helicopters—and other aircraft—more efficient and cleaner

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 01 Aug 2008 16:37

India's First Green Housing Project Completed

http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/07/30/ind ... completed/

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 01 Aug 2008 17:40

Exciting future fuel from algae,better than palm oil

'Oil from algae' promises climate friendly fuel.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... dtransport

'Oil from algae' promises climate friendly fuel
Alok Jha, green technology correspondent guardian.co.uk, Thursday July 31 2008
Article history

New start ... the company's website promoting green crude made from algae

A liquid fuel made from plants that is chemically identical to crude oil but which does not contribute to climate change when it is burned or, unlike other biofuels, need agricultural land to produce sounds too good to be true. But a company in San Diego claims to have developed exactly that – a sustainable version of oil it calls "green crude".

Sapphire Energy uses single-celled organisms such as algae to produce a chemical mixture from which it is possible to extract fuels for cars or airplanes. When it is burned, the fuel only releases into the air the carbon dioxide absorbed by the algae during its growth, making the whole process carbon neutral.

Major investors are already opening their cheque books: Sapphire has raised a total of $50m (£25m) in venture capital in recent weeks, the highest amount ever for an algae biotech company, including a significant investment from the UK's Wellcome Trust.

Algae are seen by many experts as promising a source of green fuel in the future: ranging from single-celled organisms to large seaweeds, they are the world's most abundant form of plant life and, via photosynthesis, are extremely efficient at using sunlight and carbon dioxide from the air to make organic material such as sugars, proteins and, under the right conditions, oils.

Yusuf Chisti at Massey University in New Zealand estimates that algae could produce almost 100,000 litres of biodiesel a year per hectare of land, compared to 6,000 litres a hectare for oil palm, currently the most productive biofuel.

'Green gasoline'

The money for Sapphire came flooding in after the company recently reached its most significant milestone yet, refining high-octane gasoline from their green crude. "The resulting gasoline is completely compatible with current infrastructure, meaning absolutely no change to consumer's cars," said a Sapphire spokesperson.

An added advantage is that their gasoline does not have contaminants such as sulphur, nitrogen and benzene that are contained in standard crude oil and the company believes the cost of their fuels will be comparable to standard fossil fuels on the market.

Many biotech companies around the world are working on using algae to produce ethanol or biodiesels that could replace traditional transport fuels while avoiding the problems raised by traditional crop-based biofuels, such as displacing food crops. A Sapphire spokesperson said that, with algae, there was no need to use valuable farmland to grow the basic resource. "In fact the process uses non-arable land and non-potable water and delivers 10 to 100 times more energy per acre than cropland biofuels."

Where Sapphire departs from other algae companies is that their aim is not to produce standard biofuels such as ethanol or biodiesel. Instead, they take their inspiration from the way crude oil was created in the first place, millions of years ago.

"Way back when, when the algae were responsible for creating the long-chain hydrocarbons like diesels and heavy oils, the biomass just got buried and compressed and formed crude oil," said Steven Skill, a researcher in how algae can be used to make organic chemicals at Plymouth Marine Laboratory and who is familiar with Sapphire's work. "Algae synthesise these long-chain hydrocarbons within the cells."

Sapphire would not reveal details of the type of algae they are using but Skill thinks it is probably using genetically-modified cyanobacteria, which used to be called blue-green algae. These organisms can grow quickly (some blooms can double their mass in just an hour), operate in high temperatures and some strains can even fix nitrogen from the air to make their own fertilisers.

"Sapphire claim they can engineer whatever they like now on the strain of algae they're working with," said Skill. The next step, he said, depended on developing the engineering and cultivation systems to grow the algae economically.

Commercial production

John Loughhead, executive director of the UK Energy Research Centre, said that research on algae was a crucial part of the work to develop green energy sources in the future. "I'd say it's a very sound idea but the question is, are they able to do anything practical in an efficient way? The key questions are the efficiency with which this process happens."

He added: "They also have the classic renewables problem in that you're dealing with the ultimate energy source, the Sun, which is quite diffuse, so you're only getting in peak conditions around 0.5KW per square metre. You need vast, great big farms."

Algae can easily be grown in open ponds, but these result in very low-density blooms and are therefore an inefficient way to produce lots of fuel. Skill said that Sapphire would need advances in technology called photobioreactors to make a successful leap to commercial production.

Photobioreactors are closed vessels that would provide plenty of light and carefully tuned conditions that could intensively grow the microorganisms. Several teams around the world are testing designs for growing algae in them but none have so far made it to market.

Also crucial to making the green crude commercially viable is to use the byproducts other than oil from the algae. "You can probably derive 40% of the algae's weight in oil and you've got 60% of other stuff and there's a lot of valuable components in that in terms of chemical feed stocks."

These extra ingredients, which include fats, sugars and proteins, could be used for animal feeds or even as replacements for other petroleum products used in everything from cosmetics to plastics.

Sapphire said it expects to be at a stage of commercial production of green crude within three to five years. Geoffrey Love, head of venture capital at the Wellcome Trust, said the investment was made with this in mind. "There was already in place a very strong scientific and management team.

"They'd already made milestone-based progress to proving they could make not just biodiesel, which plenty of other companies out there can do, but proper crude oil."

He added that the biomedical charity had its own scientific diligence work done before making the investment and that the backing of another investment group that Trust often worked with, Arch Ventures, swung their own decision.

Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace UK, said: "We urgently need to find ways of consigning the fossil fuel economy to history. Algae could offer promise, but to get a real grip on what this technology could offer we need far more information at our fingertips.

"The crucial requirement is that the end product can be produced in large quantities in a sustainable way, otherwise we're simply jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire."

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 02 Aug 2008 06:04

Breakthrough on Cheap Solar Hydrogen

This could lead to a flood of applications.
It's things like this which could remove India's energy problems, more so than nuclear reactors.

sampat · Post by **sampat** » 03 Aug 2008 01:55

India's gift to green drive: Bicycle @ 40kmph

great work, perfect combination of university + incubators + industry

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 31 Aug 2008 13:06

Ion-Mask Coating Improves Waterproofing

rajkhalsa · Post by **rajkhalsa** » 07 Sep 2008 09:47

This is ridiculously cheap and simple, and totally awesome. These can be used to Indian villages as well.

Q-DRUM: Re-inventing the (Water) Wheel

Proving once again that sometimes the simplest ideas are the most powerful, the Q-Drum makes water transportation a (rolling) piece of cake. For the vast majority of Sub-Saharan Africa, fetching water isn’t as easy as a nearby well, often involving daily trips to water sources miles away. Q-Drum makes these trips less taxing, and proves that a simple tweak to a simple barrel shape can, in fact, re-invent the wheel and bring life-saving water to millions a little more easily.

QDrum, water transport, water procurement, water tool, water barrel, humanitarian product, product design Africa, water product design

The Q-drum is user-friendly and durable, made from Linear Low Density Polyethylene with high compatibility for foodstuffs and water. The design itself is simple, with a longitudinal shaft that allows the drum to be pulled using a rope run through the hole. There are no removable or breakable handles or axles, and the rope can be repaired on the spot or replaced by means available everywhere, such as a leather thong or a rope woven from plant material. A simple spout makes filling and closing quick and easy.

In a similar vein, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4461265.stm

A company in South Africa has found a way to harness youthful energy in solving the perennial problem of water supply in rural villages.

It uses a playground roundabout to power a borehole pump.

Roundabout Outdoors is now hoping to take the concept to other African countries where water infrastructure languishes behind South Africa.

The play-pump benefits women and girls in particular who can spend hours each day fetching water.

"African and Asian women spend up to six hours a day walking to collect water," Roundabout Outdoor's Trevor Field told the BBC's World Today.

"If we put a play-pump in, if you look at the saving on time alone it's phenomenal, and it does have a massive impact on the health of children and people in general."

...

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 08 Sep 2008 01:39

Caterpillar Funds House-Printing Technology

aka. 'Contour Crafting'

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 08 Sep 2008 06:12

More on Contour Crafting:

http://greenbuildingelements.com/2008/0 ... ses-green/

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 15 Sep 2008 10:16

Friday, September 12, 2008
Solar Roofing Materials
Integrating solar cells into building materials could make solar power more attractive to homeowners.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 16 Sep 2008 03:57

Sanjay M wrote:
Friday, September 12, 2008
Solar Roofing Materials
Integrating solar cells into building materials could make solar power more attractive to homeowners.

they have this in Northern California. One can get connected to the PG&E (local electric co.) and get credit for the power being supplied. A friend of mine has $100/mo bill for a humongous home. However initial cost of panels etc was quite high.

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 16 Sep 2008 07:46

Carbon Nanotubes Might Be Used in Future Water Filters

Written by Ariel Schwartz
Published on September 15th, 2008

Nanotechnology seems to be invading all facets of modern life, from the pills you take to the batteries that power your iPod. Pretty soon, carbon nanotubes may even filter your water.

Researchers at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center in India are investigating the hollow carbon fibers as a potential water filter. They believe the unique chemical properties of nanotubes mean that only water molecules can pass through their interiors, while toxic metal ions, viruses, and bacteria cannot.

Additionally, the smooth, water-repellent interior of the nanotubes means that a filter made from the technology would have a high flow rate of water without fouling—so it would be very efficient.

But there’s still plenty of work to be done before carbon nanotubes are a viable option for filtering. The Indian research team is currently trying to engineer nanoscale structures to form arrangements that can efficiently decontaminate water.

With the rapid rise of contaminated drinking water around the world, solutions are desperately needed. Since poor countries are more likely to lack access to drinking water, a carbon nanotube filter will be most useful if it is both simple and cheap to operate and maintain. And if that massive hurdle is surpassed, developing nations may suddenly be a lot better off.