Science News: September 2014

Monday, September 29, 2014

Turning Algae into oil

'We think it is a really elegant solution," said Matt Atwood, the chief executive. At its heart is a "hydrothermal liquefaction" system that heats the algae and other solids in the sewage to more than 550 degrees Fahrenheit, at 3,000 pounds per square inch, turning out a liquid that resembles crude oil from a well.

The company sent the liquid to Auburn University, where scientists added hydrogen (a common step in oil refining) to produce diesel fuel. An independent laboratory, Intertek, confirmed that the diesel fuel met industry specifications. The thermal processing has caught the attention of independent scientists. The Department of Energy recently awarded a $4 million grant to a partnership led by SRI International for further work on Algae Systems' hydrothermal processing system…

Some companies have tried gene-altered algae, but Algae Systems uses naturally occurring forms drawn from the bay. Whichever strain flourishes in the bags is what the company uses. "We call it the Hunger Games," Mr. Atwood said.

The early results were promising enough for IHI, a Japanese conglomerate, to invest $15 million.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/19/science/not-letting-algae-just-float-around.html?_r=0

Friday, September 26, 2014

India/Mars

'This is a mission that has been budgeted at 4.5bn rupees ($74m), which, by Western standards, is staggeringly cheap.

The American Maven orbiter that arrived at the Red Planet on Monday is costing almost 10 times as much.

Back in June, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi even quipped that India's real-life Martian adventure was costing less than the make-believe Hollywood film Gravity.'

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29341850

Newlight Technologies is turning carbon into plastic

http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/innovationnation/2014/09/23/plastic-made-from-air.cnnmoney/index.html?iid=GM

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Fwd: Water vapor exoplanet

'Astronomers have detected water vapour in the atmosphere of a planet that orbits a star far beyond our solar system.

Observations of the Neptune-sized planet, which lies 120 light years from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus, revealed that its atmosphere was mostly hydrogen with around 25% made up from water vapour.

Until now, researchers have been frustrated in their efforts to study the atmospheres of planets much smaller than Jupiter because their skies were thick with clouds. The problem was so persistent that astronomers had begun to think that all warm, small planets formed with substantial cloud cover.

But writing in the journal Nature, scientists in the US describe how they found a Neptune-sized planet with cloud-free skies, enabling them to make detailed measurements of a small planet's atmosphere for the first time.

The planet, named HAT-P-11b, is about four times the diameter of Earth. It orbits so close to its star that surface temperatures reach more than 600C and a year passes in five Earth days. Like our own Neptune, the planet lacks a rocky surface – it's a ball of gas – and is thought to be lifeless'

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/24/water-small-warm-planet-atmosphere