Science & Engineering FYI: July 2009, Part II

Researchers from the University of Nevada, Reno describe in a paper, in The Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, how they extracted fat from chicken feather meal and converted it into ‘good-quality biodiesel.’

According to the paper, there is enough feather meal produced in the United States to create about 150 million gallons of biodiesel a year. Read the article from The New York Times for more details.

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Thanks to a joint collaboration between NASA and the University of North Dakota, 47 undergraduate and graduate students, middle and high school teachers, and scientists were able to gather environmental data aboard the NASA-owned DC-8 “flying laboratory.”

During the six-hour flight over the California coast, students gathered air samples and collected images from land and sea. Read article from the Los Angeles Times.

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A new design from Stirling Energy Systems (SES), based in Phoenix, has made solar thermal power cheaper. Design changes include reducing the number of mirrors and reducing the weight of the dish.

The new production design should allow electricity costs to be competitive in most markets. Plans are underway to build 12,000 of the new sun-catching dishes.

Advantages of the electricity production include, zero consumption of water and immediate electricity productions once the dishes are installed. Currently the only disadvantage of the new system is an inability to store heat, to generate electricity when the sun is not shining. Read full article from the Technology Review.

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