NASA, Technology and Our Everyday Lives

Ever wondered how technologies developed by NASA are being used today to simplify and help us with our daily routines?

Space Shuttle Launch / www.nasa.gov

Quite a handful of them, from air purifiers to cameras, have been made available to us through partnerships and license grants to private entities. Some of the most notable technologies in the energy industry include:

A fuel cell device developed by K.R. Sridhar for the Ames Research Center that is being used by Bloom Energy Server to provide clean and cost-effective energy for companies such as eBay, Google and The Coca-Cola Company.

Blended Winglets, a drag-reducing feature for airplane wings, manufactured by Aviation Partners Boeing that has already saved 2 billion gallons of jet fuel and more than 21 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

For more information on these technologies, you may visit:  spinoff.nasa.gov

In line with this, NASA also launched the NASA TechnologyTransfer Portal to speed up the transfer of these technologies to industries and the general public.

China, Japan, Nuclear Power and Wind Energy

Nuclear Power Plant

Petr Kratochvil / www.publicdomainpictures.net

In September 2011, China began operating another wind farm in Wuzhong, a city in Northwest China. China made use of their vast available land by constructing a wind farm spread across 215 square miles in the area. Coupled with solar power installations, they were able to produce 400 megawatts with 300 megawatts coming from the wind turbines.

China has many good sites for onshore wind farms due to the large land mass that the country has. The newly constructed one in Wuzhong in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, a semidesert, is just one of the many suitable areas for installing wind turbines.

BASF, Renmatix and Cheap Industrial Sugars

Hopefully even wood can be a viable
source of industrial sugar
Source: Jiri Hodan / www.publicdomainpictures.net

With the participation of BASF in Renmatix through a $30 million investment, we are keeping our hopes high that somebody, Renmatix in this case, will come up with ways to produce cheap and viable biofuels from wood chips and corn stovers. The biofuels industry, particularly in the US, is in need of innovative companies that can produce ethanol from sources that will not compete against food.

Although current known processes of extracting industrial sugar from cellulosic materials have been expensive, Renmatix claims that they have made breakthroughs in reducing the cost. Now, backed up by BASF, we are hoping that this is true and that Renmatix will soon be able to commercialize their process.

Renmatix is the proprietary of the Plantrose process, a two phase method of extracting sugar from cellulosic materials using supercritical water. For more information, you may visit http://renmatix.com.

The Renewable Energy Agenda Holds Water, Politics Aside

Used Oil
Source: Peter Griffin / www.publicdomainpictures.net

The recent survey that most Americans still favor further development of alternative energy shows that the renewable energy agenda should continue. This is not to say that pushing for it must be based from the decision of the majority alone but I think it is a wise move. The public, the economy and the environment as well must not be subjected to the ill-effects brought about by using fossil fuels.