Print
Email
Print Edition Stories
MHT's Galen Moore: N.E. firms target individual carbon footprints
New England prepared to leverage smart grid expertise
Following the Clean Energy Council Fellows
MIT unveiled research this weekend in advance of its annual Energy Conference that outlined a new discovery in generating electricity directly from carbon nanotubes.
Researcher Michael Strano told press gathered at the MIT Energy Initiative about how he and his research team discovered that they can generate intense bursts of electricity by burning fuel on the outside of a carbon nanotube. While he admitted that the discovery was so new he hadn’t worked out the math or physics behind the reaction, Strano did say he had demonstrated that it could potentially generate more electricity than other recent advances such as micro-fuel cells or advanced lithium-ion batteries.
While commercial applications would still be years away from a discovery that happened just last year, Strano did speculate that a power source could be made for something like a remote sensor or communication system that could stay dormant for years and, when triggered, could send out a powerful signal driven by the electricity generated from the nanotube systems.
Strano is the Charles and Hilda Roddey associate professor of chemical engineering at MIT.
Also among the speakers at Friday’s event was Paula Hammond, who talked about her research in nanoscale deposition of material, and two possible uses for it — making much more powerful batteries, or much more efficient membranes used in certain types of fuel cells. Hammond is the Bayer Chair professor of chemical engineering at MIT.
Strano and Hammond were both noted for their advanced research in a Mass high Tech article in August of 2008.
Comments
If you are commenting using a Facebook account, your profile information may be displayed with your comment depending on your privacy settings. By leaving the 'Post to Facebook' box selected, your comment will be published to your Facebook profile in addition to the space below.
RSS Feeds
