6 Engineering Quotes From World's Renowned People

We know engineering is important and lets see how the world's top leaders described the important of it. Below quotes are from Eco Founder:

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Charging Mobile Phones With Sound

Dr. Joe Briscoe and Dr. Steve Dunn from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) are partnering with Microsoft to develop an energy-harvesting prototype (a nanogenerator) that could be used to charge a mobile phone using everyday background noise – such as traffic, music, and our own voices.

Zinc oxide possesses the property of generating voltage when it is been squashed or stretched. QMUL's researchers used it to form nanorods which respond to everyday sound, such as our voices, to produce electrical energy. The rods can be coated onto various surfaces in different locations making the energy harvesting quite versatile.

Using spray-on technique a thin layer of zinc oxide was formed on a plastic sheet. Mixed with other chemicals and heated to just 90°C, zinc oxide nanorods grew all over the surface of the sheet. Then cheap and cheerful aluminum foil, instead of expensive gold, was used as the electrical contacts. About the size of Nokia Lumia 925 the device was able to generate 5V, which is enough to charge a phone.

Dr Joe Briscoe commented: "Being able to keep mobile devices working for longer, or do away with batteries completely by tapping into the stray energy that is all around us is an exciting concept. This collaboration was an excellent opportunity to develop alternative device designs using cheap and scalable methods. We hope that we have brought this technology closer to viability."

Developing Better Anode For Li-Ion Battery From Old Tires

Li-ion batteries provide power to plug-in electric-vehicles and tires roll the vehicles around the town, and they seem to be 2 unrelated vehicle parts. Wait! Researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), U.S.A., have developed a new technology to recycle old tires into the material for the anode contact of li-ion batteries. The new process can be seen below.

Graphite is commonly used to produce the anode of li-ion battery. Now, ORNL's team uses a proprietary pretreatment to recover pyrolytic carbon black material from old tires, which is similar to graphite but man-made. When used in anodes of lithium-ion batteries, researchers found a reversible capacity that is higher than what is possible with commercial graphite materials. After 100 cycles of charging and discharging the new battery still measured nearly 390 milliamp hours per gram of carbon anode, which exceeds the best properties of commercial graphite.

ORNL plans to work with U.S. industry to license this technology and produce lithium-ion cells for automobile, stationary storage, medical and military applications.

Kyocera Solar Modules Ranked "Performance Leader"

GTM Research has ranked Kyocera as the "Performance Leader" among 15 solar PV manufacturers in all 6 categories, including Temperature Cycling, Dynamic Mechanical Load, Humidity Freeze, Damp Heat, and two Potential Induced Degradation Tests. The tests were carried out by independent testing body PV Evolution Labs.

“With the exception of one manufacturer, Kyocera, no company consistently ranked within the Performance Leaders group for all test regimens,” GTM Research noted. “Results showed that most producers that performed well in one test did not necessarily perform well in all tests.”

PV Evolution Labs’ stringent test protocols exceeded the current industry standards to emulate various real-world climatic conditions over lifetime periods while observing power degradation performance of the solar modules being evaluated.

“Kyocera has proven time and again, both in independent testing and by solar modules performing uninterruptedly in the field for decades, that our modules are able to consistently produce clean, renewable energy even in the harshest conditions,” said Steve Hill, president of Kyocera Solar Inc.

Source: http://pv.energytrend.com/news/20140826-7309.html