Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Greener travel

Two posts here from Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends worth mentioning:

1) Toward greener jet fuels:

Researchers at Princeton University are currently working on two projects to reduce jet travel's role in global warming. The first one, a major project funded by the U.S. Air Force with $7.5 million, is focused on developing computational models that accurately simulate the burning of jet fuel, a complex process not well understood today. The second one, funded by NetJets, a company providing business jets, will help to develop new jet fuels with near-zero net greenhouse gas emissions.


2) The world's biodiesel potential:

Two researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-M) have ranked 226 countries according to their potential to make large volumes of biodiesel at low cost. Their evaluation of the world's potential to produce biodiesel shows that Malaysia, Thailand, Colombia, Uruguay and Ghana are the developing nations most likely to attract biodiesel investment for several reasons including agricultural and political factors. The researchers have estimated that 'a grand total of 51 billion liters of biodiesel could be produced annually -- enough to meet roughly 4-5 percent of the world's existing demand for petroleum diesel.'


-

No comments: