Innovation Pipeline

There’s a steep energy price to pay at most desalination plants. And the cost can make or break their feasibility, especially if located in a remote area with limited infrastructure.
Now researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Freiburg , Germany, have developed a small-scale solar-powered desalination system for areas of the developing [...]

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One wonders if all the investors, farmers, corporations and entrepreneurs lining up behind biofuels will win big or get crushed like a soybean.
There’s no shortage of data to argue both sides. But fundamentally the answer depends on the price of biofuels relative to gasoline.
Price fluctuations for ethanol are a major risk and they continue to [...]

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Purdue University researchers are looking to biology to do some heavy cleaning of a toxic waste site. In a collaborative project with Chrysler, researchers at the Indiana campus are planting transgenic poplar trees at a 40-year-old oil-storage facility this coming summer.
It’s not a beautification effort. The trees are capable of absorbing trichloroethylene, or TCE, a [...]

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