Aug 20 2008
ANG and CNG Natural Gas Vehicles
I find that as gasoline prices drop, I tend to loose interest in researching alternatives. Well today I went looking again. I have found some fairly good sites about absorbed natural gas that was put out by Midwest Research Group. Here are a few links to some of the stuff that has been published on the subject of ANG.
- ALL-CRAFT Storage Technologies for Methane Extracted from Landfills
- Corncobs Store Gas for Natural Gas Vehicles
- Adsorbed Natural Gas Tank ‘Holds Promise’ for Future
Now this is not all the suff that I have read on the subject. But this is a good starting point for anyone that wants to learn more. I am going to try to make one of these tanks myself, I just need the patent that they have appied for. That should give me enough info to try to make one. I have the container, I have the corn stalk, and I have intellegence to do it. I have natural gas at my home at only 1.5 psi, but I can compress it up to 500 psi. I will keep you all informed on my progress.
Tonight I had a bug to go and find out some more information on the pocket projectors that are just about to hit the market. I find this to be significant for many reasons. I have been following the development of OLED displays for the last couple of years and am excited to see them come to the market. However the pocket projectors may render OLEDs dead before they ever live in the open market. Why, because if a person can get a 15″ - 100″ screen from a device like a cell phone or laptop in high quality, who cares about roll up screens any more. Oled will suffer some of the same problems that LED screens suffered from like lifetime and brightness. However the laser or led driven pocket projectors will generate very little heat, can project on any surface and should not suffer from the lifetime limits of oled. The light will still have to be created. Some companies are using lasers, some ore using diodes (LED). I like the diodes because they run cooler and use less energy (battery). As of current, the projectors need a wall or surface to project on. However I see the release of projectors that ‘project’ a reference beam that acts as a ’screen’ for the light to interact with and cause a virtual screen to be seen by the viewer. Eventually that technology could be used to create a screen that had a 3d surface, so when the color was bounced off of it, it would appear to create a 3d object. This technology sure does move us closer to the type of stuff they currently have only in sci-fi movies. I am more excited now than ever about the display field. Some of the pocket projectors are slated to be released to the public this year.
As another side note, the projectors do not need to be focused. This is because of the refraction that happens at the creation of the image. The light never passes through a lens. It is refracted to the correct position in the image and shoots strait out, much like the real light bouncing off of real objects that we see every day. The refraction is accomplished using tiny mirrors built into the control chip of the projector. It is truly a very cool and innovative display technology. All that a company needs to add a display to a device is to buy the chip from Light Blue Optics, create a light source to point at the chip, and away they go. No lenses needed, no fans to keep it cool. This means that we could be seeing the R2D2 projection system in the NEAR future. One phone company is already making it into their next phone (Light Blue Optics would not disclose which company).