This week we have synthetic petrol, environmental mobile apps, supercomputers and gigantic solar powered trees!
Petrol out of thin air!
This week the Independent reported a UK company that can apparently produce gasoline using nothing but carbon dioxide and water from the air. It sounds incredible, but the problem is the process requires electricity. The process won’t be truly renewable until it can be powered using solar, wind or tidal energy. New Scientist discuss the future of this ‘clean fuel’ over on their website.
Join the Discussion on New Scientist
GreenSpace
GrrenSpace is a free, yet high quality, social game that can be played on your Apple/Android device or Facebook. It allows kids (and big kids) to learn about recycling and renewable technology as they clean up a futuristic planet that is covered in junk.
Green Taxis in Manchester?
In some local news, a Manchester entrepreneur is launching an app named TaxiTastic. It helps users find the nearest taxi firm and best of all, uses satellite technology to alert you if the driver is taking a longer than necessary route! The app is really aimed at saving money, but we imagine it will also help users save fuel and carbon too.
Read the original news article
Climate change destroying supercomputer
A new super computer has been turned on at the (take a deep breath) National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Wyoming Supercomputing Center. It can run a rather impressive 1.5 quadrillion calculations per second, and is being used for “studying everything from hurricanes and tornadoes to geomagnetic storms, tsunamis, wildfires, air pollution and the location of water beneath the earth’s surface.”
Read the full article on Treehugger
And finally…
Some quite frankly ridiculous, huge, solar-powered, artificial trees in South Korea. Of course.
More pictures on Interesting Engineering