Zero-combustion Energy-resource Research Community: Join Us
Building the Green Economy, Renewable Resources, Zero-combustion paradigm ::
24 November 2008 :: by J.E. Robertson
The Hot Spring is forming an ongoing research community project to develop zero-combustion energy sourcing technologies. The first phase of the project entails filling in the conceptual space of the zero-combustion paradigm for energy generation. Next, we propose thinking toward the “jump generation” technologies, which emerge from advances still not in practical application, but which will enable us to vastly expand the energy-productivity of our resource base.
The key will be to rethink how energy can be extracted from the environment, without needing direct turbine-turning manifestations of kinetic energy or fuel that can be burned or broken down in order to produce that kinetic energy. This will be done by way of a series of improbable, but necessary advances, namely:
- Direct energy-to-energy extraction and delivery;
- 100% clean powering of circuitry and locomotion;
- Exploitation of surfaces as energy repeaters and multipliers;
- Self-powering vehicles, feeding from their own kinetic energy;
- Expressed energy re-generated by radically advanced processing mechanisms;
- Cross-platform technological engineering;
- Quantum mechanics as access point for future energy harvesting designs;
- Supplemental mechanisms that allow effective storage of clean energy…
The efficiency of self-powering or live-fuel vehicles could be enhanced by a new generation of ultra-lightweight “batteries” whose role is more to transpose energy than to contain and preserve it. They may be radically different from anything now conceived of as batteries, and their role in powering the vehicle will be both more complex and more subtle than the vision of fuel-cells running on hydrogen.
If we keep in mind that combustion is just one of the countless ways to produce or “encounter” energy, we can begin to move away from the much-too-literalist burn-to-energize conceptualization of automotive power. Light, magnetism, momentum, vibration, impact and chemical phase transition are all energy-releasing or “energy-revealing” processes, which can be used to build the next new energy option, beyond the heat and combustion paradigm.
More revolutionary ideas, with a wide array of technical specifics, will become part of our research base for this project. Please join our community and contribute your ideas, or just find a way to work our research into your informational work, whether in academics, public policy, media or business.