The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) is getting ready to host its fall Illinois Biochar Group meeting. Meetings are held three times a year and are usually located at ISTC. The Illinois Biochar Group encourages research in the production and use of biochar including the project topics: soil amendments, site remediation, carbon sequestration, and supercapacitors.
Category: Alternative Fuels
Sustainability Seminar Series: February 2013
ISTC will host two more seminars this month.
Engineer Explains the Promise of the Other Hydrogen Fuel
Junhua Jiang, Senior Research Engineer at ISTC is featured in two Lightning Talk presentations from 2011 now available on the Prairie Research Institute’s YouTube channel. In one talk, Jiang deals with his work on improving electrochemical nanostructured microelectrodes for sensing nitrogen. He describes his work increasing nitrogen sensor sensitivity and using biochar nanostructures in the […]
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Middle Schoolers Celebrate Clean Power on Earth Day
On Earth Day, April 22, Jefferson Middle School hosted a ribbon cutting to celebrate the completion of their 3.5 kW h wind turbine project. The clean energy project was funded by the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation, ISTC, and high efficiency light bulb sales by the school’s Green Team. The little turbine spun energetically during […]
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New book cautions against the use of invasive biomass crops
Across the globe, efforts are being made to find sustainable, renewable, and economically-viable sources of energy. Here in the U.S., Congress passed a mandate in 2007 (the Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS) that requires refiners to blend an increasing quantity of biomass-derived ethanol into gasoline. The RFS stipulated that corn-based ethanol would be capped at […]
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Bioenergy Investments Bode Well for Green Economic Growth
There is increasing interest in biofuels not only to lessen dependency on foreign oil but also to promote sustainable fuels and the growth of a greener economy. ISTC’s researchers currently are exploring greener alternatives for fuels used in the automotive and aviation fields. Progress is being made by them and others in using waste […]
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Sharma Named Fellow of National Engineering Society
ISTC NEWS B.K. Sharma, senior research engineer at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center, has been elected a fellow of the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE). Fellows are selected based on their significant impact on the field. Fellows represent outstanding authorities from industry, academia, and government agencies. Six new fellows were named […]
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Illinois Governor’s Sustainability Award, Illinois R&D Demonstrate Growing Commitment to Sustainable World
On Friday Nov. 4, the Paris Agreement on climate change became official. The U.S., China, and 53 other nations have ratified the treaty representing half of the world’s carbon emissions. “The politically difficult step was Paris,” said Robert Stavins, an environmental economist at Harvard University was quoted today in The Wall Street Journal. […]
Sustainability: A Force for Good in our Galaxy
WRITTEN BY: Katherine Gardiner ISTC staff You may have heard that a new Star Wars movie came out last week. If you haven’t had a chance to see it yet, don’t worry, we won’t spoil it for you. But it got us thinking about sustainability in the Star Wars universe. Yes, it was a […]
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Science & Technology at the Market
This fall the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) at the University of Illinois will be presenting information about several of its research and outreach projects at Urbana’s Market at the Square. Topics include:• September 22 – Waste Biomass Projects: Turning waste into energy. Come learn how ISTC researchers, Dr. Junhua Jiang (Senior Research Engineer), uses […]