Solar thermal devices use direct heat from the sun, concentrating it in some manner to produce heat at useful temperatures.

A Phoenix inventor said he has developed a new way to economically take salt out of water, and it depends on a readily available resource - hot water. Deluge and the Phoenix Department of the Interior have signed an agreement to test the new technology, called a Thermal Hydraulic Engine, at Interior's water research facility in Yuma. The engine, which is designed for use with geothermal or solar thermal, will be tested as a new high pressure pump for desalting ocean water. Deluge expects to use salt water from the Mexican Gulf of the California coast only 50 miles south of Yuma, solaraccess.com reported.
Ancient mariners boiled seawater to extract drinkable water. That process, distillation, is still used today. Newer technologies include reverse osmosis (RO), but both RO and distillation require lots of power--and that makes them expensive.
"We're excited about the potential of this project; desalting is a critical piece of the water supply picture. If the testing is successful, we'd expect to see significant applications for the thermal engine," said Mike Norris, Director of the Water Quality Improvement Center.
Brian Hageman, Deluge president and the inventor of the Thermal Hydraulic Engine, claims that the new technology can revolutionize the desalting industry.
"Pressurizing ocean water uses lots of electricity," said Hageman. "Our new engine can do the same job as an electric motor, and run on solar heat or geothermal hot water." Nearly 75 percent of the operating cost for current desalination methods is for electricity.
The engine has been proof-tested in the Wyoming oil fields under a research agreement with the Department of Energy. Deluge recently finished a 30-day test of the engine, pumping crude oil out of the ground using geothermal hot water as the engine's "fuel." As a result of this test, Prince Manufacturing Corporation, located in South Dakota, has begun design and cost analysis on a prototype for production.
Under the agreement with Interior, the engine will be concept-tested at Deluge's lab in Phoenix. Later testing will involve hooking up the specially designed pump to desalting equipment sited in the Interior test facility, the Water Quality Improvement Center, located in Yuma. Testing at the WQIC will refine the engine's design and provide information about operating costs.
"We think many companies around the world will want a license for use of the new desalting system," Hageman predicted. He says the equipment cost is much lower than any other alternative energy system, "And operating costs are very low; all the engine needs is hot water to make it work, no electricity." Deluge expects to begin licensing the technology this year.

Equatorial Guinea's crude oil production has risen from next to nothing a decade ago to 350 000 barrels per day.

Marisa knows she is living in Africa's new oil-rich Eldorado but that hasn't helped her find the cash to buy shoes for her six children.
Like many in Equatorial Guinea, a tiny central African backwater where large offshore deposits of crude have brought sudden wealth, Marisa is as poor as she was before the oil boom.
"My life hasn't changed," said the 41-year-old, who scrapes a living from selling dried fish by the side of the road on the outskirts of Malabo, the capital, Reuters reported.
"I know there's a lot of money coming from oil but it doesn't come to people like us," she said, gesturing to three of her children who were playing barefoot in the dirt.
Equatorial Guinea's crude oil production has risen from next to nothing a decade ago to 350 000 barrels per day, making it sub-Saharan Africa's third-biggest producer after Nigeria and Angola. Oil represents 90 percent of the state's income.
It is a prize that foreign oil firms have lined up to get a share of, with US company Exxon Mobil at the front of the queue--and authorities say oil was the reason behind a failed mercenary coup attempt six months ago.
The surge in oil revenues has boosted real gross domestic product (GDP) by rates many countries can only dream of - 37,5 percent in 2001, 17,6 in 2002, and almost 15 percent last year, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which predicts growth of 45,1 percent in 2005.
The government budget for 2004 puts oil revenues at 539,7 billion CFA francs (R6,5-billion). That figure is based on an average oil price of $25 per barrel, well under the record highs it has fetched this year.
The sums represent a huge bonanza for the former Spanish colony of between 500 000 and a million inhabitants, split between a mountainous jungle mainland and lush volcanic islands including Bioko, where the capital is located.
The minimum legal wage for those lucky enough to work in the oil sector is at least 2,5 times higher than for other workers.
The effects are visible on the streets of central Malabo. At a gleaming, well-stocked supermarket, middle-class shoppers fill trolleys with expensive imported foods and wines.
Traffic jams, previously unheard of, are now a daily fixture. Among the battered old cars there are more and more four-by-fours and sleek luxury sedans with dark windows.
A few new buildings, like the block covered in blue mirrors housing the national telecommunications company, contrast with Malabo's colonial arcaded houses with their peeling yellow paint.
But a short distance from the centre, across a slimy river, the slum of Ela Nguema displays no tell-tale signs of new wealth. There, people live in corrugated iron shacks, many with mud floors and no running water or electricity.
"All the social infrastructures - water, electricity, education, health - are not taken into account in a satisfactory way," said Bacar Abdouroihamane, head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Equatorial Guinea.
The biggest obstacle to development is poor training and education, with 65 percent of young people not finishing school and a lack of properly qualified teachers, Abdouroihamane said.
Equatorial Guinea has no daily newspaper, no bookshop, and just one public library at the Spanish cultural centre.
In the UNDP's ranking of countries by human development, Equatorial Guinea dropped from 94th place in 1985 to 116th place in 2001.
"The country needs brains. It needs to train people so they are capable of managing their wealth," said Abdouroihamane.
Equatorial Guinea has been ruled for a quarter of a century by the same man, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, since he deposed his despotic uncle and had him executed. Obiang and his family have kept a firm grip on power ever since.

The raw materials--water and sunlight--are free. The only waste, oxygen, is nonpolluting. And the product is hailed as the mean, green, fuel of the future. Welcome to the hydrogen economy.
Today's the Day. The premise is sound, but the obstacles are substantial. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. However, it is shamelessly promiscuous. It will hook up with almost any atom it passes. Like oxygen, in whose sweet embrace it produces water. Or carbon, in whose grubby grope it makes fossil fuels. It doesn't come in a pure form.
Currently, the cost of producing hydrogen fuel is greater than the value of the energy it delivers. Production entails either electrolysis in water or extraction of hydrogen from fossil fuels like natural gas, wirednews.com reported.
But as scientists worldwide race to find cheaper ways to produce hydrogen, last week teams from the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia announced some major advances.
"I think it is indisputable that it is a race because the people who develop the IP (intellectual property) that works will be the OPEC of the future," said professor Christopher Sorrel, a director of the Centre for Materials and Energy Conversion at the University of New South Wales.
Last week, Sorrel and colleagues promised advanced materials developed in their lab would lead to a commercial solar panel in seven years that would produce cheap hydrogen from water, a production method known as solar hydrogen.
Karen Brewer, who leads a team at Virginia Tech that last week announced another method to produce solar hydrogen, is less gung-ho.
"I don't feel it's a race, I feel that people are working hard to work together and are sharing their information very freely in terms of where they are. Certainly people are feeling the pressure to get results; everybody wants to be first," she said.
Hydrogen fuel is not a new idea. Sir William Grove invented the first hydrogen fuel cell in 1839. But interest in the technology took off in recent years to combat greenhouse gases and end oil dependence.
In the United States last year, the federal government launched a $1.2 billion Hydrogen Fuel Initiative. Major research programs also exist in Europe and Japan. But the cost of harvesting hydrogen must come down to make the fuel economically viable.
Sorrel said that's what the University of New South Wales team did, using modified titanium oxide ceramics in a solar panel. Titanium is a popular choice in solar hydrogen research because it has the right semiconducting properties and it's resistant to water. But it is not efficient enough on its own without modification.
Sorrel's group identified 10 key variables that subtly alter the properties of the titanium oxide. By manipulating these variables, the team got a significant boost in performance. But the technology is still not ready for the big time. The team now needs to produce better materials by changing the variables.
"(They're) optimistic, and missing some pieces of the puzzle, but that's par for the course with these announcements," said Stephen R. Connors, director of the Analysis Group for Regional Electricity Alternatives at MIT's Laboratory for Energy and the Environment. Connors said issues like the variability of sunlight, water purity, storage and distribution remain for all solar hydrogen projects.
Nevertheless, finding a way to use solar energy to split water is one of the most important avenues of hydrogen research.
"Sunlight is essentially an unused resource, so there's no energy cost when you use it for hydrogen production," said Virginia Tech's Brewer.
Today's the Day. Brewer's group is developing supramolecules-- molecular machines created using combined molecules--to gather electrons.
It's a good trick. Electrons normally repel each other, but Brewer's group developed a molecular machine that can gather electrons together and deliver them to a reactive metal site where they can do their work--splitting hydrogen from water.

Babool Tree

The health benefits of the babool, a thorny mimosa, are well known. Now research is on in Rajasthan to produce electricity through the plant that grows widely in the state.
"We are trying to generate electricity by burning the wood of the babool tree," an official in the Rajasthan Non-Conventional Energy Sources department told IANS.
He said if the effort proved successful, electricity generated would be much cheaper than that from conventional sources like thermal, hydro-power or gas, newkerala.com reported.
He said, according to studies conducted so far, around 12 kg of babool would be required to generate 7,500 watt of electricity.
With prices of imported and indigenous babool wood hovering at around 50 paise a kilo, the cost of generating electricity through biomass electricity plants would come to Rs.2.50 a unit while the cost of producing power in traditional electricity plants is around Rs.3-4.50 per unit.
He said the state government proposes to install a nine-kilowatt plant based on babool wood. The cost of installing this would come to around Rs.2.2 million and the union government has in principle agreed to bear the complete cost of the experimental phase of this project, he added.
"If successful, we propose to set up these plants in villages, which don't have electricity supply and have abundant unutilized agricultural matter," he added.
He said the process of selecting model villages in Ajmer, Nagaur, Bhilwara and Tonk for establishing these plants had already started.
Babool is found in abundance in Rajasthan. For centuries, it has been a popular remedy for oral disease conditions like spongy gums and loose teeth. Plants like babool, which contain tannins, are considered effective against oral bacteria as an anti-plaque agent.

Very few conferences change the world, but 1,000 people from 90 countries gathered last week in Denver with their fingers crossed. The eighth annual World Renewable Energy Conference differed from some green-minded gab fests in its emphasis on practical solutions.
These were true believers. One after another the participants could demonstrate that renewable energy is no longer pie-in-the-sky but a practical answer to many energy problems.
More could have been accomplished already if the US government had embraced efforts as extensive and consistent as in Asia and Europe.
At the end of last year, the entire United States had only 464 megawatts of wind energy capacity in place, according to the World Renewable Energy Network. (One megawatt can supply about 1,000 homes.) Compare that to Germany's capacity of 14,609 megawatts; Spain, 6,202; Denmark, 3,110; and Italy, 904. US solar energy production was about 127 megawatts last year, compared to 331 megawatts in Japan. Those other countries have smaller populations and economies than the United States, yet America's diverse climate provides opportunities for both solar (think Arizona) and wind (for example, Wyoming).
Other countries have done better by achieving a long and non-partisan focus on renewable energy. The consistent public policies help the private sector secure financing and achieve economies of scale still not seen yet in the U.S.
Since the 1970s, federal support for renewable energy has come in fits and starts, with Congress changing its mind more often than most people change their socks. For example, tax breaks for home solar energy systems, available in the 1970s, vanished by the 1980s. And nearly every budget cycle, advocates have had to fight to keep the lights on at the National Renewable Energy Labs in Golden. (NREL hosted the world conference in Denver.)
At the conference this week, the US Department of Energy said it will offer $77 million in federal grants for renewable energy research, focusing on hydrogen fuels. Audience members said privately that while the DOE's announcement was welcome, the overall Bush administration energy policy still mostly emphasizes fossil-fuels production, including oil and gas drilling. Moreover, continued funding for the research projects is uncertain, as Congress hasn't passed this year's budget.
Very often, US advocates of renewable energy encounter stiff resistance to having the government support the key components to make renewables work: research, support for start-up businesses and creation of markets. Yet the philosophical opposition doesn't stand up to historical scrutiny: Early in their development, other energy sectors also got government support. When the transcontinental railroad was built across the West in the 19th century, Uncle Sam gave the railroads every other section of land along the route. The properties were rich in coal, making the railroads among the largest US mineral producers.