Posts Tagged: "Green Technology"

For a Greener Footprint: Innovating to Capture Carbon Dioxide

Although carbon capture technologies exist, the scale of carbon dioxide that needs to be drawn from the atmosphere to combat the effects of climate change is very discouraging. We seem to be many years, if not decades, away from any realistically deployable solution. Nevertheless, we wanted to wrap up our coverage of Earth Day 2014 at IPWatchdog, albeit a little bit late, with a look at developments in this very important technological field. To do this we profile recently published patent applications found in our search of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database, focusing on carbon capture and mitigation technologies.

Innovation Focus: Water Treatment & Desalination

We’ve noticed a great deal of inventions that involve desalination techniques to turn saline water containing a lot of salts into fresh, drinkable water. Desalination is capable of reducing salinity in water from 35,000 ppm, the typical salinity of ocean water, to 1,000 ppm, and many of these innovations are designed to help people apply desalination techniques on a wider scale at lower costs. We’ve also noticed some developments that might help communities derive water from sources other than rivers and streams, such as the atmosphere. As I conducted my research I was struck by how many of these inventions for creating clean water involved other recycling or sustainable technologies, addressing many environmental concerns through one novel system or apparatus.

University Research Leads to Biofuel Breakthrough

Exciting new innovations being patented and licensed by American universities may provide some effective answers to issues that have been vexing biofuel developers for years. Wilkerson described the breakthrough in Science, explaining that poplars can be specifically designed for deconstruction. “Poplars are dense, easy to store, and the flourish on marginal lands not suitable for food crops, making them a non-competing and sustainable source of biofuel,” said Wilkerson. According to Jennifer Gottwald, a licensing manager with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), the basic technology applied here to poplar trees could used in a variety of other plant life, even grasses.

Earth Day 2014: A Salute to Recycling Innovations

Today is Earth Day 2014, and with that in mind we will be taking some time today and throughout the week to take some time to look at the progress of sustainable, environmentally friendly technologies… We’ve searched the recently published patent applications and issued patents coming out of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to find the most unique innovations in the realm of recycling technologies. We’ve found an assortment regarding novel systems for improving retrieval of recyclable material, as well as new systems of recycling existing waste products… We also found some recently issued patents related to recycling technologies including a couple of original systems for recyclable collection, including one method of shredding mixed waste to remove glass, metal and other recyclables, as well as new methods of recycling disposable materials, such as artificial bait.

Qualcomm Seeks Patent on Managing Carbon Emission Credits

Fuel efficiency and carbon reduction from vehicle use are the main thrust of our featured patent application today. This patent application describes a system by which a fuel transaction can be uploaded to a carbon credit management system for applying rewards to vehicle owners. Electronic device owners who are walking around in urban centers may find better mapping applications because of two other recently published Qualcomm applications. Our look at Qualcomm’s recently issued patents has turned up a wide assortment of novel digital services for mobile device owners. Discounts for mobile TV broadcasts, emergency medical service alerts and methods of socially connecting users with related interests within a local area have been protected by a few patents issued to Qualcomm. We also noticed a useful patent for conserving battery using in computing devices by detecting a user’s eye gaze and providing bright light to only those sections of the screen being viewed.