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A new thermoelectric power generator from Johnson Space Center consists of an oven box and a solar cooker/solar reflector unit. The solar reflector concentrates sunlight into heat and transfers the heat into the oven box via a heat pipe.
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NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has proposed a scheme for generating electric power from rivers and from ocean currents, tides, and waves that not entail the high maintenance costs of other schemes that call for submerged electric generators and cables.
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A fine-water-mist fire-suppression device developed at John H. Glenn Research Center can be discharged uniformly in any orientation via a high-pressure gas propellant. Research in recent years has shown that fine water mist can be an effective alternative to ozone-destructive Halons.
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NASA Glenn Research Center has designed, built, and tested an innovative fuel-cell water separator that not only removes liquid water from a fuel cell’s exhaust ports, but does so with no moving parts or other power-consuming components. The separator employs the potential and kinetic energies already present in the moving exhaust flow.
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NASA Glenn Research Center has developed a hybrid electric utility vehicle that is powered by hydrogen-burning PEM fuel cells operating with a metal hydride hydrogen-storage unit. This vehicle utilizes ultracapacitors - rather than batteries - for storing electric energy.
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NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has introduced another method for detecting airborne elemental mercury. When films made of certain polymer/carbon composites are exposed to air containing mercury vapor, their electrical resistances decrease by measurable amounts. The films can be operated and regenerated at mild temperatures.
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SiGe is an important semiconductor alloy for high-speed field effect transistors (FETs), high-temperature thermoelectric devices, photovoltaic solar cells, and photon detectors. The growth of SiGe layer is difficult because SiGe alloys have different lattice constants from those of the common Si wafers, which leads to a high density of defects, including dislocations, micro-twins, cracks, and delaminations.
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