A collection of interesting things I've seen in passing. These are my personal thoughts about what I think is cool.
Jatropha curcas: A tropical flowering plant used to produce high-quality biodiesel
Some math based on my soruces says that that Jatropha can produce on average of 300L of oil annually. To use in unmodified regular diesel engines, jatropha oil is recommended to be mixed with petroleum diesel. So it is a diesel supplement - so that it may be stretched thinner - not an alternative. Still, every little bit of conservation helps.
However, I think the overhyping of jatropha in the past caused its downfall. It was planted heavily in the third world with little return on investment.
Jatropha wikipedia | Jatropha yields | Jatropha failures | Biodiesel blends wikipedia
Warp: Parallel threads which are tensioned while a weft is weaved through them to produce fabric
Sewing is cool. I think it'd be very enjoyable to go from sheep to shirt.
Landfills: Humanity generates complicated waste. It's cool how this is handled
Most of what we throw away isn't bad. Energy is usually recovered from landfills, but I wish we could recover some raw materials. Maybe scavengers could do this? The only issue is that trash is EXTREMELY compacted every step of the way. Scavenging would need to happen in the incredibly limited time between dumping and compaction. To be honest, I think I just have pipe dreams to see robot spiders be useful.