Posted by jumperhead on August 21st, 2008
It seems that the US Department of Energy (DoE) can’t get enough of giving away cash to clean tech projects. Stories about the largesse of the DoE seem to crop up with all the regularity of editorials about Princess Diana/binge drinking/house price crashes in the Daily Mail, rubbish BBC sitcoms or chewing gum on Greenbang’s bus seat.
So naturally Greenbang was very excited to see someone actually reporting on what they’ve done with all that cash. And that someone was Umit Ozkan, professor at Ohio State University, who’s conjured up a new catalyst that can help make ethanol into hydrogen faster and more cheaply than its alternatives.
The catalyst, which the University refers to, rather spookily, as ‘dark grey powder’ is made from cerium oxide - a bog standard material you get in ceramics - instead of the precious metals that are normally used in this sort of thing.
The cost: precious metal catalyst - $9,000 an ounce. Grey powder catalyst - $9 a kilo.
And just because it’s cheap doesn’t mean it’s lower quality, oh no - it can get hydrogen out of ethanol with 90 percent efficiency.
The end result? According to Ozkan, it’s a big old boost for the hydrogen cars out there.
She reckons:
“There are many practical issues that need to be resolved before we can use hydrogen as fuel — how to make it, how to transport it, how to create the infrastructure for people to fill their cars with it.
Our research lends itself to what’s called a ‘distributed production’ strategy. Instead of making hydrogen from biofuel at a centralized facility and transporting it to gas stations, we could use our catalyst inside reactors that are actually located at the gas stations. So we wouldn’t have to transport or store the hydrogen — we could store the biofuel, and make hydrogen on the spot.”
Posted by RobAshwell on August 21st, 2008
A couple of years ago Greenbang headed north on the M6 to visit the Lake District and saw countless pictures of Donald Campbell and his world record breaking boat, Bluebird.
Now, two Brits are going for a wind power land-speed record and have named the vehicle in Campbell’s honour - albeit reflecting the environmental credentials - Greenbird.
Showing that eco doesn’t mean slow, the record currently stands at 116mph. In fact, it can travel at speeds between four and six times the actual wind speed - don’t you just love physics.
Entrepreur Dale Vince and engineer Richard Jenkins are behind the project. Vince told the Beeb:
“Campbell did it with the prevalent fuel of the day - we’re doing it with the prevalent fuel of tomorrow… The wind will still be here in 50 or 100 years time - the age of renewables has been a long time coming but will endure.”
Albeit, it didn’t sound as cheesy when he actually said it on BBC News 24.
The team from Gloucester is already in Australia to test the vehicle and has told the BBC he is “eight out of 10 confident” of breaking the record. The team will have to wait for the weather to behave and the ground to dry up.
Writing on the Greenbird blog, Jenkins stated:
“The remaining water on the lake surface is causing quite serious concern. Although probably only 30 per cent of the lake surface is covered, it blows around depending on the wind direction. Last night we received the first signs of wind approaching with a cold shift and a southerly wind at about 15 mph, gusting 20.”
The team also plans to make a challenge on the Ice World Speed Record, again using wind power alone.
For those fancying plotting a course home, tacking up wind along the M4, the team behind Greenbird is working on a domestic wind-powered vehicle. Vince said:
“We’re going to have our prototype on the road in December.”
Posted by jumperhead on August 18th, 2008
Greenbang has just seen possibly the most efficient thing ever - not Mary Poppins tidying up the bedrooms of parentless kids using magic, but the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory or NREL, if you will, has busted the record for photovoltaic solar cell efficiency wide open, topping out at 40.8 per cent.
Greenbang didn’t realise that 41 per cent efficiency was such a cause for celebration. As soon as her boss disables Facebook at work, she aims to get her own efficiency rate up to the mid-30s. Maybe even higher once she’s had a cup of tea and a Hob Nob.
For the NREL though, the 41 per cent efficiency rate means how much of the light that falls on a cell can be converted into electricity.
The clever types over at the NREL reckon the cell they invented could be used in space satellites or terrestrial concentrated solar arrays.
More on how it all works from the horse’s mouth:
The new solar cell differs significantly from the previous record holder – also based on a NREL design. Instead of using a germanium wafer as the bottom junction of the device, the new design uses compositions of gallium indium phosphide and gallium indium arsenide to split the solar spectrum into three equal parts that are absorbed by each of the cell’s three junctions for higher potential efficiencies. This is accomplished by growing the solar cell on a gallium arsenide wafer, flipping it over, then removing the wafer. The resulting device is extremely thin and light and represents a new class of solar cells with advantages in performance, design, operation and cost.
NREL’s Mark Wanlass invented the original inverted cell, which recently won a R&D 100 award. His design was modified by a team led by John Geisz that further optimized the junction energies by making the middle junction metamorphic as well as the bottom junction. Metamorphic junctions are lattice mismatched – their atoms don’t line up. The material properties of the mismatched semiconductors allows for greater potential conversion of sunlight.
Posted by RobAshwell on August 18th, 2008
Over the past months there have been more ‘largest solar plant to be built in X’ stories than you can shake a - well - solar panel at.
But, work being done in the Massachusetts based Worcester Polytechnic Institute may have unearthed a system to create solar space from nowhere. Use the road space - or ‘blacktop’ as it’s more commonly known.
In a superb piece of lateral thinking the researchers decided that roads get hot in the sun. They then discovered that the bit that gets hottest is two centimetres below the surface. Next, they decided that it would be better if it were hotter still, so they painted an anti-reflective coating to their test blocks and mixed quartzite to the mix.
The result is a mix that can be poured over copper water pipes. This then stays hot for a couple of hours after the sun goes down too, and can be used to generate power.
The copper pipe bit might change and the research team are looking into highly efficient heat exchangers - but currently don’t know what this will be.
The research is being done at the request of Michael Hulen, president of Novotech, which holds a patent on the concept of using the heat absorbed by pavements.
In the Worcester Polytechnic Institute press release he says:
“Asphalt has a lot of advantages as a solar collector. For one, blacktop stays hot and could continue to generate energy after the sun goes down, unlike traditional solar-electric cells. In addition, there is already a massive acreage of installed roads and parking lots that could be retrofitted for energy generation, so there is no need to find additional land for solar farms. Roads and lots are typically resurfaced every 10 to 12 years and the retrofit could be built into that cycle. Extracting heat from asphalt could cool it, reducing the urban ‘heat island’ effect. Finally, unlike roof-top solar arrays, which some find unattractive, the solar collectors in roads and parking lots would be invisible.”
According to EcoGeek:
There are already a examples of similar technology in use around the world, but modifying the chemistry of the asphalt specifically to make it a good solar collector is a new move.
Posted by RobAshwell on August 18th, 2008
There are times when I desperately wish I could remember a little more about my A-level chemistry. I can still, to this day, recall the first three lines of the periodic table and some of the properties but the main group of metals elude me. For example, what the hell is manganese?
Because, apparently, it has led to a breakthrough in hydrogen production making it cheaper and easier to produce commercially. And the breakthrough has come from plagiarism from nature - the best kind.
Researchers from Monash University, in Melbourne, have used plant based chemicals to a key photosynthesis process.
According to the lead scientist, Leone Spiccia, the group copied nature, taking the elements and mechanisms found in plant life. The breakthrough came when the group coated an anode with a chemical called Nafion. This formed a thin membrane, which acted as a host for the manganese clusters.
In the press release, Dr Spiccia says:
“A manganese cluster is central to a plant’s ability to use water, carbon dioxide and sunlight to make carbohydrates and oxygen. Man-made mimics of this cluster were developed by Dismukes some time ago, and we’ve taken it a step further, harnessing the ability of these molecules to convert water into its component elements, oxygen and hydrogen,”
“Normally insoluble in water, when we bound the catalyst within the pores of the Nafion membrane, it was stabilised against decomposition and, importantly, water could reach the catalyst where it was oxidised on exposure to light.”
So that will be solar power hydrogen, with the three billion years of evolutionary improvement behind it then.
Posted by RobAshwell on August 15th, 2008
The US Department of Energy (DoE) has just announced a pot of money for hydrogen car development.
According to the release there will be, “10 cost-shared hydrogen storage research and development projects, which will receive up to $15.3m over five years (see below), subject to annual appropriations.” Which isn’t bad.
These projects are part of Hydrogen Fuel Initiative that committed $1.2bn on research and development (R&D) for hydrogen-powered fuel cells and aims to faze out dependence on foreign energy sources.
Speaking at the Washington DC stop of the 13-day Hydrogen Road Tour, Under Secretary Albright has stated:
“With continued investment, hydrogen holds the potential to help fundamentally change the way we power our vehicles and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
The selected projects seek to develop hydrogen storage technologies and remove the distance problem of fuel cells. The projects include development of novel hydrogen storage materials, efficient methods for regeneration of hydrogen storage materials, and approaches to increase hydrogen binding energies for room temperature storage.
More from the release:
DoE’s hydrogen storage activities for vehicles focus primarily on enabling a driving range of greater than 300 miles, within packaging and cost constraints.
DoE will negotiate the terms of 10 cost-shared projects currently planned for a total of approximately $18m, with up to $15.3m total government share, subject to annual appropriations, and $3m applicant cost share. The organisations selected for negotiation of awards are:
Los Alamos National Laboratory - Up to $2.3m for novel concept using an electric field to increase the hydrogen binding energy in hydrogen adsorbents.
Northwestern University - Up to $2.2m to design novel multi-component metal hydride-based mixtures for hydrogen storage.
Northwestern University - Up to $1.3m for novel hydrogen adsorbent materials with increased hydrogen binding energy through metal doping.
Ohio State University - Up to $1.1m for development of high capacity, reversible hydrogen storage materials using boron-based metal hydrides.
Pennsylvania State University - Up to $1.5m for development of novel nanoporous materials for use as hydrogen adsorbents.
U.S. Borax Inc - Up to $600,000 for development of a high-efficiency process for the regeneration of spent chemical hydrogen carriers.
University of Missouri - Up to $1.9m for development of boron-substituted, high-surface area carbon materials made from corncobs for use as hydrogen adsorbents.
University of Oregon - Up to $640,000 for novel boron and nitrogen substituted cyclic compounds for use as liquid hydrogen carriers.
University of California at Los Angeles - Up to $1.7m for novel hydrogen adsorbent materials based on light metal impregnation for increasing hydrogen binding energies.
Sandia National Laboratories - Up to $2m for development of materials with tunable thermodynamics through the stabilisation of nanosized particles.
Posted by jumperhead on August 11th, 2008
The only headlines the Dutch town of Twente has made recently have been around employing former England football manager and ‘wally with a brolly’, Steve MacLaren and the team’s upcoming European Champions League match against Arsenal.
But while Twente’s citizens gear up to give the Gunners a pasting, its scientists have been spending their time away from the football and in the lab. The end result? Paving stones that soak up and purify airborne nasties.
The University of Twente, alongside the municipality of Hengelo, has come up with said stones, capable of sucking in the nitrogen oxides which exit the common or garden car, and turn them into “harmless nitrates”.
Here’s how it all works, courtesy of the Dutch boffins:
The top layer of the paving stones is made of air-purifying concrete. This concrete contains titanium dioxide, a photocatalytic material which uses sunlight to convert the nitrogen oxides in the air into harmless nitrates. The rain then washes the streets clean.
Based on a Japanese invention, the stones were further developed and their effectiveness demonstrated by the UT in its concrete research laboratory. The next step now is to test the stones in practice. The municipality of Hengelo has made the Castorweg location available for this purpose. The street will be divided into two sections, one half will be paved with conventional stones and the other half with air-purifying ones. The air quality will then be measured in each section to test the effectiveness of the stones. As an added bonus, the stones repel dirt and therefore always stay clean.
How cool is that? Cleaner air and no chewing gum or dog poo.
The stones will feature in the Hengelo road from the end of this year, with the scientists measuring their effects from early next year. Summer 2009 will see the first results from the test. Watch this space.
Posted by jumperhead on August 8th, 2008
The Technology Strategy Board and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council aren’t names imbued with rockstar status - unless you like rockstars with a working knowledge of microprocessor innards and the periodic table - but with the money they’re bandying around today, they might as well be asking their underlings for a pound of Smarties with all the blue ones taken out. Which is a shame, as they’re one of the superior flavours.
Yes, this week the Technology Strategy Board and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (shall we call them the TSB and the EPSRC for short? Greenbang won’t tell if you won’t) are going to spend £10m each on 16 research projects looking into materials technologies that can tackle energy issues.
According to the egg-headed twosome the projects are looking into:
- Energy efficient bio-based natural fibre insulation
- New materials and methods for energy efficient tidal turbines
- A new manufacturing process to produce a novel cellular vacuum insulation panel for retrofit into buildings, to reduce heat loss and energy
- Sustainable power cable materials technologies with improved whole life performance
Here’s a sample of a couple of projects that got the nod:
Title: High rate, high energy batteries utilising structured electrode materials
Summary: The project aims to scale up structured cathode processes that will produce high rate, high energy batteries for use in hybrid diesel/gas/bio fuel powered electrical generation equipment.
Partners: QinetiQ Ltd (lead), ABSL Power Solutions Limited, The Boeing Company.
Title: Polymer Photovoltaic Architectural Glass
Summary: The objective is the development of low cost, translucent photovoltaic architectural glass based on conjugated organic polymers (OPV) for applications in building windows and curtain walling.
Partners: Polysolar Limited (lead), Linde Electronics, Imperial College, Sagentia Ltd, Pilkington Technology Management Limited.
If you’re a bit of a completist, you can get the whole list from this PDF, here.
Posted by RobAshwell on August 8th, 2008
As well as Olympic fever, August means two things for residents of Bristol. The balloon fiesta, happening now, and the kite festival, at the end of the month. The latter is particularly important - well, in these days of health and safety, where else can you jump on a skateboard, get dragged along at 20mph and take out a small child.
The Dutch, it seems, are also keen on kites. Researchers at Delft University of Technology have successfully completed tests which suggest that kite power may become another lucrative alternative energy tool.
The experiment harnessed wind energy by flying a 10 square metre kite tethered to an electric generator. It produced enough electricity to power 10 homes - around 10kW.
Having thrown myself out of planes and been up mountains there is one thing that has always held true - wind speeds are a damn site quicker when you go higher. In fact, at an altitude of 1,000 metres, it’s estimated that wind carries hundreds of times more energy compared to ground level.
According to Celcias:
“Researchers also plan to test a 50kW version of their invention. Eventually, they hope to build a multiple kite installation which has the potential to generate 100 megawatts, enough energy to power a small city. An Italian company, Kitegen, has gone one step further and designed a theoretical system, consisting of 48 kites, which could potentially generate a gigawatt of power.”
Posted by RobAshwell on August 7th, 2008
You’ve got to love infrared cameras. When used in nature programmes they deliver stunning effects. The Blair Witch-esque images are captivating.
So, if a camera can pick up infrared and UV, then why can’t a solar cell? Instead, they solely absorb light from from the visible spectrum, ignoring ultraviolet and infrared rays. It doesn’t take Einstein to point out that the energy picked up, therefore, is sorely limited.
A new material may change this however. Spanish researchers have used titanium and vanadium to utilise the infrared band and get more from, as Poirot puts it, “the little grey cells.”
As EcoGeek puts it:
“The new material provides a “stepping-stone” for electrons to move from one energy level to another as they absorb photons, allowing more photons of different energy levels (and thus different parts of the light spectrum) to be utilized. So while some efficiency research goes into breaking down what is absorbed into specific wavelengths or trapping light for greater absorption, this technology basically casts a really wide net in order to increase how much light can be captured and turned into energy.”
The new material hasn’t yet been tested, but the researchers have stated a maximum efficiency of 63 per cent. Traditional solar cells have a maximum of 40pc with a realistic 30 per cent conversion rate. So, hopefully, this should be a lot better.
