2. Transportation Related
• Engine Friction can be overcome
– 18% (current) to 61% (20 y) fuel efficiency gains
• Lead Battery Capacitor Hybrid
– 4 to 10% energy boost
• New vehicles sells up 6.7%
– To 77.7 million
• High speed train made of plastic
• More efficient ships blow bubbles
7. Nuclear News
• China cleared to buy 4th largest uranium deposit
• Small Modular Reactor (SMR) overview and
status
• Westinghouse MSR can power a suburb
• Japan to miss 2020 emission targets due to
reduced nuclear power
• Toshiba can remove 97% of cesium from
radioactive soil
• Cigar Lake uranium mine is ontrack
14. Solar
• China increases 2015 solar power target to 15
gigawatts
• Foxconn plans to build solar panel factories
– Low cost and undreamed of scale
• Paint on solar cells
• Solar power with external quantum efficiency
> 100%
15. Is this a good idea?
Cyborg Insects
– Insect internal chemistry can generate power for
onboard devices
– Recording and bug control electronics
Hybridhttp://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57353187-76/new-lead-acid-battery-angles-for-micro-hybrids/?part=rss&subj=latest-news&tag=titleAxion Power International has a developed an advanced lead-acid battery it hopes will attract automakers and grid storage providers. The basic chemistry and components are the same, but the company has an activated carbon negative electrode, a change that leads to better performance over time, according to the company.In the auto industry, the company is targeting start-stop hybrids in particular. Also called microhybrids, start-stop systems feature a small battery to run a car's electronics when idle and to aid in accelerating.Unlike an all-electric car, the fuel efficiency savings from start-stop technology are incremental. Ford, for example, estimates an efficiency gain between 4 and 10 percent for its system. But small lead-carbon batteries are far cheaper than more "exotic" alternatives, such as lithium ion batteries or ultracapacitors, and analysts project millions to be sold in Europe and the U.S. in the coming year.It is a good thing that the first two make cars more energy efficient because we are due to even more cars..Worldwide new vehicle sales in 2012 are expected to rise 6.7 percent over 2011 volumes to 77.7 million vehicles, according to Polk, a leading global automotive market intelligence firm. China is expected to have a 16 percent increase in new car sales over 2011. If the Polk forecasts are correct the world is on track to have 100 million new car sold in 2017. China will be passing Europe for new cars in 2015, 2016 or 2017. China would have about 23 to 24 million cars sold in 2016. Polk analysts anticipate much of this growth to occur outside of the large metropolitan cities of Shanghai and Beijing.
http://vtt.fi/news/2012/12012012.jsp?lang=enNo less than one third of a car´s fuel consumption is spent in overcoming friction, and this friction loss has a direct impact on both fuel consumption and emissions. However, new technology can reduce friction by anything from 10% to 80% in various components of a car, according to a joint study by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) in USA. It should thus be possible to reduce car´s fuel consumption and emissions by 18% within the next 5 to 10 years and up to 61% within 15 to 25 years.
Axion Power's lead-carbon batteries are being tested in shipping container-size grid storage units.(Credit: Axion Power)We mentioned this in passing last weak. These are not your grandma's lead-acid batteries.The full technical description of Axion's proprietary PbC® technology is a "multi-celled asymmetrically supercapacitive lead-acid-carbon hybrid battery." Like a lead-acid battery, our battery consists of a series of cells. Within the individual cells, however, our construction is more complex. Where the negative electrodes in lead-acid batteries are simple sponge lead plates, our negative electrodes are five-layer assemblies that consist of a carbon electrode, a corrosion barrier, a current collector, a second corrosion barrier and a second carbon electrode. These electrode assemblies are then sandwiched together with conventional separators and positive electrodes to make our battery, which is filled with an acid electrolyte, sealed and connected in series to the other cells.We have been testing laboratory prototypes of Axion'sPbC® batteries since April 2004. Our test protocol requires a complete charge-discharge cycle every 7 hours to a 100% depth of discharge. During testing, our laboratory prototypes have withstood more than 2,000 cycles before failure. In comparison, most lead-acid batteries designed for deep discharge applications can only survive 300 to 500 cycles under these operating conditions. Based on the work completed during the laboratory development stage, we believe our application specific prototypes will offer several key performance advantages over conventional lead-acid batteries, including:* significantly faster recharge rates;* significantly greater charge acceptance* significantly longer cycle lives in deep discharge applications; and* minimal required maintenance.
The first test train that can reach speeds of up to 500 km an hour stands on a railway line in Qingdao, Shandong province, on Thursday. Dou Xin / Xinhuahttp://www.chinadaily.com.cn/usa/china/2011-12/27/content_14334409.htmBeijing - China's largest train maker, CSR Corp Ltd, launched over the weekend its first test train that can reach speeds of up to 500 km an hour.The six-carriage train with a tapered head is the newest member of the CRH series. It has a maximum drawing power of 22,800 kilowatts, compared with 9,600 kilowatts for the CRH380 trains now in service on the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway, which hold the world speed record of 300 km per hour.The gray train, which has testing and data processing equipment on board, was designed and produced by CSR's Sifang Locomotive & Rolling Stock Co, a subsidiary based in the coastal city of Qingdao in Shandong province.Ding Sansan, the company's chief technician, said the concept of the super-speed train design was inspired by the ancient Chinese sword. The bodywork uses plastic material reinforced with carbon fiber.http://www.qingdaonese.com/csr-qingdao-tests-500-kmh-train/
Figure 1 Image of the air lubrication system The bottom of the ship is covered by air bubbles released from the bubble outlets.http://www.mhi.co.jp/technology/review/pdf/e481/e481053.pdfThe Mitsubishi Air Lubrication System (MALS) was the first air lubrication system in the world to be applied to a newly built ship, and resulted in a substantial reduction in the ship’s resistance. Therefore, a performance estimation method using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) needs to be established as soon as possible to apply the MALS to general commercial ships.Wired - Grain conglomerate Archer Daniels Midland has ordered three dry bulk carriers that blow bubbles to improve fuel efficiency. The boats, to be completed by 2014, rely on Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ proprietary Mitsubishi Air Lubrication System (MALS). Mitsubishi claims that MALS can reduce CO2 emissions by a quarter compared with conventional dry bulk carriers. Considering the ships will carry about 100,000 tons including cargo, fuel and crew, that’s a significant reduction. The three ships ordered by ADM will be 131 feet wide and 777 feet long and will be built by Oshima Shipbuilding.GreenCarCongress - Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) has designed a new bulk carrier equipped with the proprietary Mitsubishi Air Lubrication System (MALS), which reduces frictional resistance between the vessel hull and seawater using air bubbles produced at the vessel bottom, along with high-efficiency hull form and enhanced propulsion system. The new MALS carriers will enable reductions in CO2 emissions by about 25% compared with conventional averaged bulk carriers. The three bulk carriers, which mark the first new shipbuilding order placed by ADM, are designed to accommodate new post-Panamax needs. Post-Panamax” class refers to the ships that are unable to travel through the Panama Canal and “new post-Panamax” refers to the size limit of ships that will be able to travel through the Panama Canal after its planned expansion is completed in 2014: 366m in length overall (LOA), 49m in width and 15.2m in tropical freshwater (TFW) draft. Panamax parameters are 295.0 m in LOA, 32.2 m in width and 12.0 m in draft.
China – uraniumNamibia's competition commission said on Wednesday it had cleared a Chinese nuclear company to take over an Australian mining firm with rights to the world's fourth-largest uranium deposit.The go-ahead would allow Taurus Mineral, a subsidiary of state-owned China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding Company (CGNPC), to buy a controlling share in Australia-based Extract Resources, which holds exploration licenses for the massive Husab uranium deposit in west-central Namibia.Westinghouse Electric's latest, bite-sized nuclear reactor design could open up new and unconventional markets for the energy powerhouse.Markets such as northern Africa -- or the South Hills.The Cranberry-based firm's small modular reactor -- or SMR -- couldn't power all of Pittsburgh, but it could certainly light up major suburbs and bring nuclear energy to clients without the infrastructure, land or money typically needed to support a nuclear facility.http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/12/westinghouse-working-on-225-mwe-small.htmlMore SMR news on following slides..Japan emission targetThe Japanese government and the ruling Democratic Party of Japan plan to reconsider Japan's pledge to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels. "Achieving the target has become impossible in any way," a government source said, because the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant has made it impossible for Japan to significantly expand its nuclear power capacity.Toshiba Corp says it has developed a revolutionary new technology designed to decontaminate radioactive soil from the area surrounding the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.The technology was originally designed to purify radioactive water at the nuclear power plant, but its developers say it also removes 97% of cesium from radioactive soil.Toshiba said in a statement that the device is currently capable of dealing with 1.7 tons of radioactive soil per day, but it is theoretically possible for a machine capable of processing 100 times that amount. The device uses crystalline adsorbents that have the ability to selectivity remove radioactive ions from liquids, soil and waste.Cameco today announced it has reached the main mine workings with the second shaft at the Cigar Lake uranium mining project in northern Saskatchewan.Miners removed the final section of rock connecting shaft 2 with the mine workings 480 metres below surface on January 3, 2012. The second shaft will provide for increased ventilation of the underground workings as well as additional means of entering and exiting the mine.“The breakthrough is a key milestone on our path to safe, clean and reliable production from this exceptional orebody,” said president and CEO Tim Gitzel. “We expect to resume full mine development and construction activities in 2012 and remain on track to start ore mining by mid-2013.”Cigar Lake is the world's largest undeveloped high-grade uranium deposit. The deposit has proven and probable reserves of more than 209.3 million pounds U3O8 at an average grade of 17.04% (Cameco's share is 104.7 million pounds).They will ramp up Cigar Lake the production to 5000 tons per year. 5000 tons per year would be about 9% of the world's 2010 mined uranium production.
But doesn't expect deployment until 2020. Why?More great slides on this subject at http://www.iaea.org/INPRO/3rd_Dialogue_Forum/07.Ingersoll.pdf
Test flight: A time-lapse photo shows the flight path of an airborne wind turbine. The vehicle is tethered to a converted fire engine (lower left) during a test in a remote area of Sherman Island, California. Credit: MakaniIn a concrete control tower of a decommissioned naval air base just outside Oakland, California, a team of engineers is building what might best be called a hybrid of an unmanned aerial vehicle and a wind turbine.The 120-pound craft has rotors on its wings to lift it into the sky helicopter-style; a thin tether attaches it to a platform. Once in the air, the craft begins to glide like a kite, its 26-foot wingspan tracing circles 250 feet overhead. Now the propellers become generators, spinning freely and generating electricity that flows down the taut tether—and, someday, into the local grid.Because the wing makes more efficient use of the wind than a fixed turbine, Hardham says, and is made of fewer, lighter materials, it should produce lower-cost energy. Maintenance can occur on the ground rather than at the top of a wind-turbine tower.High-altitude wind harvesting still faces skeptics. "It's a really interesting idea with potentially significant benefits, but we're early in the process of sorting out whether it'll work," says Fort Felker, director of the National Wind Technology Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in Golden, Colorado. However, he says, reliability, safety, and economics are all concerns. Aerial vehicles designed to harvest wind energy need to be flying most of the time—and there's always the risk they could "land on a school bus," says Felker.The company has carried out a series of test flights, including a flight this fall during which the carbon-fiber prototype with a 26-foot wingspan generated five kilowatts of power. Within two years the company hopes to have an 88-foot wing that generates 600 kilowatts—around a third what a large conventional wind turbine can generate. A gargantuan wing to generate five megawatts is on the drawing board.The company's project has drawn some interest from funders. Google has put $15 million into the company, and in September 2010, Makani won a $3 million grant from the Department of Energy's ARPA-E program, which funds high-risk ideas that could lead to what the agency calls "transformational and disruptive energy technologies."
http://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFL3E7NF18G20111215?sp=trueChina has set a target for installed solar power generating capacity to reach 15 gigawatts by 2015 and wind power capacity to hit 100 GW, China National Radio reported, citing an announcement from the National Energy Administration. The solar power capacity by 2015 to be 50 pct over previous plan from just earlier in 2011. Annual solar power output will reach 20 billion kilowatt hours by 2015 and wind power output 190 billion kWh.BEIJING, Dec 15 (Reuters) - China has further revised up its solar power development target for 2015 by 50 percent from its previous plan, state media reported on Thursday.The government has set a target for installed solar power generating capacity to reach 15 gigawatts by 2015 and wind power capacity to hit 100 GW, China National Radio reported, citing an announcement from the National Energy Administration.The ambitious move may have been encouraged by a rapid increase in solar power installation in recent months after the government unified grid feed-in tariffs for solar projects for the first time in July, and offered a higher price for projects that would be put into operation before the year end.http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-23/foxconn-s-entry-into-solar-power-might-narrow-margins-for-chinese-makers.htmlFoxconn Technology Group’s decision to start making solar power modules may speed the rate at which margins are narrowing for Chinese manufacturers, another blow for an industry already coping with a plunge in prices.“Foxconn plans to build new factories with undreamed-of scale and lower cost,” Jenny Chase, who leads a team of six solar analysts at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said yesterday. “It will push capacity higher and prices lower.”Prices for solar cells have skidded 62 percent this year as Chinese companies led by Suntech boosted production and won market share from European and Japanese rivals. Foxconn’s gross margin of 5.6 was less than half Suntech’s in the third quarter, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.Paint on solar cells?http://newsinfo.nd.edu/news/28047-notre-dame-researchers-develop-paint-on-solar-cells/Imagine if the next coat of paint you put on the outside of your home generates electricity from light—electricity that can be used to power the appliances and equipment on the inside.“We want to do something transformative, to move beyond current silicon-based solar technology,” says PrashantKamat, John A. Zahm Professor of Science in Chemistry and Biochemistry and an investigator in Notre Dame’s Center for Nano Science and Technology (NDnano), who leads the research.“By incorporating power-producing nanoparticles, called quantum dots, into a spreadable compound, we’ve made a one-coat solar paint that can be applied to any conductive surface without special equipment.”The team’s search for the new material, described in the journal ACS Nano, centered on nano-sized particles of titanium dioxide, which were coated with either cadmium sulfide or cadmium selenide. The particles were then suspended in a water-alcohol mixture to create a paste.When the paste was brushed onto a transparent conducting material and exposed to light, it created electricity.“The best light-to-energy conversion efficiency we’ve reached so far is 1 percent, which is well behind the usual 10 to 15 percent efficiency of commercial silicon solar cells,” explains Kamat.“But this paint can be made cheaply and in large quantities. If we can improve the efficiency somewhat, we may be able to make a real difference in meeting energy needs in the future.”A team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame has made a major advance toward this vision by creating an inexpensive “solar paint” that uses semiconducting nanoparticles to produce energy.>100%Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have reported the first solar cell that produces a photocurrent that has an external quantum efficiency greater than 100 percent when photoexcited with photons from the high energy region of the solar spectrum. The fabrication of the high efficiency Quantum Dot Solar Cells is also amenable to inexpensive, high-throughput roll-to-roll manufacturing, which would potentially make them very affordable.The external quantum efficiency for photocurrent, usually expressed as a percentage, is the number of electrons flowing per second in the external circuit of a solar cell divided by the number of photons per second of a specific energy (or wavelength) that enter the solar cell. None of the solar cells to date exhibit external photocurrent quantum efficiencies above 100 percent at any wavelength in the solar spectrum.The external quantum efficiency reached a peak value of 114 percent. The newly reported work marks a promising step toward developing Next Generation Solar Cells for both solar electricity and solar fuels that will be competitive with, or perhaps less costly than, energy from fossil or nuclear fuels.http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6062/1530.abstract
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/cwru-ibc010612.phpAn insect's internal chemicals can be converted to electricity, potentially providing power for sensors, recording devices or to control the bug, a group of researchers at Case Western Reserve University report.The finding is yet another in a growing list from universities across the country that could bring the creation of insect cyborgs – touted as possible first responders to super spies – out of science fiction and into reality. In this case, the power supply, while small, doesn't rely on movement, light or batteries, just normal feeding.The work is published in the online Journal of the American Chemical Society."It is virtually impossible to start from scratch and make something that works like an insect," said Daniel Scherson, chemistry professor at Case Western Reserve and senior author of the paper."Using an insect is likely to prove far easier," Scherson said. "For that, you need electrical energy to power sensors or to excite the neurons to make the insect do as you want, by generating enough power out of the insect itself."
Liquid transport fuel from goalResearch from SRI International has identified a promising new way to produce liquid transportation fuels from coal without consuming water or generating carbon dioxide. Based on data from bench-scale tests, SRI engineers estimate that the capital cost for a full-scale plant using SRI’s process would be less than half that of a conventional coal-to-liquids (CTL) plant that uses a process called Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS). FTS produces only a small fraction of the hydrocarbons needed for fuel and requires extensive recycling.SRI’s new process uses natural gas to provide the hydrogen needed to convert coal to syngas (a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen). Syngas is first converted into methanol, which can then be efficiently processed to make transportation fuels.Using natural gas eliminates the need to add water as a source of hydrogen, reduces the need to add energy to drive the gasification reaction, and results in the use of a smaller gasifier. In conventional CTL approaches, energy is supplied by burning a portion of the coal feed, which then produces carbon dioxide. SRI’s approach makes it economical to use carbon neutral electricity, such as nuclear, hydro, or solar as a source of additional energy."The implications of this research are expansive, including enhancing US energy security through the use of domestic carbon sources," said Robert Wilson, Ph.D., director, Chemical Science and Technology Laboratory, SRI International. "The process can also dramatically reduce the environmental footprint associated with alternative transportation fuels."DARPA solicitation. The DARPA solicitation set goals for a coal-to-liquids process for JP-8 of:Process scalable to 100,000 bbl/dayProduction cost of JP8 less than $3.00/gallonNo CO2 emissions during processWater consumption less than 235 kg/barrelCapital cost less than $15,000/daily barrel(The availability of CO2-free electricity was assumed.)
http://www.ba-lab.com/pdf/BALScience.pdfA team of scientists from Bio Architecture Lab (BAL), has developed breakthrough technology that helps to further enable the wide-scale use of seaweed (macroalgae) as a feedstock for advanced biofuels and renewable chemical production. The team engineered a microbe to extract the sugars in seaweed and convert them into renewable fuels and chemicals, thus making seaweed a real renewable biomass contender.“About 60 percent of the dry biomass of seaweed are sugars, and more than half of those are locked in a single sugar - alginate,” said Daniel Trunfio, Chief Executive Officer at Bio Architecture Lab. “Our scientists have developed a pathway to metabolize the alginate, allowing us to unlock all the sugars in seaweed, which therefore makes macroalgae an economical alternative feedstock for the production of renewable fuels and chemicals.”http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6066/308The key benefits of BAL technology are:* Single Platform. BAL converts seaweed carbohydrates into one renewable chemical intermediate that is affordable and scalable for both fuels and chemicals.* Commercial Focus. Leveraging the single platform, BAL will first commercialize high-value products to generate early cash flow that simultaneously paves the path for larger market opportunities.* First Mover Advantage. With over 60 patents or patents pending, BAL has carved a broad IP estate for the use of seaweed as a biomass for chemicals and fuels.
HALF matter, half antimatter, positronium atoms teeter on the brink of annihilation. Now there's a way to make these unstable atoms survive much longer, a key step towards making a powerful gamma-ray laser.All the elements in the periodic table consist of atoms with a nucleus of positively charged protons, orbited by the same number of negatively charged electrons. Positronium, symbol Ps, is different. It consists of an electron and a positron orbiting each other (see diagram). A positron is the electron's antimatter counterpart. Though positively charged like the proton, it has just 0.0005 times its mass. Positronium "atoms" survive less than a millionth of a second before the electron and positron annihilate in a burst of gamma rays.In principle, positronium could be used to make a gamma ray laser. It would produce a highly energetic beam of extremely short wavelength that could probe tiny structures including the atomic nucleus - the wavelength of visible light is much too long to be of any use for this.The trouble is that this means assembling a dense cloud of positronium in a quantum state known as a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). How to do this without the positronium annihilating in the process was unclear.Now a team led by Christoph Keitel of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany, suggests that ordinary lasers could be used to slow the annihilation. The trick is to tune the lasers to exactly the energy needed to boost the positronium into a higher energy state, in which the electron and positron orbit farther from one another. That makes them much less likely to annihilate (arxiv.org/abs/1112.1621).The positronium will eventually lose energy by emitting photons and return to the annihilation-prone state. But the team calculates that about half the excited positronium atoms can survive for 28 millionths of a second on average, 200 times as long as unexcited ones.This may be long enough to assemble the BEC cloud. In a BEC, positronium atoms behave in lockstep, so when one annihilates itself, the rest follow suit, producing a burst of laser radiation made of gamma rays.It may sound like a lot of work, but one thing makes the task easier. Ordinary atoms can only form a BEC when cooled gradually to within a fraction of a degree of absolute zero. By contrast, due to quantum effects, positronium will form a BEC at close to room temperature.
