Ring Around the Sun

While politicians try to gain mileage out of ethanol based gasoline and how it could help reduce dependence on oil, scientists and wall street have been paying more attention to Biodiesel. In-fact biodiesel has been around forever…your local tree-huggers have been running their diesel cars on waste grease from the nearest fast food joint. Although this often made car exhaust smell like french fries, it essentially paved the way for the much more efficient and profitable biofuel ventures of today. Business 2.0 magazine reports:

It’s not hard to see why. Biodiesel is 30 percent more fuel-efficient than gasoline, which in turn is 30 percent more efficient than ethanol. And while most ethanol produced in the United States comes from a single feedstock - corn - biodiesel has many sources: the oil of seed plants, such as soy and canola, french-fry grease and animal fat. That means the market can weather a price increase in any one raw material. Solazyme, a South San Francisco biotech firm, has even started making biodiesel from genetically modified algae.

Better yet, biodiesel can be manufactured in large quantities today - unlike fuels such as hydrogen. Total production shot up from 25 million gallons in 2004 to 250 million last year. Nearly 100 new plants are now under construction; even Chevron has joined in, cutting the ribbon on a 20-million-gallon plant in Galveston, Texas, in May.

…………………The past few months have seen plenty of major corporations rush to hop on the biodiesel bandwagon. Oil giant ConocoPhillips (Charts, Fortune 500) has inked a deal with Tyson Foods (Charts, Fortune 500) to make diesel out of animal fats. In July, U.S. Steel announced that it will use a 10 percent mix of biodiesel at its plant in Gary, Ind. And Berkeley-based Clif Bar has started subsidizing employees who drive biodiesel cars.

The rush to biofuel has attracted not only the automotive sector, but airlines such as Air New Zealand and Virgin Atlantic together with jet engine makers Rolls Royce and GE have announced biofuel flights for 1008 and 2009. Chances are they are already carrying out ground testing and plan to run one of the four engines in a 747 jet on biofuel.

Biofuels also promise to create booming economies for otherwise impoverished regions of the world. Traditionally energy starved Africa could become one of the world’s biofuel powerhouses…..that is according to a $ 160 million deal signed by BP to produce biofuel from the oil of the ‘jatropha’ plant. Jatropha is an otherwise poisonous and inedible plant that grows well in arid soils 25 degrees north and south of the equator. This makes much of Africa’s landmass and climate suitable for the crop. Under the terms of the BP deal about half of the jatropha plantings will take place in African countries.

With many foreign automakers already lining up to introduce diesel engines into the US, the onus is now truly on the local Big 3 who have lagged behind in both research and production of diesel based vehicles. Interested readers note that unlike ethanol and natural gas vehicles, the average diesel engine will run quite happily with biodiesel..including the local home brewed variety made from restaurant grease. The internet is full of cookbook and recipes to brew your own batch. Just do a google search on biodiesel.

However, there have been concerns from the UN and Oxfam (UK based glabal charity) about the viability of diverting arable famrland from the production of food for the world’s impoverished, to the production of biofuels. I think this fear is premature and unnecessary. My theory is that impoverished farmers, by and large, stay impoverished becasue the food they produce has little or no value. By producing more valuable bio-fuel crops they stand a better chance of pulling themselves out of the cycle of poverty. In the long term, it will all depend on the diversity of energy sources. It would be foolish to think that biofuels could be the next ‘oil’, the dominant energy source for the world. Rather, I see the future as consisting of a wide variety of affordable energy sources such as bio fuels, solar energy, wind and wave power.

Earlier this month, my 23 month old fell ill with a virulent ear infection. After a trip to the emergency room, we came back home with some ear drops and an antibiotic prescription. The antibiotic worked for about 3 days, the ear pain and fever was gone, but now he had developed chest and sinus issues. The fever returned as soon as we were done with the 5 day antibiotic dose. Back to the doctor: this time, another antibiotic with the same results. The fever returned in 5 days along with the sore throat and congenstion. Our latest trip to the doctor resulted in yet another antibiotic prescription, this time a 10-day dosage. Thankfully, the toddler seems to have recovered fully this time and the fever has not come back.

This, rather scary brush with illness got me thinking about my own childhood in the late seventies and eighties, where the slightest hint of fever would trigger generous doses of antibiotics. Things really have not changed at all. Doctors today may be much more aware of the declining efficacy of antibiotic drugs and the rise of reisistant germs, but that has not stopped them from prescribing antibiotics. Its almost like fighting a battle you know you are going to lose…eventually. Very quickly, the drug resistant species of the same germ would emerge and start propagating.

A recent article in Newsweek, highlighted the need for a shift in thinking for the medical research community…from trying to kill all microbes in our bodies to trying to understand the critical role they play in balancing human vitality and illness:

As antibiotics lose their effectiveness, researchers are returning to an idea that dates back to Pasteur, that the body’s natural microbial flora aren’t just an incidental fact of our biology, but crucial components of our health, intimate companions on an evolutionary journey that began millions of years ago. The science writer Jessica Snyder Sachs summarizes this view in four words in the title of her ground-breaking new book: “Good Germs, Bad Germs.” Our microbes do us the favor of synthesizing vitamins right in our guts; they regulate our immune systems and even our serotonin levels: germs, it seems, can make us happy. They influence how we digest our food, how much we eat and even what we crave. The genetic factors in weight control might reside partly in their genes, not ours. Regrettably, it turns out that bacteria exhibit a strong preference for making us fat.

The recent spate of news reports about MRSA, methicillin resistant Staphylococcus Aureus is really not news. MRSA has targeted select groups of vulnerable people for the last five years: football players and hospitalized patients. However, it has recently made the leap from those select groups to the general population….

….first as an opportunistic infection among people already hospitalized, now increasingly a wide-ranging threat that can strike almost anyone. The strain most commonly contracted outside hospitals, dubbed USA300, comes armed with the alarming ability to attack immune-system cells.

In terms of infectious disease, the environment of the American suburb is unquestionably a far healthier place than most of the rest of the world. But we’ve made a Faustian bargain with our antibiotics, because most researchers now believe that our supersanitized world exacts a unique price in allergies, asthma and autoimmune diseases, most of which were unknown to our ancestors. Sachs warns that many people drew precisely the wrong conclusion from this, that contracting a lot of diseases in childhood is somehow beneficial. What we need is more exposure to the good microbes, and the job of medicine in the years to come will be sorting out the good microbes from the bad.

The microbes we have all our lives are the ones that colonize us in the first weeks and months after birth, while our immune system is still undeveloped; in effect, they become part of the landscape. “Dendritic” (treelike) immune cells send branches into the respiratory and digestive tracts, where they sample all the microbes we inhale or swallow. When they see the same ones over and over, they secrete an anti-inflammatory substance called interleukin-10, which signals the microbe-killing T-cells: stand down.

And that’s an essential step in the development of a healthy immune system. The immune reaction relies on a network of positive and negative feedback loops, poised on a knife edge between the dangers of ignoring a deadly invader and over-reacting to a harmless stimulus. But to develop properly it must be exposed to a wide range of harmless microbes early in life. This was the normal condition of most human infants until a few generations ago.

Today, of course, that is not the case in the developed world. The turnover of products used to kill household bacteria, good or bad, rivals the economies of many third word countries. The proliferation of such products is so pernicious that many doctors and prominent scientists are paid to be on the advisory boards of such companies.

The effect is to tip the immune system in the direction of overreaction, either to outside stimuli or even to the body’s own cells. If the former, the result is allergies or asthma. Sachs writes that “children who receive antibiotics in the first year of life have more than double the rate of allergies and asthma in later childhood.” But if the immune system turns on the body itself, you see irritable bowel syndrome, lupus or multiple sclerosis, among the many autoimmune diseases that were virtually unknown to our ancestors but are increasingly common in the developed world.

The Solar Decathlon 2007, a competition conducted by the US Department of Energy challenges 20 college teams to compete in building and operating efficient solar-powered homes. The Decathlon entries, built on campuses around the country, must be disassembled, transported and re-built on the National Mall in Washington DC, where they will be judged. The homes must be representative of a fully functioning, modern US household, appliances, lights bathrooms and all. The homes compete and are awarded points in 10 categories, the winner being determined by the highest cumulative points total.

The winners of the 2005 contest (the last time this contest was held) were students from the University of Colorado at Boulder:

Using natural materials was one of the team’s five major design goals, along with innovation, energy efficiency, modularity, and accessibility. The result is a sustainable, attractive solar home built almost entirely of recycled and natural materials—one that can go almost anywhere to complement almost any lifestyle.

The Colorado team is especially eager to unveil the innovative, biobased structural insulated panels—BIO-SIPs—used for the walls. Julee Herdt, one of the team’s faculty advisors, developed the BIO-SIP with the help of researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Products Laboratory in Wisconsin. It meets all building code requirements and is patented for use in future products. BIO-SIPs merge two commercially available green products: strong but lightweight Sonoboard, made of recycled cellulose materials by Sonoco Company, and BioBase 501, a lightweight foam insulation made of soybean oil by Biobased Systems.

The BIO-SIPs and high-performance window glazings contribute to the home’s energy efficiency. So does the integrated radiant solar thermal system used for space and water heating. “We wanted a nonintrusive, ductless heating and cooling system, and this really fits the bill,” says Kendra Tupper, student leader of the engineering team.

The team also carefully selected the home’s rooftop PV system and building-integrated PV awnings, which provide shade as well as electricity. “Our rooftop PV system is made of 32 SunPower 200-watt panels; they’re around 16%-17% efficient,” says Jeff Lyng, student project manager. After the Solar Decathlon, the home will be set up again and connected to a utility as part of the university’s education and outreach activities.

  

This year, the competition will be held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., October 3 - 22. It will be open to the public from October 12 to 20th. While most of the teams are from US based schools, there are 3 international teams from Germany, Spain and Canada respectively. The US DOE maintains a consumer information website to publicize the spirit of the competition: Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

The european space agency (ESA) released shocking images on September 14 showing the most direct route in the northwest sea passage fully clear of sea-ice. The area of ice in the passage covers the smallest area since it was first measured in 1978. The ice-covered area has dropped to about 3 million square kilometers (1.16 million square miles), a million less than a previous low in 2006 - a dramatic change.

Envisat ASAR mosaic of the Arctic Ocean for early September 2007, clearly showing the most direct route of the Northwest Pssage open (orange line) and the Northeast passage only partially blocked (blue line). The dark gray colour represents the ice-free areas, while green represents areas with sea ice.

Many Scientists claim that sea ice melting is only going to accelerate due to global warming and the ‘albedo’ phenomenon. The albedo phenomenon is the reflectiong of solar heat by sea ice due to its bright surface. Once the sea ice has melted and replaced with darker water, it increases the absorption of heat, thus accelerating the temperature rise.

While the scientific debate (aka propaganda) over the existence of global warming rages on, another much more dangerous battle is brewing. Canada claims full rights over parts of the Northwest Passage that pass through its territory and that it can rightfully control transit and trade vessels there. This has been disputed by the US and the European Union who claim the new route should be an international strait that any vessel can use. The war of words between Canadian PM Steven harper and US president G.W. Bush has started. US is probably worried about the influx of terrorists from an unpoliced northwest passage and probably wants to put its own security force there.

It is pathetic enough that scientists hired by a certain ‘government’ throw a veil of confusion over the global warming issue and paralyze any action to counter it. The icing on the cake is now an international dispute is brewing on who gets to profit from the opening up of a fabled shipping route between Europ and Asia.

In commemoration of the International Polar Year 2007-2008, the Belgian government has commissioned the first ever ‘zero emmissions’ polar research station. It will be assembled in its entirety at Tour & Taxi in Brussels Belgium. The entire project has been opened for public viewing at this website. Once fully assembled and inaugrated by the appropriate Belgian Royalty on September 5th 2007 (I hope they have chocolates), the station will be disassembled and transported to Antarctica to be re-assembled on site.

The base is intended to be fully functional using only local renewable energy sources available in Antarctica (with back-up diesel generators). It will provide a state of the art climate change laboratory for 16 scientists.

Heat transfer enhancement is one of my favorite topics. Not surprisingly….engineers spend a good portion of their lives dealing with heat transfer problems or derivatives thereof. Nuclear power plants of the PWR (pressurized water reactor) type use a flow of water -under pressure- to remove heat from nuclear fuel rods from within the nuclear reactor. The water boils on contact with the fuel rods, generating steam that is then run through a steam tubine to generate power.

The amount of power generated is a direct function of the amount of steam generated. The limiting process in generation of steam is the boiling heat transfer between the fuel rods and the water - when the surface of the fuel rods becomes covered in bubbles of boiling water, heat transfer becomes limited by how fast the bubbles move away from the surface of the fuel rod (vapor bubbles conduct very little heat compared to the liquid water). Researchers at MIT have found a way to increase the rate of boiling heat transfer by adding small quantities of nano-particles to the water. They performed representative experiments by dipping heated wires into pools of water compared with nano-particle spiked water.

Photographs provide some insights into why the nanofluid works better than the water does. In both tests, as boiling begins, bubbles form along the hot wire. At relatively low temperatures, the bubbles are spaced out, and the sections of wire between them are in direct contact with the fluid and kept reasonably cool. But as temperatures rise, things go bad for the wire in water. Bubbles begin to crowd together until the wire becomes covered with a continuous layer of vapor—“and vapor doesn’t conduct heat very well,” said Buongiorno. The wire becomes glowing hot and ready to break.

Images taken with a scanning electron microscope show why the wire submerged in the nanofluid fares better. After boiling occurs, the wire in water is still smooth, but the wire in the nanofluid has become coated with nanoparticles. That rough, porous coating encourages the formation of bubbles, and—when the nanoparticles are made of “water-friendly” materials such as alumina—the coating actually pushes newly formed bubbles away. The layer of vapor cannot form.

The researchers have now performed preliminary experiments using their nanofluid coolants at MIT’s Nuclear Research Reactor.  ”Initial results have been very promising,” said Hu.  If all goes well, they hope that within a few years the use of nanofluid coolants will make today’s PWRs significantly more productive. And if nanofluids were used in place of water in emergency cooling systems, they could cool down overheating surfaces more quickly, improving plant safety in all types of reactors.

To simulate the transfer of heat from the nuclear fuel to the coolant, MIT researchers use hot wires submerged in water and in an alumina nanofluid. In these scanning electron microscope images, the wire in water (top) is still smooth after boiling. The wire in the nanofluid (bottom) has become covered by a layer of nanoparticles—a rough surface that enhances heat transfer and keeps a vapor layer from forming.

So perhaps by building ‘nucleation points’ on the surface of a heat transfer surface, the nano-particles enhance heat transfer during boiling. The question is how many of the nano-particles are carried away by the boiling vapor? If the water is in a closed loop, are they returned to the system. If not, then where does the water eventually go and what kind of ‘disposal problems’ do the particles pose? There are numerous heat transfer problems in industry that are limited by a boiling fluid. This seemingly simple solution offers an easy way to break through the limitations imposed by the physics of moving bubbles of boiling vapor out of the way to make space for new bubbles.

Some of us can smell a good bargain from the other side of the store, to others, shopping is a rational, well thought out process. Very few of us are aware that many stores actually try to manipulate our sense of ‘rational’ by visual, audible and, now olfactory cues. In addition to soothing music, attractive lighting and changing room mirrors that make you look ten pounds lighter, many retailers have been experimenting with smell in the hope that it may make you loosen your grip on your wallet. New Scientist reports:

Exactly how scent exerts its effects is only beginning to be understood. When odour information travels from the olfactory bulb and reaches the primary olfactory cortex it activates the limbic system at an earlier stage of processing than do the other senses, says Pamela Dalton, who studies cognitive and sensory psychology at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This triggers an almost instantaneous emotional response in mammals. It is this initial reaction that marketeers hope to exploit by using scent in products or stores.

The articles includes a chart that details the emotional responses to various smells. The smell of Melon, somehow, is associated worldwide with happiness and youth. No surprise that Samsung uses a subtle melon fragrance in its stores. Target audience: the young impressionable buyer of cellphones and sundry electronic goods.

So next time you ‘really’ like something at the store and cannot explain why…it may be your nose. Note: No one ever   forgets what a new car smells like. Car sales people are eager to get you to take a test drive… because the moment the  smell hits your nose, your ability for rational thought falls by a few points.

While politicians bicker about immigrant workers and farmers worry about not having enough hands to pick their crops, many enterpreneurs are busy developing a technology that could perhaps do away with the need for hired help around the farm. It would change the face of farming forever. Your next salad could indeed come from the highrise building next door.

Companies such as ‘Omega Garden’ are pioneering commercial scale urban farming. Plants are grown in rotating cylindrical wheels with a light in the center. Several of these wheels can be stacked vertically in a ‘carousel’ arrangement with automatic rotation, watering and lighting. The company claims plant growth is much more efficient than traditional terrestrial farming and pretty much any plant can be grown in any season: provided your building is climate controlled. Omega Garden claims you can grow herbs, fruits, flowers, even crops like wheat and rice!

Another company called ‘Vertical Farm’ is hoping to turn the entire urban sky scraper into a farm. Claiming to house an entire, self contained ecosystem, the vertical farm would be a model of sustainable farming very close to its target market (so tomatoes for NY city would be grown right in Manhattan - eliminating the inefficient, labor intensive farm to market transport). There would be no floods, droughts and pestilence. Irrigation water runoff would be recycled, as would plant matter (composted to generate methane and fertelizer). The very detailed website cites numerous studies and papers written on the subject. It also seems to serve as a repository of building designs.

Our vertical farm consists of a self-sustaining building or an interconnected network of buildings in a modern city that produces food and assists in waste management for its urban population. In an effort to minimize the negative environmental effects that growing urban populations continue to have on our planet, the Vertical Farm Project combines established and cutting-edge technologies to create a dynamic model for urban farming. A model for a Vertical Farm has been developed and designed to feed 50,000 people and its parameters are presented in this document. The urban environment selected to model the Vertical Farm is New York City’s Island of Manhattan.

In an era where most crop farmers struggle to make any money, it is interesting to think that the alternative urban farm business model cold actually transform the eoconomics and technology of farming by removing numerous inefficiencies of the farming process. After all, growing food has not really changed ever since the first homospiens learned to cultivate the land.

In a much publicized video in Sony’s press release web-portal, a solution of glucose (the ‘energy’ component of many energy drinks including gatorade) is poured into a series of bio-battery cells that then power an MP3 player connected to external speakers. A power output of 50mW is claimed for each such cell: not a whole lot compared to a typical AA sized alkaline battery, but it is the highest output reported for passive bio-batteries.

The cell mimics the energy generation mechanism found in many living organisms. Glucose poured into the cell is oxidized into Gluconolactone at the anode by reaction with immobilized enzymes. Hydrogen ions produced in this reaction travel through a membrane into the cathode side of the cell. At the cathode, the positively charged hydrogen ions combine with oxygen in the air and produce water.

The press release spares us any details on how the waste products, gluconolactone at the anode and water at the cathode are disposed. Perhaps they can simply be poured out? Just what is gluconolactone anyway?….a little research shows that gluconolactone is used in numerous high end skin care products and moisturizers. It is also a critical to the chemical communication system of certain insects such as the ‘Blatta Orientalis’, or oriental cockroach.

As exciting as it may seem, you still cannot pour your energy drink directly into the battery. A close read of the ’small print’ on the website reveals that the glucose solution has to be in a sodium phosphate buffer and be within a tight molecular composition. At some point in the future, one can imagine pouring your energy drink onto your walkman when it runs out of juice at the gym….and furthermore using the waste products to make your skin look good!!??

I have recently been experimenting with the latest in Robotic ‘toys for boys’, the Robomower RL500 that I picked up on Ebay. Though it has relieved me several hours of unnecessary labor every week (I much rather turn my front lawn into a prairie if it were’nt for neighborhood peer pressure) by automatically mowing the lawn, it has burdened me with the mental anguish of the pressing global question of efficient home energy storage.

Made by ‘Friendly Robotics’, the robomower and I have a high maintenance relationship. Most of the maintenance involves me charging its electric batteries and dealing with the inevitable battery life problems. The mower draws down on a pair of 18 Amp-hour batteries in only a couple of hours. Nobody said lawn mowing was energy efficient. The weight of the battery pack (40 lbs according to my calibrated left hand) is itself to blame for a big chunk of the power draw.

This has compelled me to start thinking seriously about the future of high density, efficient energy storage for the average home user. Clearly hauling around a 40 lbs battery pack that only provides 2 hours worth of mowing is an unacceptable solution. This is the same problem faced by Hybrid electric vehicles and, though less acute, by PV solar cells that store their energy overnight in battery packs. Clearly the problem is two-fold:

(i) The batteries we have today have a short operational/useful life (I find 2 years for cheaper lead acid units and a 3-8 years for the more expensive lithium ion batteries unacceptable)

(ii) The energy storage density, energy to weight ratio, is low at best.

With the re-emergence of solar, wind and wave power as renewable, clean sources of energy and their eventual penetration into the domestic market depends on cost and weight efficient energy storage. Any cyclical energy source will need similar storage capability. Of course the problem severity is higher for transport applications such as hybrid vehicles and, yes, robotic lawn mowers. It certainly seems that much of the press and development effort these days focuses on hybrid vehicles, wind and solar power generation, scant attention has been paid to improving the storage efficiency of the cyclic energy generated by these devices. The humble lead acid battery, the century-old technology continues (with few challengers)to be the energy storage work horse.

In industry the problem has been solved by employing superconductors in several modes. Superconductors offer zero resistance to flow of electrons, therefore if a current were to flow in a closed superconductor loop (such as a coil), it would remain there ‘forever’ until an external sink (such as electrical device) draws it down. This is essentially the principal of operation of Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage (SMES) devices. The fact that SMES devices have now broken into rail transport is encouraging and perhaps there is a glimmer of hope of one day being used in domestic automobiles. The challenges, of course, are formidable. Superconductors need to remain at cryogenic temperatures, typically -196 degrees Celsius or even lower. This requires expensive and inefficient refrigerators (or cryocoolers). For industrial applications the trade-off between the energy required to sustain the superconducting system and the energy saved in hyper-efficient storage is justifiable. However it does not make sense for widespread home/domestic adoption.

On the domestic scale, a promising idea is to use self assembling micro-organisms such as viruses that create nano-scale batteries. Research on this subject is being carried out by Professor Paula Hammond of the MIT energy initiative:

Hammond’s research group builds up the films with the help of ionic charges. Positively and negatively charged polymers or nanoparticles can be added by alternately dipping the substrate into solutions containing the plus- and minus-charged species. The negatively charged viruses are kinetically arranged on the top surface and used as a template to complete the assembly of the sandwich-like film.

The ionic bonds holding the components together are strong and stable. The process, which takes place at room temperature, allows each layer to be precisely patterned and fine-tuned, Hammond said. The technique, which allows ultrathin films to be produced in large quantities at low cost, could be used for water-based processes, which would be handy for fuel cells; or in the dry state, for batteries. MIT researcher Yet-Ming Chiang, Kyocera Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, an integral member of the Center for Self-Assembling Materials for Energy, also works on creating batteries as small as a grain of rice that cram as much electrical energy into as small or lightweight a package as possible.

All of this, of course, is still far fetched for the mentally anguished engineer at home who wants to extend the battery life of a hybrid vehicle or a battery powered lawn mower. My options today are limited and expensive. I could go out and spend a small fortune on a lithium ion battery, or I could build a solar powered stirling generator and mount it on the lawnmower (more on this in another posting). Anyone out there have a better idea?