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.

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.

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.

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?

In addition to being the most web-connected nation in the world, Iceland is also the most geographically interesting and geothermally active spot in the world. The Nesjavellir geothermal power plant in Iceland produces about 120 MW of electrical power and delivers about 1800 liters/second of hot water to the greater Reykjavik area. Interestingly enough, the per capita energy usage in Iceland is also the highest in the world. About 19% of that energy comes from Geothermal sources. The rest comes from Hydro-power. In terms of renewable energy production ans usage, Iceland is an example many nations could learn from.

The concept of geothermal energy is old and simple: drill two holes deep into the ground. Deep enough that they tap the heat emanating from the earth’s molten core. Pump water into one hole and hot pressurized steam should emerge from the other hole. Now use the steam to run a turbine and produce electric power or use the steam to heat buildings.

The US, by far, sits on the largest single reserve of Geothermal energy. The Geysers dry steam field near San Francisco produces nearly 750 MW of electricity.

Perhaps an equally creative idea that has largely been ignored is using the cool, stable temperatures at the bottom of large bodies of water as a source of refrigeration. In 2004, the city of Toronto did just that: drawing 39 degree Farenheit water from Lake Ontario at a depth of 270 feet. The project cost $170 million and saved 59 MW of electricity (enough to power 12,000 north american homes). The National Geographic reports:

Ocean Cooling

Engineers have also turned the deep ocean as a cooling source. Because of the churning action of wind, waves, and currents, ocean water must be drawn from greater depths to get consistently cold temperatures.

The Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA), a state research facility located on the Big Island of Hawaii, runs its own deep-source cooling plant. The system cools buildings on the agency’s campus, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean. The plant draws 42.8-degree Fahrenheit (6-degree Celsius) seawater from a depth of 2,000 feet (610 meters).

“NELHA saves about [U.S.] $3,000 a month in electrical costs by using the cold seawater air-conditioning process,” said Jan War, an operations manager. “We still use a freshwater loop to cool our buildings, since seawater is so corrosive.”

Makai Ocean Engineering, a private company based in Honolulu, is also developing plans to cool all of the city’s downtown using a similar system.

Elsewhere, Stockholm has used its unique location on the shore of the Baltic Sea and at the mouth of Lake Malaren (the largest lake in Sweden) to build a deep-source cooling system for its downtown buildings. Another large project is planned for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

So far deep-source cooling is only practical for communities with numerous buildings located near large bodies of water. But many of the world’s major cities, settled during the golden age of sailing ships, are close to shore—something to think about the next time a dip in the ocean takes your breath away.

The author concludes with a powerful point: with so many of the world’s most populous cities located near the ocean (think Singapore, Hong Kong, Karachi, Bombay, Dhaka, Shanghai…) the potential for this untapped ‘refrigeration’ source is huge. Many of these cities are dependent on oil fired power plants for their energy. In the heat of the summer when many cities in Pakistan and India struggle with power blackouts  - largely caused by everybody turning their AC’s on - they could have essentially ‘free refrigeration’ delivered by the cold ocean-bed waters….

A recent article in the Herald Tribune reports a curious cooperation between the Russians, Danes and the Swedish in search of a soverignty claim over the Arctic. A group of 10 Danish Scientists plan to board a Swedish ship assisted by a Russian ice breaker. Of course no one is going to spend all that money to lay claim to all that ice…they are really after the oil that lies under the ocean bed. So why are the Swedes and Russians helping the Danes…it cannot simply be a platonic business arrangement….the stakes are too high. Perhaps they have developed a resource sharing formula? We may find out soon…or indeed we may never find out until the first barrel of Arctic oil hits the market.

A Russian expedition to the bottom of the Arctic culminated in the planting of a titanium Russian flag at the ocean bed of the north pole. This was an amazing feat of engineering: launched from on board a nuclear Ice-breaker, two mini-submarines plunged to a depth of nearly 4000 meters. Not being an oceanographer, I would estimate the water pressure at 4000 meters is about 386 times the pressure on the surface - about 5600 pounds per square inch. Enough to crush a submarine shaped vessel unless it had walls several inches thick. The subs also collected ’samples of sub arctic flora and fauna’. One wonders if life is possible at all under such extreme pressures.

Scientific feats aside, a careful read of the news streams related to this expedition starts to reveal a far more - lets just say - ‘non-academic’ motive behind this expedition. The first clue is that it was led by a Russian legislator Artur Chilingarov, who also happens to be a polar explorer.

Move over Theodore Roosevelt..there’s a new cowboy in town !!??.

In a curious, but perverted parallel to Teddy Roosevelts jaunts into the national forests and mountain ranges, the Russian expedition hopes to lay Russian claims to the underwater mountain Ridge called the Lomonosov Ridge.

Why lay claims to an arctic wasteland??…..I am glad you asked!
45-55 million years ago, the arctic had a sub-tropical climate. Rich fossil evidence found in the Canadian arctic suggests this area was once teeming with life. Today there are geological indications that the Lomonosov ridge could be hiding vast reserves of gas and oil under the ocean bed. Want to know more about Arctic Oil…there an interesting link to a documentary in the ‘clean air blog’.

Teddy Roosevelt also famously lobbied for the construction of the Panama Canal - the Arctic Pacific passage. In an even more perverted parallel to Teddy’s efforts, the Russians are hoping the fabled Northwest Passage would open up pretty soon…helped along by Global Warming. Even the Russian president is pulling for this expedition…purely for its scientific value of course!

Russia is not the only country to have its finger in the pie. Recently, Canadian Prime Miniter belligerently announced C$7 bn of funding for up to 8 military patrol ships designed to defened Canada’s Arctic sovereignty. “The ongoing discovery of the north’s resource riches, coupled with the potential impact of climate change, has made the region a growing area of interest and concern,”……Stephen Harper was not as subtle about his intentions as the Russian president. The US, Denmark and Norway are also considering action to assert sovereignty over the Arctic.

So is this the start of another cold war? this time all parties hoping global warming will lay open the vast treasures. There is no time for guilt or the moral imperative to fight global warming…both are a burden..the latter on the conscience and the former on the wallet. Lets rip open the Arctic!….I’ll fight you for it.