Then the Electric Power Research Institute, a utility-funded research group, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, concluded that if 60% of U.S. light vehicles were electrified by 2050, it would increase national electricity consumption by less than 8%. But it would cut total U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions by 450 million metric tons annually, equivalent to taking 82 million cars off the road.

So a few reports are out about utilities considering ordering thousands of vehicles of the series hybrid type to support their industry and to support the U.S. automobile manufacturers who they worry could be lost to their current financial trauma. The targets are cars recharged off the grid overnight that run primarily on electricity with gasoline generator sets to extend range.

Utilities stand to gain by selling electricity and their purchasing power numbering in the tens of thousands of units for their fleets could be a solid jump off point for new vehicle markets. The idea under discussion involves putting in a substantial order to put weight behind development and, perhaps, persuade Congress to give the auto industry the assistance it needs.

Some people in the industry are concerned about the stresses such new cars could put on the nation’s electric grid. If utilities become early plug-in-car adopters, they’d have a prime opportunity to make sure recharging happens in a way that optimizes grid use or strengthens the electric grid, rather than weakens it. What they want to avoid is a repeat of what happened when air conditioners became popular. While starting small, air conditioning eventually became the major factor in pushing up summer electricity demand. Many utility systems that historically peaked in winter now reach even higher peaks in the summer – a new usage pattern that took the utilities by surprise.

Bill Johnson, chief executive of Progress Energy Inc. said, “Our industry is interested in reducing carbon-dioxide emissions, and it seems like a good idea for auto makers and us to pull together,” and that the idea is in a formative stage and is “gaining momentum.”

Talks with automakers have occurred individually and through the electric industry’s primary trade organization, the Edison Electric Institute. Participating utilities include Xcel Energy Inc., Progress Energy, PG&E Corp., Edison International, Wisconsin Energy Corp. and others unnamed.

The exploratory discussions are being conducted at top levels and among firms regarded as among the most earnest concerning climate issues. They see electric cars as “transformative” for the way energy is used in the U.S.

Dick Kelly, chief executive of Xcel Energy in Minneapolis said, “If we get enough of us together, we could put in a very large order and maybe a big down payment.”

“I would do it,” says Gale Klappa, CEO of Wisconsin Energy, adding that his utility has about 3,000 vehicles in its fleet and replaces 20% each year.

General Motors Corp. spokesman said the company “welcomes the interest” of utilities.

Mark Duvall, a researcher at the Electric Power Research Institute, the utility-funded group suggests that what might be best for automakers is multiyear orders. That’s because early models may be money losers, so multiyear orders would help automakers achieve profitable production. He estimates fuel savings, for utilities, at $10,000 to $15,000 per car.

You might want to pass this along to your electric utility provider with some encouragement. It has got to be cheaper than Congressional bailouts and it would start the investment in the transition to more electric drive vehicles. Even if Congress has to bail them out, the payoff should make it back to consumers in more choices and reduced fuel expenses. I might even be in the market for a used one someday myself.

Hat Tip to Rebecca Smith at the Wall Street Journal.

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The tree is estimated to grow up to 50 feet in three years. Its high sugar content makes it a potential source for biofuel production.

Ray Allen, a botanist and CEO of Emerald Energy who has been evaluating the tree and its properties for years, said the tree has multiple uses. Its high sugar content makes it a potential source for biofuel production. Gary Banuelos, a plant and soil scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Research Service in Parlier California said he is slightly skeptical of the tree’s ability to survive the west side’s poor soil and water conditions. “A tree with an aggressive root system will tap into the water table where the levels of salt and boron will be very high,” Banuelos said. “So if the irrigation water does not knock them out, the water table could prevent them from growing.”

Allen and the MegaFlora tree may not be widely known, but that should soon change. He is included in the upcoming documentary “Fuel,” which looks at the oil industry and energy alternatives such as solar, wind and biofuels. The film has received several awards including the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. “We have been quietly going about our business,” Allen said. “But it is time to expand this.”

Ceil Howe’s sprawling Kings County California ranch has a greenhouse with tiny MegaFlora that he hopes holds big potential for San Joaquin Valley farmers. Howe and a handful of partnering farmers are growing hundreds of the saplings which are now just a few inches tall and plan to plant them over hundreds of acres in the San Joaquin Valley. The MegaFloras are already planted in the nearby Kettleman Hills and the marginal soils of Fresno County.

Bill Jones, founder of Sacramento-based Pacific Ethanol, which has a plant in Madera County, said he and other ethanol producers are looking for renewable and affordable sources to make biofuel. “If it has dual uses and can be grown in highly saline water conditions, then it is worth looking at.”

Allen already has attracted the attention of Kansas farmers, the documentary filmmaker mentioned above and investors, including Titan Global Industries, a Texas company with interests in telecommunications, electronics and energy resources. Michael D’ Onofrio, vice president of mergers and acquisitions for Titan, visited Howe’s ranch earlier this week as part of a tour sponsored by the Farming Clean Energy Conference in Tulare. D’ Onofrio said his company is interested in the tree for biofuel. One of Titan’s divisions, Titan Global Energy, is focused on the production and distribution of environmentally friendly and sustainable sources of renewable fuels.

Fast growing plants that can lock up CO2 for the most easily recovered and processed carbon products are an area of intense interest. But so far the numbers such as ethanol or biodiesel per acre numbers are pretty limited even though some like algae and sugarcane are impressive. Just what the future holds for carbon dioxide to biofuel plant matter is truly speculative.

What we’re looking for is the annual net tons of carbon product per land unit area price. If humanities’ innovation in the huge commodity crops since Mendel first began the hybridization and genetics technology over one hundred years ago is an indicator, then biofuels are likely to produce the millions of barrels of oil equivalent per day sooner that many expect. It might be that processing technology will fall behind with the capital formation problems in the current economic situation.

The process from sunlight and CO2 to new fuels endlessly recycling within the planet’s carbon cycle is coming and high standards of living should become even more widespread across the earth’s peoples.

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During the summer Agri-Source cranked out about 3 million gallons of the tea-colored, low-pollution fuel. Then a Georgia-based oil company blended Agri-Source’s product with petroleum diesel to make B20 - a diesel product that’s 20 percent biodiesel - and sold it to bulk users. Agri-Source said they were limited only by how much $3-a-gallon chicken fat they could truck into the plant.

Now Agri-Source has slashed its production by half as plummeting oil prices and its fixed cost for raw materials have turned the company’s bottom line from black to red. You see, they signed up those chicken fat producers with a fixed $3 a gallon price.

On the other hand the vegetable oil seed pricing that is market driven, especially soybean oil, has collapsed. Those forms of biodiesel are still much more viable. As you may have learned though, some business tried to use the futures market to lock supply in the coming months with what seemed at the time to be an ever increasing price that has since decreased by as much as ½ leaving them obligated to buy at a vastly higher raw material price. The trap has sprung.

The escalating price of soybeans forced the owner of a Lakeland Florida biodiesel plant to stop production last summer. The factory has spent this year processing glycerin - a biodiesel byproduct - and retooling to use other raw materials.

Now lets not be hasty, some intensely smart people from Southwest Airlines who also used the futures market to weather the crude oil price run up with big profits with seemingly dirt cheap jet fuel while other airlines were getting killed to many farmers who mostly held their crop back in storage until the price and the oncoming crop forced sales at coincidentally record prices. That has backfired too, with Southwest now in for a few months of big fuel prices while crude is cheap and the farmers are coping with seed, fertilizer and pesticide prices made while those inputs prices were very high.

The keys to the industry’s future will be developing new sources of raw materials, writing supply contracts with pricing flexibility and getting much smarter in using the futures market to lock margins rather than insure a price.

The market has begun to exploit its native resources. The biodiesel industry used only 4 percent of the 173 million pounds of animal fats and greases produced in 2007; the rest went to other uses, from road paving to cosmetics. There is a lot of growth available in fats alone.

State and Federal support is now in place. A federal $1-per-gallon tax credit was renewed last year to support biodiesel production. The same legislation sets a goal of blending 1 billion gallons of biodiesel into the nation’s fuel supply by 2012. So far, the entire industry produces about 600 million gallons, according to the National Biodiesel Board. Last year’s Federal Energy and Security Act, which mandates that oil refineries mix an increasing amount of renewable fuels into the national supply in the coming years. The plan aims to reduce pollution and the amount of oil the United States imports. The mandate kicks in next year at 500 million gallons.

The last leg is the consumer. While Europe has dived into biodiesel with enthusiasm U.S. consumers are still slow to take up biodiesel blends. Manufacturers are gradually issuing warrantee support for biodiesel and more pumps are being seen. Some markets, especially farm operators are way ahead. In some areas it’s almost not possible to buy off road diesel without it being a biodiesel blend.

There are a few issues, such as high percentage blends experiencing problems in very cold areas. But these are problems with solutions that the farm community and distributors have already fashioned fixes for.

The volatility of energy markets remains both a prize and a problem. The lessons learned over the past year have gone far to assure that producers and processors get flexibility into the raw material cost arrangements. Which as history shows, tends to clam the volatility.

In any assessment, the economy will rebound and prices will go back up. The target will be to moderate the high prices and buffer the sure to follow low prices that follow.

One thing is certain, oil will be volatile, and it doesn’t look like oil discovery is going to keep up with consumption or even with projected growth. Biofuels look good, if the companies can harness the skills to manage pricing more adroitly, there is likely a 5 to 10 million barrel a day world market coming over then next decade that could grow to beyond 50 million barrels of daily demand sooner than anyone has thought.

The guide might be the suspected measure that the major oil companies use, its got to make money at or below $50 a barrel to get an investment. Even that can be managed with sound raw material price management. One just has to live with the reality that seeking to stabilize a profit is better than making a killing at high prices and losing big when they fall.

It’s just a maturation process in the business model. The lessons are given, we’ll see who gets them.

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Pentland Firth is in the UK’s far north and has been described as the “Saudi Arabia” of marine power.

The considered leading candidate is Marine Current Turbines Ltd, who confirmed that it intends to apply for a lease from the Crown Estate to deploy its “world-beating” tidal technology in Scotland’s Pentland Firth.

Atlantis Resources Corporation chief executive Timothy Cornelius said the area that the company hoped to develop in Scotland is also the Pentland Firth in the country’s north, too. The company is confident it will win a contract to build 500 underwater turbines in the sea off Scotland.

One wonders how big this Pentland Firth place is, now with so much interest.

SeaGen In Operation

Marine Current Turbines has a project underway called SeaGen deployed in May of this year, a tidal project in Northern Ireland’s Strangford Lough, the world’s first commercial-scale grid-connected tidal stream energy system. At 1.2MW capacity, SeaGen, which is in the final stages of commissioning, will generate electricity onto the grid to meet the average needs of 1000 homes. Martin Wright, Managing Director of Marine Current Turbines adds, “Harnessing the power of the Pentland Firth will be challenging and there are still substantial issues, in particular financing and grid connection, which will have to be addressed. However, the move by the Crown Estate is a significant and welcome step forward if the UK is to harness the sea’s energy potential on a truly commercial basis.”

SeaGen works in principle much like an “underwater windmill” with the rotors driven by the power of the tidal currents rather than the wind. Strangford Lough has a highly energetic tide race and so is recognized as one of the main tidal “hotspots” in UK and Irish waters.

The Aussies at Atlantis Resources Corporation have developed turbines that can generate electricity from the sea’s movement, too. The deep-water Solon turbine “is a story of a group of young Australians doing wonderful things on a global scale.” Cornelius said.

The Solon Ducted Turbine

Cornelius said, “This young guy from Townsville, in 12 months, has gone from concept to building this turbine.” The deep-water Solon turbine designed by 28-year-old Dr. John Keir is considered by many to be the world’s most efficient underwater generator.

The thrifty and frugal Scots have their naysayer in Scottish engineer Tony Trapp who told The Scotsman newspaper that tidal power was not reliable enough to generate the power levels that Atlantis is suggesting. Dr. Trapp says, “The trouble is, it isn’t the solution. Tidal and wave [power] are trivial in the world energy picture. The overall conclusion is it’s silly - it’s not a sensible use of intellect or financial resources.”

Cornelius counters saying, “The tides are completely reliable, so much so that you can predict them 20 years in advance. That is exactly the kind of information energy companies are looking for. We can be highly accurate on our outputs to the electricity grid.”

I’m with Cornelius on this. There is a huge amount of momentum in tidal flows ready for the harness if the details and economics can be worked out. It seems that the Crown Estate and Marine Current Turbines think so, too.

Now as you’ve noted, these two companies are using what can be described as conventional turbine technology of blades levering a shaft. A new take on this is a near shocker - using vortex-induced vibrations, actually making them to work in slow moving water – is counter intuitive as vortex induced vibrations are something engineers avidly seek to avoid. These vibrations are the bane of moving things; they wear, fatigue and destroy equipment and installations to great damage and harm. The idea of inducing them and pulling out the energy is just – innovative in the extreme.

A University of Michigan engineer, Michael Bernitsas, a professor in the U-M Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering designed VIVACE, which stands for Vortex Induced Vibrations for Aquatic Clean Energy. VIVACE is the first known device that could harness energy from most of the water currents around the globe because it works in flows moving slower than 2 knots (about 2 miles per hour.) Most of the Earth’s currents are slower than 3 knots. Turbines and water mills need an average of 5 or 6 knots to operate efficiently. A paper on it is published in the current issue of the quarterly Journal of Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering.

Vortex induced vibrations are undulations that a rounded or cylinder-shaped object makes in a flow of fluid, which can be air or water. The presence of the object puts kinks in the current’s speed as it skims by. This causes eddies, or vortices, to form in a pattern on opposite sides of the object. The vortices push and pull the object up and down or left and right, perpendicular to the current. The vortices push and pull the passive cylinder up and down on its springs, creating mechanical energy. Then, the machine converts the mechanical energy into electricity.

Professor Bernitsas estimates that array of VIVACE converters the size of a running track and about two stories high could power about 100,000 houses. Such an array could rest on a riverbed or it could dangle, suspended in the water. But it would all be under the surface. Because the oscillations of VIVACE would be slow, it is theorized that the system would not harm marine life like dams and water turbines can.

Bernitsas says VIVACE energy would cost about 5.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. Wind energy costs 6.9 cents a kilowatt-hour. Nuclear costs 4.6, and solar power costs between 16 and 48 cents per kilowatt-hour depending on the location.

Here is a hard truth and some study based facts on the power in tides and currents. “There won’t be one solution for the world’s energy needs,” Bernitsas said. “But if we could harness 0.1 percent of the energy in the ocean, we could support the energy needs of 15 billion people.

That would be a lot of power and the professor is thinking a tenth of one percent of the power available for his assertion.

It might behoove the Crown Estates to do a little further research before they commit to leases. The installed cost, the rate for kilowatt-hours to the consumers and the longevity of the initial investment with good operating cost estimates needs prime attention.

Those tides and currents aren’t likely going anywhere soon. But a bunch of capital investment will be involved for a multi decade or even longer useful lifetime. Realistically, as amazingly sensible as tide, current, wind and solar are, it will be the cost for ratepayers that matters. Great ideas need great development work and a sense of application of skills that brings more, better and cheaper. None of the resources are going to disappear or deplete. Getting it right, getting the most efficiency for the best price can take a little extra time. Harvesting systems need to get much better, and cheaper than the fueled production systems are today.

Competition has an important role here, as the best will be found and everyone will benefit. It’s a sure thing that some of the currents and tides will get into a harness.

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This new technique relies on nanoparticles consisting of gold and silica called nanoshells, invented 10 years ago at Rice by nanophotonics pioneer Naomi Halas. Nanoshells, about 20 times smaller than a red blood cell, can amplify light waves and focus them so tightly that scientists can use them to detect just a few molecules of a target chemical. So by building catalysts directly on the surface of the nanoparticles allows researchers to use the nanosensing capabilities of nanoshells to directly follow chemical reactions on the catalyst using light. The method lets the Rice team watch molecules break down on the surface of a catalyst as individual chemical bonds are formed and broken.

Wong said, “We can see the vibrations of the bonds between the atoms of our molecules. By watching the way these vibrations change frequency and intensity with time, we can watch how molecules transform into other molecules step-by-step.”

The original driver for the research is a hunt for a better way to clean up a stubborn water pollutant, TCE or trichloroethene, a common solvent. A carcinogen, TCE is found at 60 percent of the contaminated waste sites on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund National Priorities List, and the Pentagon has estimated the cost of cleaning up TCE contamination at U.S. military bases to be in the billions. Lots of motivation here.

Wong’s research group developed a new palladium-gold catalyst several years ago that helps break TCE into nontoxic components. Early tests showed that the new catalyst worked remarkably quickly. In fact, it was more efficient than predicted, based on the best available theories. “The gold was definitely playing a role that we didn’t fully understand,” Wong said.

So Wong approached Naomi Halas the Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, professor of chemistry and director of Rice’s Laboratory for Nanophotonics and Rice theoretical chemist Gustavo Scuseria. Wong’s four-nanometer particles have a gold center covered by palladium atoms, he and graduate student Kimberly Heck wondered if they could cover Halas’ much larger gold nanoshells with palladium atoms and then use the nanoshells to detect the elusive TCE chemical reaction. “We also didn’t know how the TCE molecules decomposed on the catalyst surface,” Wong said.

It took about a year and half to develop the technology and work out the experimental kinks, but Wong said the results were worth waiting for. The method uses surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy to reveal the structure and makeup of molecules sitting on the palladium-covered gold nanoshell surface. Scuseria, Rice’s Welch Professor of Chemistry, and postdoc Ben Janesko provided sophisticated theoretical calculations that helped match the vibrations with the type of chemical bonds.

“We think we parsed it out pretty well,” Wong said of the hydrodechlorination reaction. “Millions of surface-bound molecules are reacting simultaneously, but with a lot of work we’ve uncovered at least seven chemical steps.”

The irony is the reaction the team set out to analyze — the breakdown of TCE into the nontoxic hydrocarbon ethane gas and chloride salts — happens “way too fast” to be observed by the method. So, the team slowed down the reaction by using a similar molecule called DCE or 1,1-dichloroethene. In fact, DCE is what TCE can become after the catalyst breaks off the first chlorine atom, so by studying the DCE reaction, they are getting a good look at much of what happens with the TCE breakdown.

The clincher is Wong and Halas each think their new method will be especially useful in providing a new level of detail for how molecules are transformed in chemical reactions that take place on catalytic surfaces.

Now add to that Boston College and MIT have a team of scientists opening up a new platform in catalyst research with an announcement of a new class of “exceptionally effective” catalysts that promote the powerful olefin metathesis reaction.

The discovery from a team led by Boston College Prof. Amir H. Hoveyda and MIT Prof. and Nobel laureate Richard Schrock, who shared the 2005 prize in Chemistry for early discoveries of catalytic olefin metathesis, is new class of catalysts that can be easily prepared and possess unique features never before utilized by chemists.

This is exciting because catalytic olefin metathesis transforms simple molecules into complex ones, an important tool if the economical path for biomass to fuel yields simple molecules while markets need the more complex ones. The critical challenge has been developing catalysts for these organic chemical reactions that are practical and offer exceptional selectivity for a significantly broader range of reactions.

Schrock said the unprecedented level of control the new class of catalysts provides will advance research across multiple fields. “We expect this highly flexible palette of catalysts to be useful for a wide variety of catalytic reactions that are catalyzed by a high oxidation state alkylidene species, and to be able to design catalytic metathesis reactions with a control that has rarely if ever been observed before.”

This is a remarkable development with profound implications across biology from pharmaceuticals to fuels and on to materials production. For a deeper sense and explanation, here is the link to the press release pdf. The paper is available at the online edition of Nature.

More Nobels I suspect.

That makes for a big moth for catalysts. The most interesting this is just a few days separate two ways to examine catalysts at work. The implications of for the future of energy and fuels will be huge. And these are just the first breakthrough steps!

I am very impressed, how about you?

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First up is Dan Gardner writing in the Ottawa Citizen his op-ed “Even The Good News Is Bad.” Satire remember? But Dan does a good job in reversing the point of view from the bad news, and the leavening he shares puts some cause for thanks in the day. You just have to think about it – and this year the personal view for many isn’t so great- as bad as it may seem it could be worse. And yet there are surely some good reasons to give a bit of thanks today, for everyone.

Next is John Morrissy writing for Canwest News Service on canada.com about Merrill Lynch strategist Steven Milunovich’s comments titled “World On Cusp Of Clean Tech Revolution: Merrill Lynch.” Morrissy covers in broad strokes what he’s picked out of the ML report. The story line is that about each 50 years or so a “revolution” in economics takes place starting a “golden age” based on the new technology and the transformations it drives. It’s a sound review, and includes a list at the end of the previous 5 “revolutions.” Morrissy draws on Carlota Perez, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital somewhere, maybe one of her books. But in any case Milunovich is not someone to be overlooking when one gets a chance to hear what he’s thinking. It’s a link well worth you time. (If anyone finds the report let me know and I’ll add the link!)

As for me, well, I’m thankful for everyone who has stopped by this year. I hope we gave you some food for thought, hope for the coming years, amusement, insight, encouragement and little more know how than you had before you arrived. The comments are appreciated and the emails welcomed. I have done my best to include every suggestion made and hope my command of the language has improved, as it bugs some folks.

Be safe, be productive, and please come back. If any of these wishes comes true for you, then my Thanksgiving Day is a huge success.

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Last month saw Senator Orrin Hatch pop a bill, S 3680 IS in the 110^th Congress as his district has a confirmed site of a huge quantity of thorium that would serve America for a long time. Its called Lemhi Pass, the link here is to a Google Search. We’ve also looked at thorium here more than once; click here for a prime post with informative links at the bottom.

The bill Senator Hatch has introduced is an amendment of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 that would compel the inclusion of thorium as a fuel source for federal programs. Briefly, the bill instructs the creation of thorium regulations in the Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology of the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Regulations would be due at the end of 2012 with demonstration projects at the Idaho National Laboratory.

The bill goes further than one might expect as one section instructs the departments to provide recommendations for “strengthening international partnerships to advance nuclear nonproliferation through design and deployment of thorium fuel cycle power generation and providing incentives to nuclear reactor operators in the United States and foreign countries to use proliferation resistant, low waste thorium fuels in lieu of other fuels.”

The instructions are followed up with $250 million dollars for 2009 through 2013.

That sounds good to the proponents. It may not be enough and might well be late to the party.

The news Monday from MiningWeekly.com in an interview with Neal Froneman the former Uranium One CEO and current Gold One CEO and holder and developer of mineral rights in southern Africa about thorium ore deposits at Etendeka in Namibia are “Olympic Dam” types. That must be a local vernacular term. Sounds impressive though. With a comment that Etendeka shows “Very high thorium grades,” Froneman goes on to suggest that thorium could have an excellent future as thorium may well replace uranium beginning over the next 15 to 20 years.

All optimistic. But keep in mind that Senator Hatch is no lightweight novice and is exceptionally good at taking care of his Utah constituents. There is good reason think that with national support by interested people that his effort to get thorium fuel in the U.S. power mix could well get a good start in commercialization.

The news out of southern Africa is also good, very good, as a thorium industry would counter the New Soviet apparatchiks of Russia busily selling uranium reactors to such strange leaders as those of Iran and Venezuela. Thorium offers better, faster and cheaper and an offering by the developed world to build such plants countering uranium plant offers would certainly disclose the clandestine efforts to build atom bombs.

Thorium can be a major tool in powering civilization. It offers much more than power, it offers those with technology in place to sell a great opportunity and free people’s governments a strong diplomatic tool to reduce the risk of uranium and plutonium weapon proliferation that endangers everyone.

Ignoring thorium is looking more and more as fools with their heads in the sand.

Thanks to Senator Hatch a new form of power generation and more civilized and safer international trade is in sight. But will the new U.S. leadership seize the opportunity?

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The whole idea is to use a binary system in a Rankine Cycle, a cyclical sequence of heating for temperature and pressure to achieve stored energy, evaporation at a preset temperature controlled by the pressure, then delivering hot gas to an mechanical engine to get the energy into mechanical work, and then recondensing the gas to a fluid returning to step one - heating again. The binary part is the heat is used to heat another closed loop system running the power set.

What’s at stake, or more accurately what’s available is over 60% of the heat from the fuel used that is simply lost to the environment.

The technology going to so low a temperature is using an air or hydraulic motor design instead of a turbine. These motors are a bit more efficient than a turbine by about 10% and run at lower temperatures. Ener-G-Rotors in Schenectady New York is having some success in getting their designs installed and getting some technology press attention.

Ener-G-Rotors is saying their gear rotor, a wheel with teeth cut around the circumference running inside a ring with matching teeth cut on the inner surface circumference. With the axles offset for the gear and ring, the difference in size of the two sets up an opening and closing airspace. It’s just like a hydraulic gear pump except the gas goes in and propels the output rather than the power going in to pump a fluid or gas.

Ener-G-Rotors has designed a proprietary roller bearing to mount the rotor that they say nearly eliminates friction so it turn very easily. The ease of motion is said to reduce the force needed to rotate the unit thus needs lower pressures from the heat source. George Yarr, the company inventor says that the engine can start from one atmosphere of pressure, which is a small input.

The first Beta Unit, a small five-kilowatt system is going to Harbec Plastics. “If this works, it’s so huge,” says Bob Bechtold, president of Harbec Plasticss, one of Ener-G-Rotors’ potential customers. “I’ve been dreaming about the concept of using [low-temperature waste heat] ever since I first knew what it was about . . . It’s all about using what we have more completely.” It actually about getting more work for each fuel unit – more efficiency.

Power Plant Fuel Split Used and Lost. Click to Enlarge

Ener-G-Rotors is also installing betas at a steam plant for New York utility Consolidated Edison and at a landfill-gas-burning plant for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. ConEd says that Ener-G-Rotors’ system is more efficient than others reviewed. In a power plant that uses steam generators, it could have the added benefit of reducing the amount of water needed to cool the steam condensation and cutting additional sewage costs for getting rid of the extra water, he says. Mark Taylor, an analyst at research firm New Energy Finance says, (Low-temperature waste-heat technologies) “Really are where the industry is going. This potentially could be applied to every coal plant, every nuclear power, and every natural-gas plant. Steel, anything that makes heat–anything.”

If the betas work out, Ener-G-Rotors plans to expand to a 50-kilowatt demonstration unit, which is much smaller than the scale that most of its competitors are targeting. The company is hoping the smaller size will open up a market for smaller industrial waste-heat streams.

Meanwhile the competition is already out there. United Technologies has larger units out in geothermal just to start, with a lot of orders to fill at Razer Technologies. Electratherm (Post with coverage here.) is also installing units closer to Ener-G-Rotors size.

But Ener-G-Rotors President Michael Newell says, “Our technology is more efficient and simpler than anything else out there right now,” he says. “There aren’t many technologies that are going to work here. And we think we have the lowest cost of any of the technologies out there.”

Still, it might be a good idea to look into other air motor designs.

Reports from the company’s area news has them pricing at about $45,000 with an 18 month payback. This is attractive if the beta’s work out, an awful lot of burners could be putting power on the grid or simply cutting their draw from the grid, getting paid or not writing such large electricity service checks.

We’ve looked at compressed air drives in the past and suspect that systems using heat to drive a refrigerant based closed loop evaporative gas may well have a huge future. Better than 60, more like 70% of the energy used in the U.S is just venting off into the atmosphere now. Harvesting any percentage is free-fueled power, and the efficiency will go up as smart companies use their heat, and revenues come in to manufacturers that fund improving the technology.

One has to wonder, with now two companies shipping tested and known waste heat to electrical generation units when it will occur to utilities and other investors this is a slam-dunk investment.

One hopes the “credit crises” rights itself soon. Opportunity is a waitin’!

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But when pirates seize and move 2 million gallons of oil, or more than 36,000 tons of wheat we’re talking food and fuel in big quantities. Americans are used to oil coming in from close by – Canada, Mexico and Venezuela with only a small fraction coming across dangerous waters. Demand destruction has pulled so far that for now the shipping and pipeline attacks aren’t having much price effect. This can’t last.

Eventually crews will be killed, cargoes lost or an enormous spill will occur, or likely all three. Then the news will heat up its reporting. For now, it’s a deep concern to the informed few.

East Africa Pirate Attacks Map and Graph

Reports of pirate attacks are solidly unreliable. Pirate pursuits of targets that fail, attacks evaded, fought off and other early event attacks that come to naught aren’t getting counted. So when we see that 2007s number of 31 attacks compared to 2008s attacks at 199 in the first eight months, a bit of statistical glint comes to mind. But the attention to the counts is just warming up now, so the probability is that likely a 6-fold increase is at hand.

The suspected Somali pirates that seized the oil tanker Sirius Star is known to not be the first attempt. We can learn from the story of the Leander, a tanker that was accosted and got away. On October 28^th the ship with 23 crew aboard entered the Gulf of Aden, the water on the north of Africa’s horn, with million barrels of crude aboard.

Moving at 12 knots, through what is called a” safe corridor” set out by NATO, 120 miles out to sea midway between the Gulf’s entrance and the turn up into the Red Sea three skiffs approached. “The center and forward attack vessel was actually a Yemeni skiff fitted with large outboard engine and was being used as a screen to mask the other two craft,” captain Russell Davies wrote in an official report filed to Interorient and the International Chamber of Shipping. Men on the skiffs fired automatic rifles at the side of the ship.

Captain Russell Davies sent a mayday signal, but nobody answered, and then followed the special training paid for by Interorient. He locked his crew in a hold, sped up the ship to 15 knots, blared his airhorn and sailed in furious S-patterns. After 10 minutes, the pirate vessels fell back and disappeared. But at 3 p.m., the pirates reappeared. In an interview via satellite phone, Mr. Davies described three “fast attack boats departing a white mother ship.” Four men were in each boat. Mr. Davies followed the same emergency routine. This time, a Spanish naval carrier responded to the mayday alert. Thirty minutes later, a military plane appeared. “The fire was a lot more intense than the morning attack,” says Mr. Davies. The pirates were approaching when the plane fired back, chasing the pirates away, says Mr. Davies. “The military only responded one out of two times we called.” Mr. Davies says ship captains need “a couple 50 millimeter mounted guns” to defend themselves.

Ship owners and insurers haven’t armed ship with weapons because they fear deadly shootouts. Interorient and other shippers say they’re looking into hiring professional security guards. The next day, three miles from the same spot, pirates successfully hijacked a Turkish bulk carrier.

But the seizure of a giant the Saudi oil tanker Sirius Star with $100 million worth of crude far off the coast of Kenya could enlarge the “war risk” zone of the Gulf of Aden that already is lifting insurance costs for thousands of ships heading west of Africa, further raising the cost of piracy to world-wide shipping.

Some 6,500 tankers, carrying 7% of the world’s oil, used the route in 2007, according to Lloyd’s Marine Intelligence Unit. Pirates attack around one of 10 ships in the area; most attacks are unsuccessful, according to the International Chamber of Shipping. Back in May, insurers declared the Gulf of Aden a war-risk zone subject to a premium of tens of thousands of dollars per day, say insurance and shipping companies. That could now be extended to the east side of the African continent.

The slower-moving tankers and dry bulk vessels that carry oil, chemicals, coal, corn, wheat and other commodities have the most to fear. But the fear needs passed along to the customers who need those commodities for food and fuel and the huge array of products made from the cargoes.

The bewildering thing is governments and shippers are sparring over who should bear responsibility for fending off the pirates, who seized 26 ships in the region during the 2008 summer alone and have collected up to $30 million in ransom so far this year, according to the International Maritime Bureau.

You can just bet that “diplomacy” will be or is being used to get some form of organization going and to cope with the regions countries rights out to sea. One would think that an effort could get underway bloody fast – the ship owners in just the past few days includes Chinese, Turk, Saudi, Norwegian, Hong Kong, among others. Meanwhile, it might be a really good idea for a military plane to obliterate a few skiffs full of armed pirates and make a video of it to go up on the news and youtube.

It’s got to be cheaper than cleaning up 2 million barrels of oil, grieving over 20 plus innocent lives, or paying off a sunken ship.

America is there, even while busy in other places. Special note and thanks needs to go to Spain for being there providing security. But by no means has everyone answered the problem. Russia is busy showing off to Venezuela instead of patrolling for pirates as her station in the world as she asserts her wishes to seen and respected would suggest.

It looks like it’s still up to American and the few “standup to responsibility” allies to police the world.

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“Ingenious” as described by the University writer Bill Steele, the microscope is part of a method to observe the behavior of single nanoparticles of a catalyst all the way down to the resolution of individual catalytic events.

The team’s observations show that not all nanoparticles in a batch are created equal. Some carry out their reactions in different ways than others. The team also directly observed that every nanoparticles changes the speed of its catalytic reaction over time, and they have measured the time scale.

Catalysts are an intense area of interest and research because they offer higher speeds in chemical and biological reactions, permit reactions that otherwise wouldn’t happen naturally or in standard procedures, make industrial processes cheaper and more controllable and offer other advantages. The range of catalyst uses is broadening with each new discovery.

Peng Chen, a Cornell assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology says, “Understanding the fundamental principles that govern the catalyst activity can help us to design new catalysts. Nanoparticles are dynamic entities. Maybe we can think about designing smart catalysts that can adapt to different conditions.”

The research is so far, a result from a single catalyst. The team immobilized spherical gold nanoparticles about 6 nanometers in diameter on a glass surface and flowed a solution of a dye over them. The catalyst changes molecules of the dye into a new fluorescent form. A dye molecule briefly binds to the surface of the gold, where an oxygen atom is removed. The new molecule fluoresces, and a blip of light appears remaining until the molecule releases from the catalyst. Using the new microscope that focuses on a very thin plane, the researchers made a “movie” with one frame every 30 milliseconds. The researchers were able to isolate the blips from individual nanoparticles and identify single catalytic events.

Nanocatalyst Graphic Click for Extended Explanation

The method reveals two slightly different reaction patterns: On some nanoparticles the dye molecule binds to the surface, are changed and then releases. On others, after the change the molecule moves to a new position before it releases. And on some nanoparticles, both types of reaction occur. The nanoparticles, Chen explained, are not perfectly spherical, and different parts of the gold crystal are exposed at different places on the surface. The current idea is this may account for the different reaction patterns.

Reactions at the same sites also varied in their timing. The time a fluorescent molecule remains at a given site might be short, then longer, then short again. The explanation, the researchers said, is that the catalytic reaction also causes a restructuring of the surface of the gold, and this causes the subsequent reactions to take place faster or slower. Later, the gold surface recovers to its original structure, and the reaction returns to its original timing.

The press release writer quotes the team as saying “For the first time, we could provide a quantitation on the restructuring timescales at tens to hundreds of seconds.”

This research is only on a single catalyst, but the door is now opened for at least one path for a deeper understanding of catalysts at work. It’s a good start on what will surely be a growing field in catalyst research and development. The very idea that catalyst operations can be observed and improved implies that catalyst improvements could be coming much faster and with better results at an ever-increasing rate.

While congratulations is in order to the team its worth noting that the funding came from the National Science Foundation, and by the Petroleum Research Foundation of the American Chemical Society. The support for the research is being provided by the Cornell Center for Materials Research.

The research by team is described in the online edition of the journal Nature Materials and will appear in a forthcoming print edition and is available now to paying subscribers or single article download.

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