The capstone of the class was when Dr. Mitchell Swartz, of JET Energy presented experimental results showing excess power in Palladium/Deuterium and Nickel/Hydrogen systems, with a particular focus on experiments he himself has conducted.

The news reported is Dr. Swartz and Prof. Hagelstein demonstrated cold fusion openly for the attending scientists and engineers.  Using the Jet Energy NANOR device they demonstrated a significant energy gain, greater than 10, much larger than the previous open demonstration back in 2003 with a 2.3 yield.  The demonstration was for the class, meaning no attempt was made to assuage skeptics.  Add the Jet Energy NANOR to the things to watch.

For the highly literate, Dr. Swartz is going to firm ground on the technical description of cold fusion or Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR), as least as far as his perception is concerned.  Swartz says, “The name should be LANR, for “lattice assisted nuclear reactions”.  That is a valid point concerning his technology.

Drs. Fleischmann and Pons actually described their work as “electrochemical experiments” that had produced more energy (“excess energy”) than could be accounted for by input energy and available chemical reactions.  Where “Cold Fusion” came from is due some research – if anyone cares.  Over the media explosion that bombed Fleischmann and Pons and the failures of others to replicate their work the Cold Fusion moniker has acquired an undeserved dubious reputation.

Then came LENR for low energy nuclear reactions.  The phrase and term work fine, but in reality now, with the nickel based work and the increasing improvement of the palladium work, the idea these are low energy is getting to be a vast understatement.

However the moniker battle shapes up, it hardly matters.  The research field’s events are definitely running temperatures lots cooler than any of the big money fusion projects and the energy outputs just keep on climbing.  Depending on the skill set of the experiment replicators, lattice based reactions are getting better and those with well-engineered experiments are showing good returns on the energy input.

It seems that after 5 (about 2 hour classes each day) days of Prof. Hagelstein sharing his breakthrough explanatory theory, the demonstration had the desired effect.  Perhaps the class will encourage the participants to continue their research and more improvement can come over time.

This week also has Defkalion back in the news.  The firm has a short video on YouTube of some testing taking place on one of their “bare” reactors.  This comes soon after the firm offered qualified testing opportunities to worthy scientists and industrial concerns.

The company commented on the firm’s website forum about the video saying, “As you can notice, this is a setup with one Hyperion “bare” reactor testing. The setup of the third party independent tests is with two identical reactors (one active, one not-active) working/tested in parallel, as described in our latest Press Release.”

At another posting the firm (translated) says, “. . . this video . . . is not suitable “tool” for the interpretation of phenomena or the calculation of the performance of reactors or for any other conclusion, and the duration of but also because of deliberately “scattered” content. Consider it as an honest view of some of the places where they work every day our people.”

Before you hit the comment link or email your humble writer, please consider this:

Forty years ago only a visionary could imagine fields free of weeds, only the crop growing.  Twenty years ago the technology was common across the developed world.

Roundup combined with genetically modified crops revolutionized food production.

By about ten years ago the extremists had decided that the genetically modified crops would poison or kill them and law was established where extremists held sway to restrict and eliminate the new crops use.

Over a generation has passed and not a single bit or any evidence, study or proof exists that roundup resistant crops hurt anyone.  But the human resistance has killed tens millions of people by starvation and millions more will die from the denial of technical potential, facts based in experience and human nature’s tendency to be fearful.

Let the visionaries run their courses as best they can and hope that one at least gets to the market with something great for all of us.  Then be on guard for the extremists who will try to take it away from you.

The new finding gives graphene’s potential a most surprising dimension – graphene can also be used for distilling alcohol by removing water.

Water evaporates through graphene sheets prepared by the team as quickly as if the membranes were not there at all.  The UM researchers have found that it is superpermeable with respect to water.  That opens the possibility to produce alcohol without the energy input for heating the water and alcohol mix to drive the alcohol out in the separation.  That would be a substantial energy input savings for ethanol production.

Dr. Nair with Graphene Sheet - Image from the University of Manchester

Graphene is one of the wonders of the science world, it’s the thinnest known material in the universe and the strongest ever measured. It conducts electricity and heat better than any other material. It is the stiffest one too and, at the same time, it is the most ductile.

The UN team studied membranes from a chemical derivative of graphene called graphene oxide. Graphene oxide is the same graphene sheet but it is randomly covered with other molecules such as hydroxyl groups OH-. The graphene oxide sheets are stacked on top of each other and form a laminate.

The researchers prepared such laminates that were hundreds of times thinner than a human hair but remained strong, flexible and are easy to handle.  Then when a metal container was sealed with such a film, even the most sensitive equipment was unable to detect air or any other gas, including helium, to leak through.

Graphene Sheet Water Filter Prep. Click image for more info, or see the Science link above for complete details.

When the researchers tried the same with ordinary water, they found with complete surprise that it evaporates without noticing the graphene seal. The water molecules diffused through the graphene-oxide membranes with such a great speed that the evaporation rate was the same independently whether the container was sealed or completely open.

Experiment leader Dr. Rahul Nair explains this way, “Graphene oxide sheets arrange in such a way that between them there is room for exactly one layer of water molecules. They arrange themselves in one-molecule thick sheets of ice, which slide along the graphene surface with practically no friction. If another atom or molecule tries the same trick, it finds that graphene capillaries either shrink in low humidity or get clogged with water molecules.”

Professor Geim follows up with, “Helium gas is hard to stop. It slowly leaks even through a millimeter-thick window glass but our ultra-thin films completely block it. At the same time, water evaporates through them unimpeded. Materials cannot behave any stranger. You cannot help wondering what else graphene has in store for us.”

Dr. Irina Grigorieva who also participated in the research points out the process advantage, “This unique property can be used in situations where one needs to remove water from a mixture or a container, while keeping in all the other ingredients.”  The idea has impressive dewatering potential.

Dr. Nair throws in the ‘proof’ positive with, “Just for a laugh, we sealed a bottle of vodka with our membranes and found that the distilled solution became stronger and stronger with time. Neither of us drinks vodka but it was great fun to do the experiment.”

The vodka experiment made it to the research paper.  Yet the team members are not offering visions of use in distilleries in particular, or offer any immediate ideas for applications.  But we can just be certain serious attention is being given to the paper by ethanol researchers.

The basic research the UM team is doing does prompt a comment, albeit quite humble from Professor Geim, “The properties are so unusual that it is hard to imagine that they cannot find some use in the design of filtration, separation or barrier membranes and for selective removal of water.”

The graphene filters are not on the market or anticipated any time soon.  The production cost of graphene for such a use isn’t even suggested or known but the research pathway to find out is now here.  But the lifetime of this the new “filter” if such a term will do for now, looks to be very long indeed.  And cutting the cost of heating the whole of the water and alcohol mix to get the water out is mostly removed, an awful lot of alcohol production that isn’t economic now, would be.

It’s very significant good news for the alterative renewable fuel folks.  There’s lots more here than just ethanol potential, getting the water out cheaply is going to have lots of applications.

This contrasts with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) standing record of never approving a new reactor design.  The December 2011 “approval” by the NRC of the Westinghouse AP1000 is not a new reactor at all; rather it’s a next generation design of existing technology.

Clearly U.S. Federal government is working at cross-purposes.  A fine, expensive and consumer and industrial damaging mess is sure to ensue.

The DOE has new cost-sharing arrangements with private industry to support design and licensing activities.  With considerable astonishment, taxpayers are going to be funding one agency to pay the fees of another.  Make that Astounded.

Small Modular Reactor Samples. Click image for the largest view.

The good news, aside from the circumstances is the DOE intends ultimately to fund up to two designs for small modular reactors (SMR) through a cost-shared partnership, which will support first-of-a-kind engineering, design certification and licensing.  The draft Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is now out to solicit input from the industry for preparing a full FOA that’s aiming at a reactor deployment date about 2022.

The DOE’s FOA seeks applications for two grants, estimated to total $452 million over five years. The funding anticipates paying up to half the cost of developing and deploying perhaps two small modular reactor designs.

The tooth gnashing fact is that’s not going to be enough money and it leaves all but the chosen one or two designs at a major disadvantage.  This after the Solyndra debacle and others has thoughtful observers realizing that bureaucrats are picking the winners before the competition starts.  That is a terrible policy; a huge waste of resources and the best design is sure to be left out when historic experience is considered.  It will be a lobbyist’s game any moment now.

At issue are small, compact reactors of around 300 MWe and lower in capacity, a third or less of the size of the typical commercial nuclear power plant built so far.  These kinds of plants could potentially offer a range of features in terms of safety, construction and siting as well as potential economic benefits.  But if only one or two are chosen the circumstances for users will be limited or force excess costs to make a mandated choice instead of an optimal one for the situation.

At this size reactors are modular or have a ‘plug and play’ nature, which means they could be made in factories and transported to generation sites.  That manufacturing approach over a custom build method offers economies of scale reducing both capital costs and construction times. The small size could make them suitable for small electric grids and markets that cannot support large reactors costs, production or regulatory expense.

Bravely, US Energy Secretary Steven Chu described the funding as a “significant step” in designing, manufacturing, and exporting small modular reactors.  It takes courage to come out with what is obviously a poorly thought out policy.  Yet, the bravery may be driven by the Congress abandoning its responsibility to organize the law in a fashion that resembles common sense.

Chu is bright enough and has enough outside the beltway experience to understand and say, “America’s choice is clear – we can either develop the next generation of clean energy technologies, which will help create thousands of new jobs and export opportunities here in America, or we can wait for other countries to take the lead.”

Meanwhile – the NRC remains embroiled in a managerial mess.  The commissioners and the Chairman are still at odds, and the oversight of the media has disappeared, the Congress along with it. There is no reasonable expectation anything of consequence is going to happen any time soon, and it’s an election year as well.

There is a lot at stake if such a plan proceeds.  Westinghouse is developing its own 200 MWe SMR, and the information has escaped that Westinghouse’s approved AP1000 nuclear reactor design was supported through a cost-shared agreement with DOE.  This information leads one to suspect that Westinghouse may be looking for a quick taxpayer funded catch up.

There is a long list of technologies with potential. (See Brian Wang’s page at NextBigFuture.)

NuScale Power Inc’s 45 MWe NuScale reactor and Babcock & Wilcox’s 160 MWe mPower should both be eligible, too. The NRC is currently involved in pre-application activities on both designs in anticipation of a design certification application for the NuScale reactor in the first months of 2012, followed by one for the mPower design towards the end of 2013.  These one should think, are the leaders.

The list of good ideas out there is grand, covering three major technologies.  The light water reactors list includes Babcock & Wilcox, NuScale Power Inc., Westinghouse and Holtec’s Inherently Safe Modular Underground Reactor at 140 MWe.

The high temperature gas-cooled reactors are coming from AREVA’s Antares, General Atomics model called Gas Turbine Modular Helium Reactor and Pebble Bed Modular Reactor Ltd.’s reactor named conveniently, the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor.

The liquid metal cooled and fast reactor list is equally impressive.  Here are GE Hitachi’s Nuclear Power Reactor Innovative Small Module, Hyperion Power Generation’s Hyperion Power Module and Toshiba’s – Toshiba 4S for Super Small, Safe and Simple.

That’s 10, add in a couple of thorium fueled ones and that would be a dozen.  The Feds expect to give one or two 40% of a billion dollars head start.  How is that going to work out for the country?

Wouldn’t it be better to just completely revamp the NRC?

Admittedly the DOE must be under stress from the machinations over at the NRC.  And from a government mind, that plan might seem great.  For the rest of us it looks like a waste from the start and a market distortion for decades, perhaps centuries to come.

Ugh.

International Petroleum Exchange Board

The answer to the headline question is – both.  But for nearly everyone the impact of swings in the oil market is serious business.  Cook gives us a very good view of what’s going on inside the market and what drives it.  The short answer from his article is again both, but what is interesting is the prediction of a bust and a recovery – all in the coming eleven and one half months.

Here we’ll summarize the market aspects that Cook outlines for making his case.

Oil is priced in dollars worldwide, so whatever the U.S. government, in particular the Federal Reserve, is doing is going to affect world prices.  Simply put the principle is futures contract traders are electing to choose between owning the dollar as a currency or the oil as an asset.  With that in mind, note that the WTI (West Texas Intermediate) or Brent (actually a combination of oil sourced from the Brent, Forties, Oseberg and Ekofisk fields called BFOE) used by the press and media are minor parts of the world crude market, but the chemistry is used as a benchmark to price the long list of other crude oils.

In the market there are major participants, the sellers and buyers naturally and investors and speculators trying to game the market for safety or profit.  Generally, and so far at least the sovereign oil companies and the Big Oil majors operate at such a scale that they don’t really have to put much money at risk by their standards in order to acquire enough cargoes to move or support the global market price via the BFOE market.

Those big sellers and buyers routinely buy and sell futures contracts in order to insure themselves against a rise or fall in the dollar price.  The market also permits participants to use market contracts for offloading the risk of owning commodities and turn the known to occur future transactions into currency.  It’s a very important part of the market and should work to find the real price, smooth out aberrations and keep the industry finances liquid and able to raise cash or hold oil as an asset.

Here is Cook’s main lesson to folks not inside the industry – in the case of a deliverable exchange futures contract; a price is set for delivery of a standardized quantity of a particular specification of a commodity at a particular location within a specified period of time. If that contract is held open until the expiration date and time then there will indeed be a spot delivery and payment against documents at the original price as set forth by the market exchange’s contractual terms.

This – Almost – never happens, unless the physical market price – which is set by physical supply and demand – is actually at that price at that specific point in time.

Instead when the physical price is lower or higher, then the futures contract will be closed out through a matching purchase or sale of a futures contract to counter the original futures contract and a profit or loss will be taken.  Factually only industry participants can take a supertanker loaded with oil.

The delivery aspect of oil markets is somewhat different than say eggs, corn or lumber.  Those kinds of commodities have found their way to the driveways of inattentive commodities speculators.  But for oil, the broker is responsible to the trading exchange for letting an investor or speculator with no capability of making or taking delivery hold a position into the last month before delivery.  If a broker blows it the exchange officials will ensure such positions are liquidated.

But the industry, investors, and speculators have a new participant – Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and structured investment products created to invest in commodities.

Goldman Sachs invented the ETF, whose Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI), enabled investment in a basket of commodities – of which oil and oil products was the greatest component.  Investors in the new fund were offered the means to exchange the perceived risk of holding dollars with inflation, for taking on the risk of holding commodities. Over the ensuing twenty years the business has boomed, bringing huge amounts of cash worldwide to the oil market and other commodities.

All that money lured in new players and the news making way to park money is to buy a tanker full of oil from a seller and sell it at a future date, while using the market to hedge out any losses.  The main impact is that oil is unseen inventory to the market until someone hedges the risk off.  This isn’t illegal or even a bad idea.  Stocking up is both a smart move for consumers and it’s been a perfectly legitimate financial strategy through history.

The driver for these isn’t greed as regular people expect.  It’s fear, plain and simple.  The U.S. has been busily “printing up” cash since 2008 at incredible rates and the inflation, or more accurately the devaluation of the dollar has been far behind the printing press.  These investors are driven not by making a profit, but by avoiding a loss on the dollars.  There’s lots of oil around, enough to satisfy demand and fill all those tanks and tankers.

Speculators do have a roll, to be sure, but they are most noticeable when they come to the market in a large rush driven by greed and drive a quick price spike.  You can be sure those already in the market are going to cash in and set up for the inevitable price fall.

Commodities markets are driven by expectations, and expectations are heavily influenced by emotions.  It’s often said markets are irrational means to get to a rational end.  Supply, demand and for the past few years the dollar, the medium of the exchange of value, all play major rolls.

The expectation of Mr. Cook, and in part your humble writer, is that supply is more than adequate with little sign of major shocks, consumption demand seems to be declining in the large markets of the U.S. and the EU with some increase in the developing markets.  Little risk here.  The risk lies in the expectations of the dollar and the effect of all that stockpiled oil sitting in tanks and tankers and the cash worried to be in oil or might wish to be back in dollars.  Lots of risk here, and reactions by the market based in reality of producers and consumers will respond.

For consumers, a short price bust might be very good news if a price fall doesn’t trigger a production drop followed by a price boom.

With the market basics covered we’ll link again to Mr. Cook’s article.  The article explains the application of the points raised above, explains how ETFs and other instruments are both consumers in some situations and producers in others. Plus he rolls in some of the expectations, including his own to get to his conclusion.  It a very long read, and there is a long following of entertaining comments.

Lastly, the markets exist to manage risk, not to make sales or buy products.  In a proper operation the price for sales is the last month’s market closing price with a bit of adjustment.  When the sellers and buyers start chasing the price changes they inevitably follow fear and set higher and lower prices, which reduces both production and demand.  Still, over time the market will average out to what the commodity is worth to both buyers and sellers.  Sometimes it just takes a very long time.

For a comparison, the common quote for the amount of iron mined in history is a cubic mile or 147,197,952,000 cubic feet.  Now platinum is more rare, the oft-heard quote is mining over history has turned out 25 cubic feet, a block 5 feet on each side, about 1/15 the amount of gold.  That’s a massive difference.

Curiously with the world economy slowed down the price of platinum is lower than gold, a situation that will not last when the economy does pick up either by demand or a drop in gold’s price from an increase in confidence.  The main industrial use is catalytic converters for automobiles – and increasing global automobile demand in emerging markets with an interest in pollution control will likely move prices higher.

Meanwhile palladium may become harder than platinum to acquire.  Russia produces 50% of palladium’s annual supply and Russia has been selling off strategic stockpiles.  In simple terms, the use of Russian palladium stockpiles for current use will turn up later as reductions of the amount available to the market.

Gold Platinum & Palladium Nuggets Shown Left to Right. Click image for the largest view.

For now these are “cheap” as platinum trades 31% below its February 2008 high of $2,273 and palladium is trading 38% below its all-time high of almost $1,100 in January 2001.  That brings us to:

An Aalto University in Finland research team has developed a new and significantly cheaper method of manufacturing fuel cells by preparing nanoparticle metal catalysts for fuel cells by using atomic layer deposition (ALD).  The ALD method requires 60% less of the noble metals than current methods.

Docent Tanja Kallio at Aalto said, “This is a significant discovery, because researchers have not been able to achieve savings of this magnitude before with materials that are commercially available.”

The most commonly used fuel cells cover the anode with expensive noble metal powder, which reacts well with the fuel.  The Aalto study’s ALD method can cover the anode much thinner and more evenly than current production methods, which lowers costs and increases quality.

Palladium Preparation for ALD. Image Credit: Adolfo Vera, Aalto University. Click image for the largest view.

The Finn’s idea is to develop better alcohol fuel cells using methanol or ethanol as their fuel. It’s easier to handle and store alcohols than trying to use hydrogen. In alcohol fuel cells, it is also possible to use palladium as a catalyst.

As we noted above, for now platinum is about twice as expensive as palladium.  This means that alcohol fuel cells using palladium would offer a more economical product to the market.

Fuel cells are very efficient and can create electricity that produces very little or even no pollution, making more energy and requiring less fuel than other devices of equal size. They are also quiet and require low maintenance, because there are no moving parts.

When catalyst breakthroughs come and production costs can be lowered, fuel cells are expected to power electric vehicles and replace batteries, along with other jobs. Despite their current high price, fuel cells have already been used for a long time to produce energy in isolated environments, such as spacecraft.

The Aalto team’s results, published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C. are based on preliminary testing with fuel cell anodes using a palladium catalyst. The Aalto team believes commercial production could start in 5-10 years.

Now if someone would find a huge palladium and platinum supply this would go big.

Piantelli's LENR Experiment Apparatus. Click image for the largest view.

As the technology sits today The Rossi E-Cat is in production facility exploration. Blacklight is making presales, The Australian hint of a technology is said to be nearing a prototype. Many others are closing in on solidifying their ideas into consistency and reliable energy release. It’s a seminal period that looks to be far past the notion LENR is mental magic.

Mr. Wang’s first post offers us the slides that Brian Ahern would have used if he had been able to do his presentation at Citi5. Running 16 pages the slides offer a set of clues on what would have been a marvelous overview on Ahern’s understanding of the physics. While incomplete as a lesson, a text or audio would be appreciated with gratitude. But it’s a gift for now and seed for thought.

The second post noted above links to a report and slides from a NASA LENR workshop held in Cleveland. The striking comments center on Dennis Bushnell the chief scientist at NASA Langley. Then as one goes through the page written by the heavily biased Steven Krivit, a laundry list of troubles from unidentified sources involving the NASA review with Rossi are presented.

But the Krivit page links to the presentation slides of Bushnell, NASA scientists Michael Nelson and Joseph Zawodny.

Wow. The Zawodny slides are a short review of the technology, an organizational chart and a short list of the engineering needed to take LENR one more step closer. The prime notation might be slide 30, pointing up the need to engineer both the composition and structure of reactor materials.

Zawodny also offers us an informative slide worthy of long term and widespread dissemination. Simply put, chemical energy release compared to fission nuclear = 1:1,900,000 ; fusion nuclear = 1:7,300,000 ; LENR = 1:8,000,000. This clears up why the non-mainstream physicists and the followers are so tenacious on staying with the technology until it become useful. Thank you Mr. Zawodny.

Michael Nelson has a very different perspective. The Nelson slide set covers his take of the late news about Rossi’s E-Cat, discloses, without naming the NASA personnel meeting with Rossi back in July, and what one presumes to be allowed, in a very likely nondisclosure agreement, public information. It clears up a lot of supposition and Nelson includes better graphics than seen anywhere else with solid credibility.

Nelson spends some pages considering the premise – is the phenomena cold fusion or LENR. While the consideration of the titling is entertaining, it’s nothing more than a waste of time, energy and emotions that should embarrass everyone involved. Yet Nelson offers a succinct and practical view of Rossi and the E-Cat, offering a conclusion that Rossi merits watching and attention.

Nelson also offers us the best tight overview of the Piantelli research that Rossi seems to have used as his preamble for his development. With superb graphics and explanations and a history to lead off, the segment sets up a comparison between where Piantelli’s work is and where Rossi takes the technology. At page 34 the variances known to date are listed.

Finishing up Nelson explains quite briefly why LENR can be so very important and sets out a sensible set of steps that NASA could adopt to integrate the technology into future plans. The slide set ends with web links and a synopsis of LENR history.

Bushnell takes a fully responsible view, which one expects from a chief scientist, and gets straight to the ‘State of the Art’. His view with 20 years of accumulating data, Rossi nearing a breakout to commercial, his man Zawodny working to zero in on theory to optimize engineering bring discipline to the science. Bushnell comes to the point that experimentation is needed to promote creative thinking. This technology is at its beginning and needs optimization at the most basic level.

Without saying so, Bushnell reveals NASA has looked into the numbers. LENR offers some astonishing potential. While most folks are bedeviled by the cold fusion, LENR titling, where to look for theory or lay credit for progress and discovery and the rest of the human psychological needs and the opponents throwing disinformation, Bushnell comes straight to the point – LENR offers a massive shift in power to weight ratios for energized work.

The power to weight ratio comes from the huge reduction in the fuel weight and the power plant. As Zawodny and Nelson point out too, the applications can run from agriculture up to space exploration. Such massive reductions offer calculations where fuel is a negligible portion of weight and cost – something opposite from the situation today.

Bushnell offers several pages of comments. While the emotions are busily steaming on many fronts, Bushnell says right on point, “The two decades of experiments and the weak interaction theories have removed the existential risk, what is remaining is to engineer for improved performance.”

The NASA men make a seminal point. LENR (or cold fusion, if one isn’t too specific on linking the phenomena to word definitions) works. LENR is a massive improvement that deserves our intense attention, the best creativity, intuition and insight we can muster.

So far a determined group has taken an over 90 year old phenomena to the breakout point. Instead of exploiting our intellect and making the science become fruitful, most people are soaked in emotion and childish conduct while one of history’s great technologies languishes. It’s a humiliating embarrassment.

For now we’re being pulled along by a revolt of independent thought, research and now a commercial attempt. The technological mountain is unassailably there; its time to climb, mine and develop.

Rossi deserves a note. Observation is telling us Mr. Rossi has innovated Piantelli’s work with a Thomas Edison like will and found a shortcut with a catalyst to get things going, his place in history is assured. Whether he can keep his lead as others find the theories to guide engineering is yet to be seen, but for now if even just one sale is running excess power- the rush will be on.

We will see a major change in viewing energy for personal use. Fusion from Lerner or Bussard or others, fission in smaller lower cost reactors, and there is still is huge supply of fossil sources to use and technologies coming to supplant and replace it are coming. If governments can wake up or populations bear upon them we could see a race to the lowest possible cost for energy and another long term boom in human social and economic development reaching to everyone for the first time.

In the UK there are now two groups working to get LN2 market ready,

Engineers at UK Highview Power Storage have developed a potential solution to several issues by building the world’s first liquid air energy-storage system.  Working with researchers at Leeds University, the Highview team has used established technology to create a modular, scalable and relatively cheap energy-dense system that can be located easily next to existing infrastructure. They believe it could be a way of capturing as much energy as a small pumped-hydro system, but without the need for reservoirs and mountains.

The Highview team takes electricity from a nearby biomass plant and uses it to liquefy air by cooling it to -200°C. The energy can then be released and supplied back to the grid by evaporating the cryogenic fluid and using the resulting gas to drive turbine generators. Waste or ambient heat can be used in the evaporation process and the cold energy from the exhaust stored and reused to liquefy more air, making the whole system more efficient.

Highview LN2 Energy Storage System. Highview’s system gives back about 50 per cent of the energy put in. Click image for the largest view.

The process looks quite simple, store energy by using electricity to operate a liquefactor, which would typically be used to distil the chemical components of the air, compressing the gas to around 40 bar (1 bar = 14.5psi) and passing it through a series of heat exchangers and expansion turbines. To release the energy, the cryogenic fluid is first compressed further to around 70 bar and then evaporated to drive turbine generators. This figure will likely increase to 100-150 bar for commercial operation, but is still well within the pressures used by existing steam turbines.The company estimates that the capital cost of cryogenic energy storage will be less than $1,000 (£635) per kilowatt (kW) when the technology is mature, one quarter of the costs of sodium-sulfur batteries and between half and a quarter of that required to pump water uphill into reservoirs.

Dearman Engine Company (DEC) has plans to develop a commercial prototype engine and is working with engineering consultancy Ricardo and several UK academics to assess its engine’s feasibility.  Their proof-of-concept model, which its developers said is far more efficient than any previous design for a LN2 engine, has already been used to power a car at more than 30mph with only cold air in the exhaust.

The engine was invented by company co-founder Peter Dearman and operates in a different way that produces considerable power.

Toby Peters a Dearman Engine Company director explains, “Mr. Dearman invented a process whereby you inject a heat-exchange fluid such as anti-freeze and water into the head of the piston just before you inject the liquid nitrogen. You keep the liquid nitrogen liquid right the way up to the piston. The result of that is that all the expansion takes place inside the cylinder. And because you’ve got this volume of heat-exchange fluid, it’s isothermal expansion, so it keeps the temperature the same, which is far more efficient.”

Peters winds up with a strong consumer outlook. “Our product is likely to be, on a cost-base, more competitive to a piston engine than a battery, and piston engines are massively cheaper.”

LN2 is handy stuff and a lot of it is already around.  There is the advantage of relying on an existing distribution infrastructure as many industrial companies use it for cooling.  LN2 could also be generated in remote places using renewable energy sources and a small liquefaction plant.  Such a system would work well as a solution for remote military bases.

Peters said the key engineering challenge was optimizing the injection of liquid nitrogen into the cylinder but that all the technologies involved, including the LN2 storage tanks, were mature enough not to be showstoppers.

The Brits are doubling up on LN2.  Dearman Engine was spun out of Highview Power Storage, who last week won the magazine The Engineer’s Technology and Innovation Awards Grand Prix for its utility-scale liquid-air energy-storage system.

The numbers look pretty decent.  Peters takes this up saying, “Pumped hydro is the gold standard but there aren’t many mountains close to London,’ said Peters. ’[Our technology is] modular and scalable, and you can move it. Because of the cycle, we can harness waste heat and, specifically, low-grade waste heat. And we generate cold as we operate. When you think about data centers, the application demand for cold is very big.”

The full system returns about 50 per cent of the energy put in, rising to 70 per cent efficiency if it uses waste heat from another source, such as a power station. This is similar to the efficiency of the much less energy-dense compressed-air storage plants and compares with 70-85 per cent for batteries and 65-75 per cent for pumped hydro.

LN2 can get into this game.  The capital cost matter looks to be offering a big advantage and that advantage could lead to an installed base much quicker than the competition.

The most curious thing is explained by Chief Technology Officer Rob Morgan, “ . . . costs and efficiency aren’t the only advantages of using liquid air to store energy. These fluids are already shipped around in tankers all around the world. The big issue with hydrogen is that there’s no infrastructure, but for cryogenic fluid there is. Not only are we looking at a storage solution here but also, as part of the broader ways of moving energy around, it’s potentially quite an attractive medium.

The other benefit of Highview’s modular design is that it can be tailored to the specific supply-and-demand needs of a particular situation, with separate liquefaction and evaporation systems that work together to maximize the process’s efficiency.

Highview’s  CEO, Gareth Brett points up an important point, “Generally speaking, what you want to do is charge the unit up at times of low price or of excess wind ability and when you want it back is at times of system stress or high price. There are more low-price, low-demand times than times of system stress and high price.”

“But the way that works in the UK is different to the continent and the US. So having a unit where you can independently size the charging system compared with the discharge system, as well as what size tank you have, is quite an advantage because you get to tailor-make your system to suit the application without having to re-engineer it from scratch, just by applying more or fewer modules, he said.

This idea with its obvious financial advantages could very well evolve into the mass market.  While LN2 is non-flammable, practically reacts with essentially nothing in personal transport or homes as a major safety consideration; suddenly freed or spilled it would offer skin contact freeze burns.

The Brits are getting pretty far among with this and the data to date is very encouraging.  Lets hope we see more information and early applications soon.  LN2 looks very good.

A Northwestern University (NU) research team is hot on porous crystals called metal-organic frameworks, with their nanoscopic pores and incredibly high surface areas that are excellent materials for natural gas storage.  Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are porous materials constructed from modular molecular building blocks, typically metal clusters and organic linkers. These can, in principle, be assembled to form an almost unlimited number of MOFs, yet materials reported to date represent only a tiny fraction of the possible combinations.

Metal Organic Framework Sample Images. Click image for more info..

Metal-organic frameworks come in millions of different possible structures, so where does research zero in?

A (NU) research team has developed a computational method that can save scientists and engineers valuable time in the discovery process. Their new computer algorithm automatically generates and tests hypothetical metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), rapidly zeroing in on the most promising structures. These MOFs then can be synthesized and tested in the lab.

Using their new method the researchers quickly identified more than 300 different MOFs that are predicted to be better than any known material for methane (natural gas) storage. The researchers then synthesized one of the promising materials and found it beat the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) natural gas storage target by 10 percent.

In addition to gas storage and vehicles that could burn natural gas, MOFs may lead to better drug-delivery, chemical sensors, carbon capture materials and catalysts. MOF candidates for these applications could be analyzed efficiently using the Northwestern method.

Team leader Randall Q. Snurr, professor of chemical and biological engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science explains the import of the research saying, “When our understanding of materials synthesis approaches the point where we are able to make almost any material, the question arises: Which materials should we synthesize?  This paper presents a powerful method for answering this question for metal-organic frameworks, a new class of highly versatile materials.”

The team’s study paper is “Large-Scale Screening of Hypothetical Metal-Organic Frameworks and was published by the journal Nature Chemistry. It also will appear as the cover story in the February print issue of the journal.

Graduate student in Snurr’s lab and first author of the paper Christopher E. Wilmer developed the new algorithm.  Omar K. Farha, research associate professor of chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, and Joseph T. Hupp, professor of chemistry, led the synthesis efforts.

Wilmer takes the explanation of how the research affects the development of metal-organic frameworks, “Currently, researchers choose to create new materials based on their imagining how the atomic structures might look,” Wilmer said. “The algorithm greatly accelerates this process by carrying out such ‘thought experiments’ on supercomputers.”

The NU team was able to determine which of the millions of possible MOFs from a given library of 102 chemical building block components were the most promising candidates for natural-gas storage. In just 72 hours, the researchers generated more than 137,000 hypothetical MOF structures. This number is much larger than the total number of MOFs reported to date by all researchers combined (approximately 10,000 MOFs). The Northwestern team then winnowed that number down to the 300 most promising candidates for high-pressure, room-temperature methane storage.

The new computer algorithm combines the chemical “intuition” that chemists use to imagine novel MOFs with sophisticated molecular simulations to evaluate MOFs for their efficacy in different applications. The researchers say the algorithm could help remove the bottleneck in the discovery process.

The other people on the team are Michael Leaf, Chang Yeon Lee and Brad G. Hauser, all from NU.

13 million vehicles on the road worldwide today run on natural gas, including many buses in the U.S.  The number is expected to increase sharply due to recent discoveries of natural gas reserves with lower prices than gasoline.  Converting a vehicle to the fuel isn’t a major matter, albeit complex and includes a drop in available total power, as natural gas is lower than gasoline in energy density. Comparatively speaking, it’s a very cheap fuel.

At Washington University in St. Louis’s Photosynthetic Antenna Research Center (PARC) one scientific team has just succeeded in making a crucial photosystem component – a light-harvesting antenna – from scratch. The new antenna is modeled on the chlorosome found in green bacteria.

We may not be stuck with just one means to harvest solar energy.  The solar cell is only 70 years old and came from a new understanding of semiconductors, materials that can use light energy to create mobile electrons and an electrical current. Comparatively they are quite efficient, yet they have almost nothing to do with the biological photosynthesis in plants that use light energy to push electrons across a membrane and ultimately create sugars and other organic molecules.

Since 1941 no one had the depth of understanding of those complex assemblages of proteins and pigments well enough to exploit their secrets for the design of solar cells.

That’s over now.

At (PARC) scientists are exploring native biological photosystems, building hybrids that combine natural and synthetic parts, and building fully synthetic analogs of natural systems.  Now they have a light-harvesting antenna described in a recent issue of New Journal of Chemistry.

Chlorosomes are giant assemblies of pigment molecules. Perhaps Nature’s most spectacular light-harvesting antennae, they allow green bacteria to photosynthesize even in the dim light in ocean deeps.

Dewey Holten, PhD, professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, and collaborator Christine Kirmaier, PhD, research professor of chemistry are part of a team that is trying to make synthetic chlorosomes. Holten and Kirmaier use ultra-fast laser spectroscopy and other analytic techniques to follow the rapid-fire energy transfers in photosynthesis.

The PARC article explains chlorosomes as biological systems that capture the energy in sunlight and convert it to the energy of chemical bonds.  While they come in many varieties, but they all have two basic parts: the light harvesting complexes, or antennae, and the reaction center complexes.

Photosystem Harvesting Light. Click image for more info.

The activity of an antenna consists of many pigment molecules that absorb photons and pass the excitation energy to the reaction centers.

In the reaction centers, the excitation energy sets off a chain of reactions that create ATP, a molecule often called the energy currency of the cell because the energy stored ATP powers most cellular work. Cellular organelles selectively break those bonds in ATP molecules when they need energy hits for cellular work.

The PARC folks are intuitive enough to look at green bacteria, which live in the lower layers of ponds, lakes and marine environments, and in the surface layers of sediments, and have evolved large and efficient light-harvesting antennae very different from those found in plants bathing in sunlight on Earth’s surface.

Green bacteria offers a super antennae consisting of highly organized three-dimensional systems of as many as 250,000 pigment molecules that absorb light and funnel the light energy through a pigment/protein complex called a baseplate to a reaction center, where it triggers chemical reactions that ultimately produce the desired ATP.

In plants and algae (and in the baseplate in the green bacteria) photo pigments are bound to protein scaffolds, which space and orient the pigment molecules in such a way that energy is efficiently transferred between them.  But chlorosomes don’t have a protein scaffold – instead the pigment molecules self -assemble into a structure that supports the rapid migration of excitation energy.

That’s intriguing because it suggests chlorosome mimics might be easier to incorporate in the design of solar devices than biomimetics that are made of proteins as well as pigments.

The PARC team’s goal was to see whether synthesized pigment molecules could be induced to self-assemble – even though the process by which the pigments align and bond is not well understood.

Holten explains, “The structure of the pigment assemblies in chlorosomes is the subject of intense debate, and there are several competing models for it.”  To design a pigment for a photosynthetic organism a chemist first builds one of three molecular frameworks. All three are macrocycles, or giant rings: porphyrin, chlorin and bacteriochlorin.  “One of the members of our team, Jon Lindsey can synthesize analogs of all three pigment types from scratch,” said Holten.

With that in mind the team wanted to study many variations of a pigment molecule to see what favored and what blocked assembly and Lindsey had also developed the means to synthesize chlorins, the basis for the pigments found in the chlorosomes of green bacteria. The chlorins push the absorption to the red end of the visible spectrum, an area of the spectrum scientists would like to be able to harvest for energy.

Doctoral student Olga Mass and coworkers in Lindsey’s lab synthesized 30 different chlorins, systematically adding or removing chemical groups thought to be important for self-assembly but also attaching peripheral chemical groups that take up space and might make it harder for the molecules to stack or that shift around the distributions of electrons so that the molecules might stack more easily.

The powdered pigments were shipped Holten’s lab at WUSTL and to David Bocian’s lab at the University of California at Riverside.

The two labs made up green-tinctured solutions of each of the 30 molecules in small test tubes and then poked and prodded the solutions by means of analytical techniques to see whether the pigment had aggregated and, if so, how much had formed the assemblies. Holten’s lab studied their absorption of light and their fluorescence (which indicated the presence of monomers, since assemblies don’t normally fluoresce) and Bocian’s lab studied their vibrational properties, which are determined by the network of bonds in the molecule or pigment aggregate as a whole.

In one crucial test Joseph Springer at Holten’s lab, compared the absorption spectrum of a pigment in a polar solvent that would prevent it from self-assembling to the spectrum of the pigment in a nonpolar solvent that would allow the molecules to interact with one another and form assemblies.

“You can see them aggregate. A pigment that is totally in solution is clear, but colored a brilliant green. When it aggregates, the solution becomes a duller green and you can see tiny flecks in the liquid,” Springer said.

The absorption spectra indicated that some pigments formed extensive assemblies and that the steric and electronic properties of the molecules predicted the degree to which they would assemble.

The PARC scientists have already taken the next step toward a practical solar device.  Along with Pratim Biswas, PhD, the Lucy and Stanley Lopata Professor and chair of the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering the team has demonstrated getting the pigments to self-assemble on surfaces, which is the next step in using them to design solar devices, explained Holten.

Holten cautions, “We’re not trying to make a more efficient solar cell in the next six months. Our goal instead is to develop fundamental understanding so that we can enable the next generation of more efficient solar powered devices.”

There is a very long way to go, and modeling from biology isn’t always a path to success.  But knowledge and understanding of biology is growing exponentially.  The research here offers a depth of understanding that will have an impact on further engineering efforts.

Man’s ability to grasp and understand vastly speeds up the time compared to what nature has needed to build complex organisms and systems.  This research is another example of basic research opening new doors for technology change.

Mercedes Aerodynamic Truck Side View. Click image for the largest view.

And it’s a fine looking truck.  Mercedes caught the beautiful bug for cars nearly two decades ago and looks to lead the efficiency fight for trucks with attractiveness built in.

Mercedes Aerodynamic Truck Rear View. Click image for the largest view.

Mercedes-Benz says that the 18% reduction would result in a reduction in fuel consumption amounting to almost 5% in real-life road traffic. In the case of an average mileage of 150,000 km (93,200 miles) a year this means a saving of some 2,000 liters (528 gallons US) of diesel fuel and a reduction of more than five metric tons of CO2.

Several individual measures drastically lower the wind resistance of the entire semi truck unit. A front airdam on the trailer front end reduces the distance to the tractor unit and lowers the wind resistance by one percent. Meanwhile side trim panels, which now are often seen added on to U.S. trucks, contribute an eight-percent improvement. The Mercedes units are slightly drawn-in at the front and characterized by an opening at the rear. This steers the air in the direction of the striking rear diffuser. The diffuser has the shape of a parallelogram and links up with the underbody paneling. This improves the wind resistance by one to two percent.

The newest piece is a rear end taper measuring slightly more than 400 mm (just under 16 inches) in length forming a crucial part of the aerodynamic concept. It features folding elements to facilitate access to the load compartment. The rear end taper improves wind resistance by a further seven percent.

The dimensions of the cargo bay remain the same in the design. The familiar box, in European custom is 13.6 meters in length, 2.55 meters in width and with an overall height of 4 meters – remains available for the freight, just as before. The aero trailer’s only restriction is the fact that its length measurement exceeds the currently permissible length limit by almost half a meter, due to the tail-end extension. That is a fifty states as well as Federal problem for U.S. adoption.

According to Mercedes-Benz the handling and maneuverability are not compromised by the rear taper.  This does highlight the need for changes to current statutes, as in the case of tail lifts and transportable fork-lift trucks, for instance, where exceptions of a similar magnitude are already granted, the company suggested.

The aero trailer is the flagship of the new “Truck and Trailer 7plus” initiative being launched by Mercedes-Benz. By taking a holistic approach to the tractor unit and trailer the initiative aims to considerably cut the fuel consumption even further than current models. The basis of the “Truck and Trailer 7plus” formula is the fuel consumption of the new Mercedes-Benz Actros, which more than 7% lower than its predecessor model.

In typical thorough German fashion tests in the wind tunnel and on the road prove that considerable further consumption progress is possible for semi-trailer tractors. As an example, measurements taken in the wind tunnel at Mercedes-Benz have shown that a side trim panel on the trailer cuts wind resistance by 8%.  More proof of this can be seen on all U.S. truck routes with all those new side skirts.

The Europeans have what’s called the “Record Run Route”, a kind of real life test where the new truck design at 40 metric tons (88,000 lbs.) improved 2%, saving about 750 liters (165 gallons) of fuel.

Mercedes has pushed for a working group of truck and trailer manufacturers under the umbrella of the German Association of the Automotive Industry, which has carried out further tests on the aerodynamics of semi-trailer tractors. Within the framework of the study, measurements in the wind tunnel at Mercedes-Benz concluded that modifications to the cab such as a supposedly aerodynamic extension result in merely minimal improvements where wind resistance is concerned.

They also learned there is much more potential in aerodynamic measures at the tail end of the trailer; a minor extension of the tail end in the form of a “boat tail” brings significant benefits. Four flaps measuring just 400 mm in length and positioned at an angle reduce the wind resistance of the entire semi-trailer tractor by nearly 10%. In arithmetical terms this corresponds to virtually 3% less fuel consumption or more than 1,000 liters of diesel a year. This is also shown by the simulations, which have been carried out for the aero trailer.

Mercedes-Benz is working on further measures in its “Truck and Trailer 7plus” initiative aimed at lowering fuel consumption.  One of the projects involves the inclusion of information on the trailer’s tires in the tire pressure display in the cab of the new Actros truck line.

Now others have been working at truck aerodynamics for decades, but the economics of capital cost, labor, insurance and other costs have to be included.  But a steady diet of +$4 diesel will push a lot more capital to lower fuel consumption.

Meanwhile, shipping costs have had an important impact on the cost of goods we buy.  So any improvement will be appreciated.

When efficiency and utility look as good as Mercedes has managed, those lower costs can’t come soon enough.