TU Delft in the Netherlands and Universidad Rey Juan Carlos of Spain researchers have a concept developed for the efficient catalytic cracking of unsaturated vegetable oil to greatly increase the production of gasoline and light olefins such as propane and butane. The scientists’ paper on their work was published in the journal ChemSusChem on Aug 4th 2008.

The team seems to have a novel take on the catalysts metallic structure.  By incorporating nickel onto a base commercial fluid catalytic cracking process (FCC) called equilibrium catalyst or ECat and co-feeding hydrogen into the reaction system under realistic FCC operations (525 °C, 1.1 atm), the team found that gasoline production increased 32% relative to the standard ECat. That is a massive improvement in gasoline molecule production worthy of some serious note.

Fluid Catalyst Cracking Vegetable Oil to Gasoline. Adding nickel and co-feeding H2 increased gasoline yield 32% relative to a conventional catalyst.

Contrasting to that the scientists learned that incorporating platinum with our without co-feeding hydrogen, was detrimental both to oil conversion and molecule selectivity.  This information closes a door to the very expensive platinum component often thought to be the highest form of metallic catalyst performance.  The scientists are quoted saying in a conclusion a “judicious choice of metal” is vital for performance during vegetable oil cracking.

The matter remains about coming up with hydrogen for the unit.  As adding hydrogen is a common process in most oil refineries using usually a steam process the technology is readily available.  The authors say in the study:

“This approach can be very promising and economical by utilizing recycle system for in-situ hydrogen produced to eliminate the hydrogen requirement from other sources. This concept can also lead to another potential application: co-processing of vegetable oils together with heavier petroleum feedstocks that contain metal, especially nickel, contaminants.”

“In that case, the great advantage is that metal incorporation onto the base FCC catalyst is not required while at the same time gasoline production from the vegetable oil fraction can be enhanced by exploiting the metal deposits present in the petroleum feedstock. These findings may certainly stimulate interest for directing future research in the rational design of new FCC catalysts for the production of biofuels.”

The paper has an interesting introduction that alternative fuel people might want to keep in mind.  There are several main ways to convert biomass to renewable fuels.  The list isn’t comprehensive but does get the main efforts into a short list.
·    Bioalcohols such as ethanol from the fermentation of sugars;
·    Transesterification of plant-based oils or animal fats to biodiesel;
·    Hydrotreatment of vegetable oils to renewable (“green”) diesel;
·    Pyrolysis of biomass to bio-oil, and its upgrading;
·    Gasification of biomass via Fischer-Tropsch synthesis via syngas; and
·    Catalytic cracking of vegetable oils to gasoline, diesel and light olefins similar to the standard FCC process in refineries.

The authors note that, “Depending on the feedstock type, some of the above-mentioned processes are already commercially available, but except for the FCC of vegetable oils, only the fermentation process is directly designed for gasoline (replacement) production. In addition, some of the processes above are still under development because they are very energy- and capital-intensive.”

The advantage for the new FCC process is pointed out by saying, “Thus, catalytic cracking of biomass (e.g., vegetable oils) is the only process that is able to directly produce gasoline, along with diesel and light olefins components. Furthermore, the compatibility of vegetable oil processing with the existing infrastructure of the standard FCC process makes this process much more economically feasible than other methods.”

The point being made hinges on the fact that FCC is a process with extensive support now for the oil refining business including materials and parts, experienced operators and a fully developed market.

The questions lie in the cost of operation – does feeding an FCC using vegetable oil run at higher or lower cost compared to crude and can vegetable oil source at or below the price of crude oil?  At about $2.00 per gallon for crude many vegetable oils could profitably get to an FCC for conversion and marketing.

Fluid Catalytic Cracking is a technology that many thought peaked in development several times over the past decades, but FCC just keeps on giving.  The Europeans have made a significant contribution expanding the use of FCC and there should be a high probability the new catalysts might see commercial use.

Go here to see the original: New Energy and Fuel

The BP well blowout, fire, explosion and platform collapse, and the ensuing crude oil leak are without doubt the result of human failings.  Underestimating the quality of the reservoir is one reason, perhaps some engineering choices and safety oversights, inadequate equipment, testing that didn’t work out in the real world and all the rest only show that human planning can come up short.

Now that its over this writer can recoil from the anger felt as the catastrophe unfolded.  Yes, the well getting away is cause No. 1 – something that has happened before and will happen again – hopefully with more and more infrequency.  The lessons keep coming – from drilling into the earth since Drake’s day; the pressures down there can surprise you.

But the sorrow of the lives lost was quickly overcome by the shear idiocy of the media and political response.  There has been essentially no worthy information making the mainstream press or incorporated into political activity.  The reverse is the fact – misinformation is rampant and the consequences, not counting the loss of life itself is simply incredible.

The President’s behavior has been an utter failure – doing far more damage than the oil itself.  The offshore drilling ban is keeping 50,000 jobs without paychecks topping $2 billion in payroll losses alone, not counting the effect throughout the local economy in the situation where the major economic engine, tourism, disappeared.  The President’s action wasn’t just foolish, but cruelly focused on a few innocents, thoughtless and without any kind of leadership or sense of responsibility to the local area or the nation as a whole.  The reaction actually fed the media hysteria – a fault beyond forgiving in a leader.  No gulf beach trips and minigolf photoshoots will take away the realization the President is out of his league.

In the meantime property values are gong to be hit with incomes going down.  From Texas to Florida the tourism business is in shambles and may take years to recover.

There are many reports that no one is buying Gulf seafood, even in areas unaffected by the spill. Gulf Coast shrimpers and fishermen are in a tough spot: On the one hand, as more areas of the Gulf are declared safe, they presumably won’t be able to collect compensation from BP or the government and will have to get back to work; on the other hand, no one’s buying their catch. Given the public fear of toxins in food, this problem could last a long time.  But this writer is buying – Gulf seafood – if you can find it, hasn’t been so reasonably priced in decades.

For the future perhaps the most important lesson is the current administration can’t be trusted to act in the national interest.  Bans, moratoriums and other fear based knee-jerk reactions have spoiled regulatory certainty, which will exact a huge cost from oil firms, their shareholders, management and employees and in particular we consumers. Some insider reports suggest that oil assets in the Gulf are already being disposed of at fire-sale prices.  Fear leading fear, just what an economic recovery can not stand.

The most damning realization is the most liberal administration in American history is composed of people who lack the reflexive skepticism that intelligence and science apply to the mainstream media and those left-wing blogs. Spend some time following the reporting and blogging on Deepwater Horizon, and you come to realize that the administration’s behavior in the crisis likely wasn’t based on a cynical progressive master plan.  The administration was overwhelmed by sheer emotional panic about the magnitude of the potential disaster it faced as outlined by its most loyal supporters.  Embarrassing to thoughtful knowledgeable citizens.

Here is why.  What President Obama called the “worst environmental disaster America has ever faced” – the oil has pretty much already disappeared into the environment.  The disaster was a man made broad-based failure on the part of the media, the science establishment, and the federal bureaucracy. With the nation and its leaders looking for facts, information was replaced with a massive plume of apocalyptic disinformation and threats of losing a significant part of the coastline to the goo.

While the leaking oil was terrible in many resects the magnitude was vastly over wrought.  In June a slick computer-modeled animated video showed a gigantic part of the spill making its way around the southern tip of Florida and up the East Coast. Oil covered everything from the Gulf to the Grand Banks.  The New York Daily News said, “BP Oil Slick Could Hit East Coast In Weeks: Government Scientists.”  CBS, MSNBC and many others followed on.  The video was a huge YouTube hit.  It was one of history’s most successful news frauds from the National Center for Atmospheric Research – paid for by taxpayers.  Then the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) disavowed the scenario.  Too late, who ever hears about the recantations when the media screws up?

Watson Technical Consulting of Savannah, Ga. a firm specializing in computer modeling of the effects of hurricanes, seismic events, geophysical hazards, and weapons of mass destruction asserts the simulation was bogus from the very beginning, because it ignored important conditions in the Gulf. Furthermore, says Chuck Watson, the media never took account of how diluted the oil would be once it got around Florida, through the Gulf Stream and finally got to the Atlantic: The bulk of the theoretically massive spill the video shows amounts to roughly a quart of oil per square mile. Watson claims flat-out that NOAA was “gold digging” for grants as there’s probably more federal research money floating around the Gulf than there is oil. “There is a feeding frenzy with people trying to get funding for their specialty,” he said.  Never let a disaster go wasted or some such cleverness from the administration – does that sound like people that can be trusted?

The coffin for this writer was the “Giant Plumes” of oil.  Here the lying got very creative and flunked high school general science class.  Halfway into May coming up with oil on the surface was getting problematic so some marine researchers were drafted to provide the answer.  Water tests were showing oil in small quantities under the water’s surface from wave action, but how much no one could say nor, obviously, was there any peer reviewed literature to check on the known facts.

Media reports implied and even tried to assert that “enormous oil plumes” were waiting, like nuclear submarines, to rise and attack unsuspecting beaches and wetlands. The New York Times summed up the media consensus on May 15: “Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide, and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.” The article quoted Samantha Joye, a marine-sciences professor at the University of Georgia, as saying that this oil was mixed with water in the consistency of “thin salad dressing.”  Except there weren’t any plumes at all, let alone any ‘salad dressing’ type stuff.

By the end of May NOAA, where some grownups still have responsibility, released a study finding weak concentrations of oil in the area surrounding the Deepwater Horizon site at only 0.5 parts per million, maximum. The median was a little over 0.2 parts per million.

Again as the “giant” spill that threatened the East Coast, that’s barely above the threshold of detection.  By late July and early August, BP, the Federal Government, and some independent researchers were saying they couldn’t find any plumes at all. “We’re finding hydrocarbons around the well, but as we move away from the well, they move to almost background traces in the water column,” said Admiral Thad Allen, the administration’s point man on the spill. By then some 75 percent of the oil released is gone – and that’s based on new estimates that put the spill rate at the high end of earlier projections.

The giant-plume threat was greatly overstated by scientists and further blown out of proportion by the media. This writer believes those ‘scientists’ are not scientists at all.  As everyone who passed high school general science knows, oil is lighter than water and rises above it in all known situations on this planet. The idea of underwater plumes defies everything that we know about the physical laws on earth.  It’s been a great source of irritation and anger for weeks.  It’s a very good thing the notion is so incredibly dumb that its funny – but watching people report it is to see a stunning display of ignorance.  Are there no fact checkers left in the mass media?

The Gulf of Mexico and some of the coast of California are warm ecological systems where oil seeps are part of the food chain.  The leak was a bonanza for oil eating bacteria and the bacteria bonanza will work its way up the food chain with its abundance.  While the leak was perhaps a four-fold increase in the annual oil supply to the Gulf, the natural ecosystem adjusted quite well and as seen decades ago in the Mexican leak – it’s a very short-term matter. Truly it’s a disaster not to be left unused – by bacteria.

Dispersants turn thick, ugly slicks into widely distributed droplets, minimizing damage to beaches and sensitive wetlands.  When slicks are broken up the light oil parts evaporate, and the bacteria more easily eat the heavier parts.  Corexit is thought to be the major dispersant used in the treatment – something you shouldn’t spray directly on coral, marshlands or other living things as it’s a detergent like chemical.  Corexit has made lots of disinformation news too, even being a subject for a Congressional hearing.  But the EPA who recently started proceedings to make milk spills hazardous material type events has approved Corexit in supervised use.  In a reality check using dispersants is to break up oil before it gets to shore, piles up and gets out of the water – where the oil breakdown slows down and gets quite messy for wildlife and the flora.  It’s a very good thing the EPA kept its act together and the disbursements flowing – an issue of debate that did have some suspense.

Finally, this writer has a question for everyone – where is the link to the reputable gulf shrimp supplier – I’d like a five gallon bucket full, packed in dry ice for a 3 day UPS ground trip. A shrimp feast might make the anger recede a little more.

In closing, people lost their lives and condolences are due their families and herewith are heartfelt given.  Jobs are lost, suffering and troubles are mounting, so this writer is speaking out for you and will be your customer again.

The disaster isn’t about oil anymore, it’s the impact of media and politics – something that should and could be fixed in just a few words by just one man.  Do you think it will happen?

Here is the original: New Energy and Fuel

In an article titled “Feedstocks for Lignocellulosic Biofuels” published in Science, Chris Somerville of the University of California, Berkeley, and Deputy Director Steve Long of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with bioenergy analysts Caroline Taylor, Heather Youngs and Sarah Davis at the Energy Biosciences Institute suggest that a diversity of plant species, adaptable to the climate and soil conditions of specific regions of the world, can be used to develop “agroecosystem” for fuel production that are compatible with contemporary environmental goals.

Well, press release and research notes aside, they mean that there can be a set of plant species that could provide substantial amounts of biomass grown widely across the planet without an impact on food and feed production.  The troubled firm BP, well before the Gulf well crisis, funded the study.

The study authors discuss the sustainability of current and future crops that could be used to produce advanced biofuels with emerging technologies that use non-edible parts of plants. Such crops include perennial grasses like Miscanthus grown in the rain-fed areas of the U.S. Midwest, East and South; sugarcane in Brazil and other tropical regions, including the southeastern U.S.; Agave in semiarid regions such as Mexico and the U.S. Southwest; and woody biomass from various sources.

The team takes some assumptive license by making some simplifying assumptions: that technology will become available for converting most of the structural polysaccharides that comprise the bodies of plants to sugars, that all the sugars can be used for fuel production, and that the process energy required for the conversion of the sugars to fuels will be obtained from combustion of the other components of the biomass, mostly the lignin.  That way a sugar-to-ethanol bioconversion process using current technology, a metric ton (MT) of switchgrass or poplar, for example, would be expected to yield about 310 liters of ethanol.

The author’s base is founded on the comparative soil impacts.  Maize or corn plants used completely remove much more soil fertility than a perennial plant.  Perennial plants that use C4 photosynthesis, such as sugarcane, energy cane, elephant grass, switchgrass, and Miscanthus, have intrinsically high light, water, and nitrogen use efficiency as compared with that of C3 species as seen in corn.  Moreover reduced tillage and perennial root systems add carbon to the soil and protect against erosion.

While the team reports that tropical Napier Grass in El Salvador natural stands of Echinochloa polystachya on the Amazon floodplain can respectively reach production of 88 and 100 MT/ha/year, temperate Miscanthus x giganteus produced in England at 52°N a peak biomass of 30 MT/ha/year and harvestable biomass of 20 MT/ha/year. (ha is hectare, 2.47 ha per U.S. acre) Miscanthus also offers an important soil protection effect, seasonality leads to an annual cycle of senescence, in which perennial grasses such as Miscanthus mobilize mineral nutrients from the stem and leaves to the roots at the end of the growing season. Thus, harvest of biomass during the winter results in relatively low rates of removal of minerals.

That could account for the observation that stands grown at Rothamsted, UK showed no response to added nitrogen during a 14-year period during which all biomass was removed each year.  In side-by-side trials in central Illinois, unfertilized M. x giganteus produced 60% more biomass than a well-fertilized highly productive maize crop, and across the state, winter-harvestable yields averaged 30 MT/ha/year.

Miscanthis US Growing Area Map. Click image for more info.

The author’s note in an observation that if Miscanthus were used as the only feedstock, less than half of the 14.2 Mha currently set aside for the U.S. Conservation Reserve Program  (CRP) would be required to deliver the ethanol mandate of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.  Contrary to that readers should be informed that a great chunk of the CRP land area is tiny little headlands, terraces, protective filters along watercourses and the like.  But there are vast amounts of highly erodeable land that could better serve the economy than being used for corn or soybean production.

Its worthwhile to note that as the authors seem to overlook some details they turned up others.  The Global Potential of Bioenergy on Abandoned Agriculture Lands published in 2008 reveals that more than 600 Mha of land worldwide has fallen out of agricultural production, mostly in the last 100 years.

Most readers will know that for tropical production sugarcane isn’t beaten yet and won’t most likely.  Harvested cane arrives with the sugar in liquid form ready for fermentation and the plant remnants can be burned for distillation with power left over for the electric grid.  Many other regions of the world beyond Brazil are also well suited to sugarcane production or formerly produced sugarcane on land that has been abandoned. Thus, “the total amount of fuel that may be produced from sugarcane worldwide could eventually be a very substantial proportion of global transportation fuels.” As the authors seem to be aware – the potential in sugarcane defies calculation in responsible numbers for now.

Approximately 18% of the earth’s surface is semi-arid and prone to drought.  The authors suggest various Agave species that thrive under arid and semi-arid conditions with high efficiencies of water use and drought resistance hold a potential opportunity for production of biomass for fuels.  Agave species that thrive under arid and semi-arid conditions by using a type of photosynthesis called Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) that strongly reduces the amount of water transpired by absorbing CO2 during the cold desert night and then internally assimilating this into sugars through photosynthesis during the warmer days.  By opening their stomata at night, they lose far less water than they would during the day.  Much of the land noted in the Global Potential of Bioenergy on Abandoned Agriculture Lands that has fallen out of agricultural production worldwide is semi-arid, and it appears that the amount of land that may be available for cultivation of Agave species is vast.

The research paper points out that about 89 to 107 Mha of land that were formerly in agriculture globally are now in forests and urban areas.  The authors bravely note the biomass that is harvested annually in the Northern Hemisphere for wood products has an energy content equivalent to approximately 107% of the liquid fuel consumption in the United States.  Wood resources provide regionally specific opportunities for sustainably harvested biomass feedstocks.  That explains the Chevron and Weyerhaeuser deal for biomass.

For this summary its important to note one more point the authors took the time to briefly discuss.  It is inevitable that some mineral soil nutrients will be removed when biomass is harvested, it will be essential to recycle mineral nutrients, which are not consumed in the production of biofuels, from biomass-processing facilities back onto the land. That is virtually all of the minerals.  It needs to be a built in cost before soils are degraded further by any new biomass effort.

This writer’s summary leaves a lot out from the published study including the references, the supporting documentation and the available links.  For this article Science has free registration, an opportunity cost well worth the small effort.

The authors did a good job here, but left a lot out.  There are lots more plants to consider, but the local weather and soils are going to decide what farming can accomplish and the profit for production will in the end decide.  This writers main concern is that highly profitable biomass could displace prime food and feedstock land and force food and feedstock production onto the less optimal soils.  Some oversight, as oppressive as it is – is going to be needed to balance the demands with the conditions – something competition isn’t going to get done.

Original post here: New Energy and Fuel

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An impressive idea is out in the International Journal of Energy Research from the University of Leeds and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The research group has invented a new way to answer quick peak electricity demands.

Peak demand and particularly quick and short-lived peaks are when demand for electricity soars, causing a problem for electric grid operators.  The amount of electricity drawn from national grids varies enormously at different times of day. It usually peaks in the early evening for a couple of hours after homes are occupied from people leaving school and work.  But it’s the short duration peaks that cause such concern.  Those common spikes turn up after major televised sporting events, during commercial breaks and in the morning hours.  It’s ‘the everyone hits the microwave and refrigerator’ and those industrial startups with homemakers staring the clothes dryer moments that pull down the available volts and amps.

Grid operators matching the highs and lows in demand with a steady supply is a major challenge. The companies typically top up a ‘base’ supply of energy with electricity from power plants that are just switched on to cope with the peaks. But those natural gas-fired generators often used to feed these peaks are notoriously inefficient, expensive to run and sit idle for long periods of time.  The system as it works now is both energy consumption dense and financially consumes lots of money for very little operating time.  Answering peaks is a huge chunk of your power bill.

Professor Tulong Ding. Click image for more informartion.

University of Leeds Professor of Engineering, Yulong Ding, and colleagues are proposing a more environmentally friendly system that could also be much cheaper to run.

Of crucial significance, the system would store excess energy made by a plant supplying the ‘base’ demand and use this to supply the ‘peaks’ in demand – as and when they happen.  The clever boffins of the UK and China have a fascinating take on forming a fuel to store energy.

The practice is to use excess electricity to run a unit producing liquid nitrogen and oxygen – or ‘cryogen’ from right out of the atmosphere. At times of peak demand, the nitrogen would be reheated to a boil – using waste heat from the power plant heat and as needed from the environment.   Step one: the hot nitrogen gas would then be used to drive a turbine or engine, generating the peak demand’s ‘top up’ electricity.

Step two: the oxygen would be fed to a combustor to mix with the natural gas before it is burned. Burning natural gas in pure oxygen, rather than air, makes the combustion process more efficient and produces almost no nitrogen oxide. Instead, the ‘oxygen + fuel’ combustion method produces a concentrated stream of carbon dioxide that can be removed easily in solid form as dry ice.  Clean, neat and the only effluent would be what’re produced when making the cryogen.  Smartly managed with adequate storage, the efficiency could be quite high.

Operating an integrated system with cryogen and the down process methods the amount of fuel needed to answer peak demand could be cut by as much as 50%. Greenhouse gas emissions would be lower too, thanks to the greatly reduced nitrogen oxide emissions and the capture of carbon dioxide gas in solid form for sale.  The base production efficiency if effluent free would make peak demand effluent free as well.  It’s an elegant, innovative and simple design that begs the question how could this not have been thought of before?

Professor Ding said, “This is a much better way of dealing with these peaks in demand for electricity. Greenhouse gas emissions would also be cut considerably because the carbon dioxide generated in the gas-fired turbine would be captured in solid form. On paper, the efficiency savings are considerable. We now need to test the system in practice.”

Technically speaking the new system combines a direct open nitrogen (cryogen) expansion cycle with a natural gas-fuelled closed Brayton cycle and the CO2 produced in the system is captured in the form of dry ice.  Thermodynamic analyses were carried out on the system under the baseline conditions of 1 kg s−1 natural gas, a combustor operating pressure of 8 bars and a cryogen topping pressure of 100 bars. The results show that the energy efficiency of the proposed system is as high as 64% under the baseline conditions, whereas the corresponding electricity storage efficiency is about 54%, an 10% gain or nearly a 20% improvement.

A sensitivity analysis has also been carried out on the main operating conditions. The results indicate that the baseline performance can be enhanced by increasing the gas turbine inlet temperature, decreasing the approach temperature of the heat exchange processes, operating the combustor at an optimal pressure of ~7 bars and operating the cryogen topping pressure at ~90 bars. Further enhancement can be achieved by increasing the isentropic efficiency of the gas turbine and the liquefaction process. The results of this work also suggest that the power capacity installation of peak-load units and fuel consumption could be reduced by as much as 50% by using the newly proposed system. Further work is suggested for an economic analysis of the system.

The engineering choices for a working design are a huge list with lots of variables to work through for different situations.  The outstanding point is the existing generating capacity could fuel up for the peaks leaving the whole investment for fresh fuel sourced peak demand generation out of the cost equation.  It’s a superb idea with lots of potential, not just for power plants either.

Here is the original post: New Energy and Fuel

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This writer was asked in an email a couple days ago about what the non-committed, seemingly idealism free, and generally pro commerce view is here about incentives for energy and fuel production.

It is an arena fraught with special interests of every stripe including the environment itself to the consumers ranging from wealthy to dirt poor.  The principle is here and always will be to get the most abundant supplies at the lowest possible cost.  Competitive Capitalism, not just capitalism that’s in bed with government doing the business on the sly, but out in the open, everyone gets the same deal from government – competition.

Which leads back to the principle of patents.  Now admittedly the law as dictated by special interests has diluted the value of a patent unless your situation matches well with the special interests that have hooked the law to their advantage, but the concept of exclusivity has a parallel for incentives.

So here is this writer’s take on incentives.  For new products, not services please note and mind carefully on this point; just products get a period, such as with a patent’s exclusivity that would be tax-free.  Consumers might even get an income tax deduction for buying such stuff. Put progress in high gear with high power.

Say two decades, or twenty years for no income tax, employee matching FICA, excise or other taxes for the new product’s business.  For everything, energy, widgets, you name it.  New products in new companies get two decades of freedom from taxation.  It’s time for a “tax patent policy”.

Ready to fight, got a better idea, or want to poke holes in the concept?  That’s what comments are for.  Change, modify, reject, everyone except spammers gets to have their say.  No cussin’ or you’ll get deleted.  No personal affronts either. Be nice.

Some will notice straight off that some products like software have product lives of just a few years.  That’s OK.  Just cut the averaged tax in half for say 10 year, or 25% for 5-year product life cycles.  So long as everyone gets the prize for the risk.  That’s the whole point – put an incentive on taking risk.

What has everything on slow or stop isn’t the quality of ideas.  It’s the potential between the loss of the time and money against the payoff from a risk.  Take out 35%  tax of profiting and the payoff picture looks very different indeed.

Moreover, wanting to get or losing an earned tax-free product puts intense focus on new better and cheaper products – a boon to research. Humans tend to want to be safe, but put an economy on safe with growth and better products plus lower costs and the need for innovation will explode.  It supports the emotional side of the mind as well.  New, better, faster, cheaper, has great appeal – the intellect needs stimulation to do better – not crawl into a hole and pull over a rock with a weapon poking out to fight off anyone with an advantage.

Maybe you’re thinking ‘that writer is a perverse bugger’ and maybe so, we’re talking incentives here, trying to get people to do things they would otherwise postpone or pass over.  What matters is to get human energy moving and making contributions.  That ‘Hu’ thing noticeable in some TV ads doesn’t have legs to travel.  But a product with a twenty-year tax-free status, maybe reaching to the employees, management and consumers surely will.

Lastly, one might kick in a special deal for everyone instead of a special interest set.  Let’s say your product at the tenth year costs half as much – give that product an extra ten years!  Better faster cheaper, right.

That’s enough, past 600 words.  A seed is set; ‘tax patent policy’ is out now.  This writer’s snowball has just been pitched into hell.  Lets see what the devils can do with it.

Author: New Energy and Fuel

This year will see the GM Volt and Nissan Leaf go on sale and likely deliver to buyers following the Tesla Roadster success with electric motors connected to the driving wheels.  The two are of three very different designs representing the three main manufactured groups of choices we’ll see.  Then there are the Do It Yourself crowd’s ideas that likely will find some role in the manufactured area someday.

Its been a long time coming, electrified personal transport is far to sensible to overlook, particularly in energy efficiency, but as manufacturing volumes go up, the basic personal investment needed will come down, too.

Volt Leaf Prius Tesla

The two cars are opening rounds for the three main types.  Hybrids that are powered by fuels, fueled hybrids that plug in to the grid and fully plugged in vehicles with no fuel for extending range.  They are very different paths to personal transport.

Some 20+ models of hybrids powered by fuels are on the market now soaking up about 2.3% of U.S. new car sales, down from 2.8% a year ago.  The Toyota Prius takes about half of the market.  The Prius is the model for many, its fueled without a grid connection, gets better than 50 mpg highway and sells in the high $20K range.  Most of the other 25 models work much the same – all the energy comes from the fuel – the energy is simply handled more efficiently.

The GM Volt is expected to sell at $41K before dealers gouge the first buyer group.  The Volt can be plugged in to the grid – replacing gasoline with generated power for the first miles of a trip.  For most trips that could be all grid energy.  The Volt does have serious appeal on this point.

The Nissan Leaf is much more daring.  Less complex than the Volt, no generation set is aboard; the Leaf relies on the plug in to get energized.   With 24kWh of battery capacity fully loaded and kind weather that capacity will satisfy a huge segment of the driving public.  The price will be some anxiety on range and perhaps some new habits, like plugging in.  The Leaf is thought to be sold out already.  Some say the Nissan dealers are more decent about price than the GM dealers.  The sales when deliveries begin promise to be interesting. Then the owner reports will be critical for the future.  Who gets stopped on ‘E’ looking for a plug or a tow and why will matter to the rest of us.

The Leaf also cracks the $400 per kWh battery price point.  The Times of London is reporting that Nissan can load the battery at under $9,000US. But Nissan has an advantage – the sales volume is set across much of the world instead of just the U.S.  Without internal combustion engine emissions compliance, variations across markets for the standardization gets much simpler, which cuts back on engineering, tooling and parts costs.

The GM Volt rumors have the Volt’s battery estimated at near $600 kWh.  The U.S.’s Advanced Battery consortium has a target of $400 by the mid 2010s.  Even more significant is Nissan is using air-cooling for the batteries while others, significantly the Volt, using liquid cooling – again simplifying and cutting costs.  The maintenance of air over liquid will be a long-term advantage for owners, too.  No surprise here, the Japanese have been crushing U.S. makes for decades, and the trend looks to continue.

These observations will take second seat to the customer’s ideas of what’s important.  Nissan trumpets some wild numbers for the equivalent miles per gallon.  That’s a topic yet to be standardized and when it is – it will be complex.  Owners will get to compare the power bill for a month over a chosen previous month with the earlier periods gasoline bill for hard numbers.  It will be cheaper.  Lots less money if done smartly.

The problem that can come up is range.  The needs in the car’s cabin are going to drive engineers a little nuts trying to come up with heat and air conditioning.  Leaf and other full plug ins are going to need some serious effort at getting to less energy demand for the vehicles interior.  Hybrids with generator sets are going to have a perceived advantage if not a deal making advantage.

Finally the incentives – the Prius seems to miss the Federal tax credit of $7,500.  That tax credit requires an adjusted gross income better than $55K for single filers or $74K for married couples.  That might slip when the tax rates go back up – but not a huge amount – leaving a huge part of the market out of the deal.  This will hurt many for the benefit of a few.  The tax credit idea might haunt manufacturers for years.

For better than one hundred years racing has lead automobile technology.  For the electrification of personal transport the racing crowd has started in and may offer some great ideas soon.  If anything electric vehicles are entertaining.  While one isn’t seeing 500-mile races the ¼ mile accelerating ‘drag race’ is seeing lots of innovation.  While battery or ultracapacitors could bring the long milage races into reality, the drag race is the scene for now.  And it’s quite a scene.

What follows is the ‘White Zombie’ from Oregon that has gone through the quarter mile from a dead stop to 117.23 miles per hour in just 10.4 seconds.  That’s supercar/musclecar territory.  Owned, built and driven by John Wayland the 1972 Datsun (now Nissan) has been a project for 16 years.  The Datsun sports a 22.7 kWh lithium manganese cobalt polymer pack battery running at 355.2 volts.  In the video the Datsun is paired to a Nissan GT-R supercar with 485 horsepower.  For the run Wayland boosted the power to 1800 amps and the motor current to 2000 amps.  Poor GT-R, not fair is it?

Original post created by: New Energy and Fuel

HAI, the leading manufacturer of integrated automation and security products since 1985, announced today that the OmniTouch 10pe (HAI part number 94A00-1) is now shipping from Home Controls!

“HAI’s 10pe Touchscreen is lighter, thinner, and has enhanced screen resolution with no increase in price,” explained HAI President, Jay McLellan.

HAI’s OmniTouch 10pe is a dedicated home control Touchscreen. The portable 10.4″ Ethernet based Wi-Fi Touchscreen provides easy access to manage the home’s security, lighting, temperature, audio/video and more. The 10pe can view IP cameras without any extra equipment and analog cameras with HAI’s Camera Server (part number 87A00-1).

Although the product ships with a default user interface, the interface is fully customizable using HAI’s Automation Studio software (part number 1126). Dealers can develop a graphic user interface based upon the homeowner’s lifestyle and interests. Simple updates like removing a button or more involved applications like adding a floorplan can be accomplished with Automation Studio.

HAI’s 10pe can be set up as a room controller without the need for a full-blown home control system. Using the HAI Home Theater Extender (part number 86A00-1) and the aforementioned Automation Studio, any room can be automated including home theaters, corporate boardrooms, or school classrooms. One button push can close the curtains, lower a screen, and turn on the appropriate Audio/Video equipment.

The OmniTouch 10pe features a 10.4″ XGA high-resolution TFT LCD screen and a rechargeable lithium ion smart battery. Also included are a built-in stand and stylus. A docking cradle (HAI part number 94A01-1) is also available.

A limited number of the OmniTouch 10p (HAI part number 67A00-1) are still available, at a clearance sale of 25% off! Read more »

• See the entire HAI product line @ Home Controls

Original post created by: Home Controls

Luca Technologies harnesses natural processes to sustainably produce natural gas.  The Golden, Colo. based company has developed a process to generate and then extract more natural gas from depleted coalbed methane wells by injecting water, microbes, and nutrients into the coal seams. The company is now pursuing permitting in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin to expand pilot testing of its technology.

Luca CEO Robert Pfeiffer says he anticipates that Luca will get permits for larger-scale pilot projects of “restoring” existing wells in the next four to six months.  Luca, one of many start-up companies pursuing technologies to make fossil fuels cleaner has acquired 1,350 coalbed methane wells, which have been sold by their original owners because they are no longer productive enough.

The principle Luca exploits is anaerobic microbes living in subsurface coal, gas, oil and shale reserves for millions of years, feeding on hydrogen-rich organic matter and producing natural gas. Commercial drilling and extraction exposes these anaerobic microorganisms to oxygen by taking water out of the formations and removing essential nutrients that support microbial growth. As a result, the production of biogenic natural gas slows or in some cases ceases. Over time, water is replaced in the geologic formation by natural recharge providing an environment that allows the microbes to once again produce natural gas at low rates.

Luca uses its proprietary technology to restore formation habitats to conditions that enable existing microbes to produce economically significant rates of natural gas at accelerated production volumes.  Then the company harvests this newly created natural gas and delivers it to the national grid via the existing pipeline from the pre depletion era of the wells.

Luca Technologies Underground Process. Click image for more info.

Unlike the oil and gas industry’s extraction methods in which production peaks then steeply declines as stored hydrocarbons are depleted, Luca “gas farms” can reliably produce low-cost clean energy for decades and reuse existing wells and infrastructure to create, extract and transport the natural gas.

How big a deal could this be?  Pfeiffer explains, “Farming” natural gas from depleted wells in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana alone could produce more gas than the annual consumption in the U.S., said Pfeiffer. Microbes have converted one-hundredth of 1 percent of the coal into methane in existing wells. Luca has reached 3 percent conversion in its labs, which would not happen in actual wells but it reflects the potential of the process.  It could be a very big deal indeed.

The potential, which raised $76 million in equity in late 2008 for Luca, of tapping this stranded natural gas in coalbed methane wells is significant.

When Luca identifies a depleting area or well as a natural gas farming candidate, it withdraws water from the well, transfers it to a mobile nutrient module to replenish essential vitamins and nutrients vital to sustaining microbial community health. The water is then recycled back into the well through existing infrastructure and the mobile nutrient module is moved to other wells to provide nourishment to new subsurface habitats.

Luca then temporarily shuts in the well for an average of one month to allow natural microbial populations to flourish. During this “dwell” period, the now activated microbes begin producing significant amounts of natural gas. Luca harvests the natural gas using the existing system. This cycle of restoration and harvesting enables Luca to produce natural gas from depleting wells for decades.

Its long been known that a portion of natural gas is produced by naturally occurring subsurface microorganisms. Luca’s founders discovered that certain coalbeds, organic-rich shales and oil and gas reserves were teeming with microbial life capable of producing economic and commercially significant volumes of natural gas. Based upon this discovery, Luca founders recognized that integrating the disciplines of oil and gas with biotechnology could produce a solution to the global demand for clean, affordable energy.

Here’s a list of nutrients Luca uses in its natural gas farming process in the Powder River Basin to replenish underground habitats depleted by previous drilling operators: Minerals of calcium added as calcium chloride, magnesium added as magnesium chloride, phosphate added from magnesium phosphate, phosphoric acid, calcium phosphate, sodium phosphate, potassium phosphate, or sodium tripolyphosphate, potassium added as potassium chloride.  Vitamin B-12, Niacin, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Biotin, Pantothenic Acid, Folate are added.  Proteins and perhaps activators, casein hydrolyzates, yeast extract, brewer’s yeast, soy protein, and peptones.

Looks like a nutritionist’s prescription, but Luca isn’t done yet.  Add in some vitality things like glycerol, weak organic acids, formic acid, acetic acid, propionic acid, butyric acid, lactic acid and decanoic acid.  A smorgasbord of supplements!

One has to wonder, just what does a concoction cost to treat a well, how often does a well need to be fed again, does the feeding peak with production running along on its own, and do any of the feedstocks get back to the surface for recycling?

There is an enormous amount of natural gas formation types, from landfills to deep hot rocks.  Somewhere between the extremes is an opportunity that Luca has figured out how to make pay.
If Pfeiffer is right about the potential recovery, and at least in some small part they’re correct now, the reserves in place could multiply dramatically.

Since it’s mostly all proprietary and intellectual property the hard details are out of reach.  But many a gas producer has to be looking over at Luca wondering . . . just how do I make use of that technology?  Many a consumer must be relieved as well . . . natural gas is by no means a short term fuel supply, its here to stay.

The original post: New Energy and Fuel

Researchers at LS9 have discovered an alkane biosynthesis pathway, a metabolic pathway that produces alkanes in cyanobacteria for a direct, simple conversion from plant sugar to hydrocarbon fuels.  Alkanes are the major hydrocarbon constituents of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

Using the bacteria E. coli, with the newly identified alkane operon genetics expressed, the bacteria produce and secrete C13 to C17 mixtures of alkanes and alkenes. This discovery is the first description of the genes responsible for alkane biosynthesis and the first example of a single step conversion of sugar to fuel-grade alkanes by an engineered microorganism.  The yield is in very carbon dense molecules with good hydrogen proportions.

A paper on the work was published in the July 30th issue of the journal Science.

Alkanes are naturally produced by a diverse set of species, but the genetics and biochemistry behind this biology have not been well generally well understood. The LS9 team looked into the genomes of cyanobacteria that produce alkanes in nature, evaluating many and identifying one that was not capable of producing alkanes, said Andreas Schirmer, Associate Director of Metabolic Engineering at LS9, and lead author on the paper. By comparing the genome sequences of the alkane producing with non-producing organisms, LS9 was able to identify the responsible genes.

LS9's Sugar to Fuel Organism Excretion Result. Click image for more info.

The genetics needed are an acyl–acyl carrier protein reductase and an aldehyde decarbonylase, which together convert intermediates of fatty acid metabolism to alkanes and alkenes.  The aldehyde decarbonylase is related to the broadly functional nonheme diiron enzymes.    When the genetic code is engineered into Escherichia coli, the microorganism produces and secretes the C13 to C17 mixtures of alkanes and alkenes. These genes and enzymes can now be leveraged for the simple and direct conversion of renewable raw materials to fungible hydrocarbon fuels.

Steve del Cardayre, Vice President of Research and Development said in the LS9 press release, “This is a one step sugar to diesel process that does not require elevated temperatures, high pressures, toxic inorganic catalysts, hydrogen or complex unit operations. We believe in simple processes at LS9, and the simplicity of this process has allowed us to successfully accelerate its scale-up and development.”

While other biological routes to the production of renewable hydrocarbons are emerging, these other routes require costly and energy intense chemical conversion technologies such as distillation or hydrogenation, adding significantly to the process complexity and cost.  LS9′s patent pending discovery enables the conversion of renewable biomass into fuels and chemicals without the need for these costly and energy intense chemical conversion technologies.

In addition to the alkane work, LS9 is scaling-up its production of an existing biodiesel product and a portfolio of chemicals used in making industrial and consumer products.  The new genetic code for alkanes breakthrough is consistent with LS9′s focus of developing renewable petroleum products using a proprietary one-step fermentation process that significantly reduces the costs and energy inputs.

Bill Haywood, CEO of LS9 said, “This scientific discovery made by the LS9 team is game changing for our company and the advanced biofuels industry. This remarkable breakthrough is yet another successful step in LS9′s progress toward delivering a broad portfolio of renewable fuels and chemicals to the world market as quickly as possible.”

It seems the effort is from collaboration led by researchers with the US Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute and including LS9 announced the engineering of a strain of Escherichia coli bacteria to produce biodiesel fuel and other important chemicals derived from fatty acids.  What that might mean for other production beyond LS9 isn’t being discussed.

There is a lot more starch that can be uprated to sugar and plant sugars around than most people realize.  Most are from annual crops, which supports the agricultural community.

What are missing are the efficiency numbers and other relevant to commercial scale matters.  But the ID code in bacteria is now in hand, with other organic processes sure to follow.

The notion to rely on plants to replace an 80 billion barrel a day world oil habit isn’t going to happen with any information at hand now, but if the LS9 results get to commercial scale a major dent in the world’s oil habit is in the offing with a massive shift in revenue from oil production to crop growers – a very good idea of its own.

The carbon emissions also would go into an annual recycling mode – something many environmentalists could learn to be happy with.

While the science is very high tech, the execution and operation should be common technology – something that could push fuel production out to many more locations and people – a very good thing as well.

It was a good day last week for LS9 and all the rest of us too.

Original post: New Energy and Fuel

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Green Building Certification – LEED

Green design in buildings has increased rapidly in the last few years due to the increase in energy costs. To help centralize the green building criteria, the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) developed core principles for residential and commercial buildings that are designed to lower operating costs, reduce waste, reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions, and conserve energy.  The USGBC developed LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), a rating system that serves as a third-party certification program. The numeric -point driven program evaluates a building’s total environmental performance. The number of points earned for a project determines the LEED certification level of the building. Buildings, not individual products, attain LEED certification based on the number of credits earned

U.S. Cooler offers several products to assist our customers in meeting the requirements for LEED certification.

LEED FAQs

What is LEED?

LEED is an internationally recognized green building certification system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). LEED is a 3^rd party verification system that certifies that a building or community was designed and built to improve energy savings, water efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions. This program provides the marketplace with a framework for identifying and implementing green building design and construction.

How does LEED work?

LEED is a point based system where building projects earn points for satisfying specific green building criteria. There are seven LEED credit categories that projects must satisfy to earn points towards the LEED certification. The number of points the project earns determines the level of LEED certification the project receives. LEED certification is available in four levels according to the following point structure:

There are 100 base points; 6 possible Innovation in Design and 4 Regional Priority points

Certified              40-49 points

Silver                     50-59 points

Gold                      60-79 points

Platinum              80 points and above

The allocation of points is based upon positive impacts on energy efficiency and CO2 reductions.

Regional credits acknowledge the importance of local conditions. LEED projects can earn bonus points for implementing green strategies that address the important environmental issues in the respected region.

What types of buildings could use LEED?

LEED certification is available for all building types including new construction and major renovation, existing buildings and commercial interiors.

Are there specific products that can help me achieve LEED certification?

No. Individual products are not certified for LEED usage; LEED applies to the entire project.  However, in order to meet LEED requirements products will need to have certain characteristics to achieve points for certification. There are certain elements of the LEED process that require specific product performance data to attain certification.

How much does LEED certification cost?

USGBC charges a registration fee per project of $450 for USGBC members and $600 for nonmembers. Fees for certification vary by project size but the average certification cost is about $2,000.

How do I get a project LEED certified?

The U.S. Green Building Certification Institute administers the certification process through a network of third-party certification professionals. To begin the registration process, visit www.gbci.org.

Sources: U.S. Green Building Council http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CategoryID=19

Heatcraft Refrigeration http://www.heatcraftrpd.com/res/pdf/61435_HRP_Take-the-LEED.pdf

The original is here: Cooler Connection

The RF Lighting Control System from On-Q/Legrand allows homeowners to control lights, ceiling fans and small appliances from anywhere in the home, without the need for special wiring or expensive master controllers. The system is designed to meet the lighting control requirements of residential applications including reliability, aesthetics, functionality, and ease of use and installation. Its completely scalable architecture and no-new-wire RF technology means that it is suitable for new or retrofit applications ranging from individual rooms or offices to entire residences. With a capacity of more than 100 rooms and 1,000 devices, RF Lighting Control has practically unlimited system capacity. RF Lighting Control offers a wide range of devices to extend the system functionality including IR, RS232, and Scene interfaces.

• See the complete RF Lighting Control System here!

The original post is created by: Home Controls

Stanford’s Nick Melosh, Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, seems to have cracked the problem of getting the heat of sunlight with the photons working to produce electricity in a solar cell.  That would not be just a photovoltaic; it would be infraredvoltaic plus photovoltaic.  The efficiency gets past 55% and near 60% in some configurations.  This is news.

PETE Solar Cell Test. Click image for more info

Melosh says in the Stanford press release, “This is really a conceptual breakthrough, a new energy conversion process, not just a new material or a slightly different tweak. It is actually something fundamentally different about how you can harvest energy.”

“Just demonstrating that the process worked was a big deal,” Melosh said. “And we showed this physical mechanism does exist; it works as advertised.”

Melosh’s group figured out that by coating a piece of semiconducting material with a thin layer of the metal cesium, it made the material able to use both light and heat to generate electricity.  Most silicon solar cells have been rendered inert by the time the temperature reaches 100º C; the “photon enhanced thermionic emission” device doesn’t hit peak efficiency until it is well over 200º C.  “What we’ve demonstrated is a new physical process that is not based on standard photovoltaic mechanisms, but can give you a photovoltaic-like response at very high temperatures,” Melosh said. “In fact, it works better at higher temperatures. The higher the better.”

And the materials needed to build a device to make the process work are cheap and easily available, meaning the power that comes from it will be affordable.

The process is called “photon enhanced thermionic emission,” or PETE and could reduce the costs of solar energy production enough for it to compete with oil as an energy source.  Because PETE performs best at temperatures well in excess of what a rooftop solar panel would reach, the devices will work best in solar concentrators such as parabolic dishes, which can get as hot as 800º C. Dishes are used in large solar farms similar to those proposed for the Mojave Desert in Southern California and usually include a thermal conversion mechanism as part of their design, which offers another opportunity for PETE to help generate electricity as well as minimize costs by meshing with existing technology.  There go all those plans for the huge arrays.  But its OK, getting to 60% efficiency changes the plans in a massive way as well.

Melosh explains how a PETE works, “The light would come in and hit our PETE device first, where we would take advantage of both the incident light and the heat that it produces, and then we would dump the waste heat to their existing thermal conversion systems. So the PETE process has two really big benefits in energy production over normal technology.”

Getting the efficiency up: Photovoltaic systems never get hot enough for their waste heat to be useful in thermal energy conversion, but the high temperatures at which PETE performs are perfect for generating usable high-temperature waste heat. Melosh calculates the PETE process can get to 50 percent efficiency or more under solar concentration, but if combined with a thermal conversion cycle, could reach 55 or even 60% – almost triple the efficiency of existing systems.  These technologies are already understood.

Its still way early – perhaps the paper published online Aug. 1 in Nature Materials is a competitive effort to get on record first.  Using a gallium nitride semiconductor in the “proof of concept” tests, the efficiency achieved in their testing was well below what they have calculated PETE’s potential efficiency to be – which they had anticipated. But the Melosh team used gallium nitride because it was the only material that had shown indications of being able to withstand the high temperature range they were interested in and still have the PETE process occur.  With the right material – most likely a semiconductor such as gallium arsenide, which is used in a host of common household electronics – the actual efficiency of the process could reach up to the 50 or 60 percent the researchers have calculated. They are already exploring other materials that might work.

Another advantage of the PETE system is that by using it in solar concentrators, the amount of semiconductor material needed for a device is quite small.  Melosh explains, “For each device, we are figuring something like a 6-inch wafer of actual material is all that is needed. So the material cost in this is not really an issue for us, unlike the way it is for large solar panels of silicon.”

That answers the questions where the cost of materials has been one of the limiting factors in the development of the solar power industry, so reducing the amount of investment capital needed to build a solar farm is a big advance.

Melosh closes with an academic’s understatement, “The PETE process could really give the feasibility of solar power a big boost. Even if we don’t achieve perfect efficiency, let’s say we give a 10 percent boost to the efficiency of solar conversion, going from 20 percent efficiency to 30 percent, that is still a 50 percent increase overall.”

The Stanford writer hits the competition with oil drum with “And that is still a big enough increase that it could make solar energy competitive with oil” while what they really need to beat is coal.  There is little oil used for power generation while coal is a major fuel source.  Getting competitive with coal would be great, burning coal is still a massive nasty effluent producer, and daylight high output solar would answer peak needs.

Taking the concept further, the PETE idea would be quite a basis to recalculate for orbital solar too.

Melosh and the Stanford team deserve some thanks for the breakout and some encouragement to keep at it.  The working prototype needs built, a bit of demonstration – seeing solar at anything in the 50% plus range is quite a feat, it’s a welcome crack in the efficiency war!

The original post is created by: New Energy and Fuel

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Storing the energy from wind is obviously useful.  But is it essential?  Numerous studies cover the matter both asserting that storage can useful and asserting its not.  The practical common result is the continental U.S. could increase wind energy production another ten times before the capacity would merit storage at scale.

It’s just not that simple.  In Hawaii where the ocean limits interconnection over a wide area the local conditions rule.  To get to high wind use a buffer needs to be in place between the source, the wind and to the consumer.  Hawaii has a 70% renewable target and to get there some form of moving energy production from the time it’s generated to the time it’s used has to be in place.

But numerous studies as well as European wind integration experience have demonstrated that in the continental 48 states the use of wind energy could increase by more than 10-fold without energy storage.  The opportunity is in using the sources of flexibility that are already present on the electric grid. Every day, grid operators constantly accommodate variability in electricity demand and supply by increasing and decreasing the output of the flexible generators – power plants like hydroelectric dams or natural gas plants that can rapidly change their output of generation.

The peak demand is met by the stored energy in the dammed water or the natural gas in the tank or pipeline.  Grid operators also move power from regions with momentary excesses of electricity to other regions that have a need for electricity at that moment. Grid operators use these same flexible resources to accommodate any additional variability introduced by wind energy.

In the U.S. now, demand for electricity can vary by a factor of three or more depending on the time of day and year, which nationwide translates into hundreds of gigawatts of flexibility that are already built into the power system.

Its almost always much cheaper to use the existing flexibility than to build new sources of flexibility like energy storage facilities.  When the existing sources of flexibility are eventually saturated, a number of additional low-cost sources of flexibility can be deployed, such as building additional transmission lines, encouraging additional demand response resources, reforming grid operating procedures, or making the generating fleet more flexible.

Continuing advances in energy storage technology can make it more economically competitive as a provider of grid flexibility.  Its important to remember that resources like wind energy can already be cost-effectively and reliably integrated with the electric grid without energy storage for quite some time to come.

Compare that to Hawaii’s plan to install a 15-megawatt battery on a new 30-megawatt wind farm.  Computers will work to keep the battery exactly half-charged most hours of the day. If the wind suddenly gets stronger or falls off, the batteries will smooth out the flow so that the grid sees only a more gradual increase or decrease, no more than one megawatt per minute at some hours of the day.

The Hawaiian installation is designed to succeed at a crucial but obscure function: frequency regulation. The alternating-current power system has to run at a strict 60 cycles per second, and the battery system can give and take power on a micro scale, changing directions from charge to discharge or vice versa within that 60th of a second, to keep the pace steady.

The battery system can also be used for arbitrage, storing energy at times when prices are low and delivering it when prices are high. It can hold 10 megawatt-hours, which is as much energy as a 30-megawatt wind farm will produce in 20 minutes if it is running at full capacity. That is not much time, but it is huge in terms of storage capacity. The reason for the arbitrage?  Publicly disclosed figures put the project in the range of $130 million, with about $10 million for the battery. The Energy Department has provided a $117 million loan guarantee.  Folks in Hawaii are going to pay, but the cost of the investment will be lower with all of the U.S. backing the plan up.

Isolated power systems like Hawaii’s seem like highly unique cases, since geography prevents them from sending excess electricity to neighboring regions there is limited access to sources of power system flexibility, the power grid is often weak, and the price of electricity is often high.

The success of countries like Spain, Germany, Denmark, Portugal, and Ireland reliably and cost-effectively obtaining 10% or more of their electricity from wind farms without adding any storage resources is instructive.  As well, the main grid operator in Texas has regularly obtained 20% of its electricity from wind energy, also without the use of energy storage.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory summed the matter up in a remote quote, “At present levels of wind penetration on the electrical grid, storage has not been a priority consideration. But eventually, as system resources and not exclusively due to wind or other renewable resource capacity adds on, the nation’s electrical grid will benefit from energy storage technologies. Essentially, the power system already has storage in the form of hydroelectric reservoirs, gas pipelines, gas storage facilities, and coal piles that can provide energy when needed. Today, storing electricity is more expensive than using dispatchable generation. In the future, through, advances in technologies such as batteries and compressed air, energy storage may become more cost-attractive.

The point is that Hawaii is an isolated set of islands that needs to store back energy production and move it to the time its needed.  The other side of the point is, as the renewables become a larger proportion of the total, the continental U.S., as big as it is, is a set of islands as well.

Original post: New Energy and Fuel

Capstone Turbine Corporation a leading clean technology manufacturer of microturbine energy systems announced last week that it has initiated a demonstration project with a major U.S. manufacturer of Class 5 through Class 8 heavy-duty trucks. The demonstrator will utilize a Capstone 65kW microturbine as a clean, efficient range extender in a hybrid electric drive system. This truck will be the first to use the complete Capstone Drive Solution, which includes the Capstone microturbine along with liquid cooled power electronics, permanent magnet traction drive motor and vehicle power control system.

Capstone Micro Turbine and Electrcity Equipment Overlay. Click image for the largest view.

Capstone released configurations of the C30 (30 kW) microturbine as a range extender meeting California Air Resources Board (CARB) requirements for New On-Road Heavy-Duty Engines for Urban Bus – Hybrid service with no emissions aftertreatment.

The question afoot is replacing a 40-45% thermal efficient continuous speed diesel engine with an unrecuperated gas turbine engine at 20-30% efficiency a good idea.  Small micro-turbines seem to be as efficient and run as cleanly (if not more so) than the internal combustion engines currently used for hybrid electric gensets.  Mass production in the millions would drive down the costs.  It’s a demonstration worth a review.

In total efficiency turbos win.  For thermal efficiency a diesel would win, but add in the mechanical efficiency and the turbo wins.  Internal combustion with pistons, rods, cranks, and the valve gear generate lots of friction and resistance.  And turbines weigh much less allowing for more battery or capacitor capacity.

The design characteristics of Capstone’s turbine permits ultra-low emissions, high-fuel economy, multi-fuel capability, no coolants or lubricating oil, and little to no maintenance in hybrid electric vehicle applications.

Another angle is the fuel, turbines can use a much wider range of products than a diesel, permitting much more versatility in choice and cost control.

Capstone’s microturbine technology offers many benefits, including an extremely low emission levels that meet the most stringent CARB and EPA 2010 requirements without any exhaust after-treatment. That’s a major point alone.

Capstone Micro Turbine Generation Set Block Diagram. Click image for the largest view.

As part of a recent joint development agreement with CalMotors, the Capstone hybrid electric vehicle product offering will now include inverter drives, traction motors and a vehicle power control module that will seamlessly integrate with Capstone 30kW and 65kW microturbines.

The inverters and traction motors are mobile hardened versions of the well-proven Parker Hannifin industrial motor drive products. The Capstone microturbines are able to operate on traditional liquid fuels such as diesel and biodiesel but can also utilize alternative fuels such as natural gas without sacrificing efficiency.

Jim Crouse, Executive Capstone VP of Sales and Marketing said in the press release, “This demonstration project is the first of several vehicle applications we are working on that will use the new Capstone Drive Solution. The other projects include Class 4 commercial trucks and Class 8 tractors and utilize both new OEM applications like this one and retrofits to existing vehicles. We are also pursuing marine applications for both auxiliary power and propulsion. Our new Capstone Drive Solution offering will open a lot of opportunities for electric drive systems where our ultra-low emissions and high efficiency have an advantage over more traditional prime movers.”

Darren Jamison, Capstone President and CEO offers, “A successful demonstration of the Capstone Drive Solution in this heavy duty truck application can have significant market impact. It is for this reason that the OEM truck manufacturer we are partnering with has decided not to be named at this point. However we expect that the demonstration phase will be successful and that key customers will begin to appreciate the many positive benefits of the Capstone Drive Solution. Our OEM partner is prepared to make this development more public once they confirm the performance and customer reaction.”

Still, one wonders who the OEM manufacturer leader is.

Capstone already has a Model C30 liquid fueled microturbine successfully integrated into a Ford S-Max people carrier done by Langford Performance Engineering in the United Kingdom. Langford reports that the “Whisper Eco-Logic” car gets up to 80 mpg in early stage demonstration testing.

Light weight, multifuel, low emissions, very high efficiency, no coolants, little or no lubrication oil, and a dramatically lower maintenance cost – micro turbines have a bright future when the unit cost comes down.

Source: New Energy and Fuel

Upgrade your central vacuum customers with the AVP7500 Promo! The purchase of an AirVac Model AVP7500 Platinum Series Disposable Bag Central Vacuum System includes a Garage Vacuum Kit (VMGAR) and a Hose Cover (VM700) at no cost! That’s a $160 savings on this upgraded system.

The Platinum Series Central Vacuum System features a disposable bag central vacuum power unit. The modular design with nested components reduces storage space and shipping costs. The nested design also simplifies handling, installation and service.

The AVP7500 has 551 peak air watt capacity and can be installed in homes up to 7,500 square feet. For installation flexibility, both the intake and exhaust ports can be connected from the left or right side. A front-mounted utility port allows easy connection of a hose directly to the power unit for local cleaning. The vacuum’s control panel has a power switch, four-color bag debris level display, two-color service indicator, and a service reset button. Read more »

• Offer ends August 31, 2010.

Here is the original: Home Controls

This writer thinks with others that the “laws” of science and other notions have useful purposes when they work to our advantage.  But the laws need challenged now and one must suppose forever.  So when the impossible, flaunts the law, or whatever gets crashed, there’s cause for some celebration – not for the breaking, but for the new frontier.

Back at the July fourth weekend, but Rick Cavallaro and the crew at fasterthanthewind.org proved a wind-powered vehicle traveled downwind faster than the wind speed.  Naysayers said it couldn’t be done, but the anarchist in this writer can’t help but spread the word.  It’s official – impossible but done.  The North American Land Sailing Association made it official July 27th, 2010 when it ratified the results.  And at better than 2.8 to 1 as well.

The achievement means physics texts, record books, and a pile of assumptions all have to be rewritten and reevaluated.  A new frontier, indeed.

Richard Jenkins wrote in part, “My heart is split between belittling idiots, and saluting eccentrics, and this downwind quest lay somewhere in the middle. These loonies were pursuing a pointless goal, doomed to failure, but there was some genuine merit in the myth and their enthusiasm . . . Traveling through zero apparent wind, with no stored power? Impossible. Why would you even attempt it?

A few months later I actually met the idiots in question and, to my surprise and concern we not only have a few mutual friends, but they seemed to be rather technically credible. But, everyone makes mistakes, and I let them off as decent people with a blinkered view of fundamentally flawed engineering . . .  A few months later they were claiming success!

There was, however, a growing momentum of technical people (who should have known better), saying that these idiots have actually proven that it is possible to travel faster than the wind going directly down wind.”

Jenkins shot the video:

The backing for the record attempts isn’t full of dopes either. The list includes JobyEnergy, Google, MetOne Instruments, and SportVision.  Some eccentric press picked it up including Wired Magazine, Popular Science, Discover, Sail Magazine, Discovery Channel, and Thin Air Designs.  Let the skeptics rest.

Cavallaro and his crew designed an innovative ultra-lightweight, aerodynamically sound cart with a 17-foot propeller that’s driven by the vehicle’s wheels. The wheels turn the prop, while the prop turns the wheels – possible thanks to an incredibly heavy-duty transmission – with the wind acting as an external power source that propels the cart faster than the wind itself.

The team set out to prove such a feat was possible and now that they’ve set a record they’ve fixed their sights on breaking it. Cavallaro hopes to reach three times the speed of the wind within a few weeks.

The counterintuitive idea that you can travel downwind faster than the wind is casus belli for aerodynamic arguments from Internet forums to college classrooms. The concept DWFTTW (Down Wind Faster Than The Wind) can cause world-renowned physicists to throw their Nobel Prizes in fits of rage.

Cavallaro explains, “If you’re on a bike and you’re going downwind, you don’t feel any wind anymore at all. You lose the power of the wind when you reach the wind speed, because there is no relative wind at that point.”   Working with a hang-gliding buddy, Cavallaro did the math and built a model to prove DWFTTW is possible.  The equations didn’t persuade anyone, “I thought people would say, ‘That’s cool,’ but they didn’t. They said, ‘Wow, you’re an idiot.’ So we decided to build a full-size one. That’s when we approached a couple of sponsors.”

Cavallaro lined up help from Google and JobyEnergy and set to work with the San Jose State University aero department on an ultralight, four-wheeled vehicle with a 17-foot-tall propeller. The vehicle is made mostly of foam and parallels the aerodynamics of a Formula 1 racecar.  The propeller is key to how it is possible to travel downwind faster than the wind. It’s also the source of the biggest misunderstandings about how the vehicle works.

Cavallaro goes on, “Skeptics think that the wind is turning the prop, and the car is turning the wheels, and that’s what makes the car go. That’s not the case. The wheels are turning the prop. What happens is the prop thrust pushes the vehicle.”

“It sounds like a perpetual motion machine – the wheels turn the prop, which turns the vehicle’s wheels, which turn the prop, which turns the vehicle’s wheels – but you’ve got the wind as an external power source,” Cavallaro said.

Building a transmission capable of transferring power from the wheels to the prop was almost as hard as convincing skeptics that the vehicle would work. It took longer than a year and a lot of trial and error to make it work. “You’ve got to come up with a transmission that can handle those loads, even though it’s not at a high horsepower,” Cavallaro said. “You break some things, and then you build bigger.”

Sometimes it’s the laws that break.  The anarchist in this writer is pleased; other laws can fall, too.  Many things, from BlackLight and cold fusion in physics on to chemistry and biology there’s a wealth of laws that need sent back to being ideas with new frontiers in their place.

Original post created by: New Energy and Fuel

The Germans seem to believe, in part anyway, that electro mobility makes sense only if car batteries are charged using electricity from renewable energy sources. But the supply of green electricity is not always adequate. An intelligent charging station can help, by adapting the recharging times to suit energy supply and network capacity.

Germany is rich or getting poor, depending on your view of economics with aims to have one million electric vehicles – powered by energy from renewable sources – on the road by 2020. And, within ten years, the German environment ministry expects “green electricity” to make up 30 percent of all power consumed.

From a math perspective the proposition is it would be possible to achieve CO2-neutral electro mobility. But, in reality, it is a difficult goal to attain. As more and more solar and wind energy is incorporated into the German power grid, the proportion of electricity that cannot be controlled by simply pressing a button is on the increase. In addition, there is a growing risk that the rising number of electric vehicles will trigger extreme surges in demand during rush hour.

They are thinking ahead over there.  This – from a society that not so long ago was busily decommissioning nuclear – but now is looking to build more nuclear stations.  Reality wins one there.

Dominik Noeren of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems says, “What we need is a smart grid that carries information in addition to power.  The information transport equipment is available now.  Noeren explains the structure of the grid has to change from a push (information feedback) system based on energy demand to a pull (information feedout) system based on production output. In Noeren’s opinion, “electric cars are best equipped to meet this challenge.” Introduced in large numbers, they have the capacity to store a lot of energy. On average, a car is parked for at least 20 hours out of 24. That is more than enough time to recharge them when the wind picks up or the demand for electricity is low.

Fraunhofer Smart Charger Concept Art. Click image for more info.

The Fraunhofer researchers developed a “smart” charging station, a device that enables electric vehicles to recharge when the system load is low and the share of energy from renewable resources is high. In this way, load peaks can be avoided and the contribution of solar and wind power fully exploited. “For us, it is important that end consumers are completely free to decide when they want to recharge. We do not want them to suffer any disadvantages from the controlled recharging of their vehicles’ batteries,” Noeren emphasizes. That’s why he favors electricity rates that adapt to the prevailing situation in the power grid — ones that are more expensive in periods of peak demand and particularly cheap when there is a surfeit of renewable energy.

Noeren is right, most all light and personal transport vehicles sitting still and empty is the vast bulk of the useable lifetime.  That presents an opportunity both to charge, store and discharge.  The amount of energy has a value as well as the speed the amount is delivered.  Add those points to the time of day that energy is drawn and the available renewable supply.  One might be very interested if one charged up on the cheap overnight and discharged to others during the morning rush.  Smart enough information handling and the cost of energy for transport could make much more sense.

The Fraunhofer thinking is the person using the “smart” charging station could then choose between recharging immediately or opting for a cheaper, possibly longer, recharging time. If they go for the second option, all they need to do is enter the time when their vehicle has to be ready to drive again. The charging station takes care of everything else, calculating the costs and controlling the recharging process. Via the display the user can track the progress of recharging and also see the costs incurred and the amount of energy used.

They’re halfway there . . . Now if the utility companies catch on and work out the economics the markets could start some forecasts.

A lot depends on more than the price(s).  There’s a whole lot of politics, investment and return, and operating costs to understand much better before much can happen.  A huge amount of mass storage would help as well.

Yet, it’s a gallant start.   The group showed their prototype charger at the Hannover Messe back in April.

Original post: New Energy and Fuel

• Large backlit display and soft-touch button interface
• Precise temperature control of plus-or-minus 1-degree Fahrenheit
• 7 day programming with 4 programmable periods per day
• Includes 3 interchangeable décor faceplates to enhance décor–titanium, charcoal, and taupe
• Features furnace filter change indicator and early start function

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Honeywell RTH2520B Decor 7-Day Programmable Thermostat

A new magnetic effect was discovered by accident when a UC Berkeley postdoctoral researcher and several students grew graphene on the surface of a platinum crystal.  Graphene is a one atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal pattern, that looks like chicken wire.  Examination showed when grown on platinum, the carbon atoms do not perfectly line up with the metal surface’s triangular crystal structure, which creates a strain pattern in the graphene as if it were being pulled from three different directions.

Michael Crommie, professor of physics at UC Berkeley and a faculty researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory runs the lab where the discovery was made. Charles Kane and Eugene Mele of the University of Pennsylvania first predicted the appearance of a “pseudomagnetic” field in response to strain in graphene for carbon nanotubes in 1997. Nanotubes are a rolled up form of graphene.

Crommie explains the strain produces small, raised triangular graphene bubbles 4 to 10 nanometers across in which the electrons occupy discrete energy levels rather than the broad, continuous range of energies allowed by the band structure of unstrained graphene. This new electronic behavior was detected spectroscopically by scanning tunneling microscopy. These so-called Landau levels are reminiscent of the quantized energy levels of electrons in the simple Bohr model of the atom.

Graphene Strain Induced Nanobubbles. Click image for more info.

Crommie said, “This gives us a new handle on how to control how electrons move in graphene, and thus to control graphene’s electronic properties, through strain. By controlling where the electrons bunch up and at what energy, you could cause them to move more easily or less easily through graphene, in effect, controlling their conductivity, optical or microwave properties. Control of electron movement is the most essential part of any electronic device.”

Inventive engineers take note – this opens a new field.

What happens is the electrons within each nanobubble segregate into quantized energy levels instead of occupying energy bands, as in unstrained graphene. The energy levels are identical to those that an electron would occupy if it were moving in circles in a very strong magnetic field, as high as 300 tesla, which is stronger than any laboratory can produce except in brief explosions, said Crommie.  For comparison, a magnetic resonance imager uses magnets running at less than 10 tesla, while the Earth’s magnetic field at ground level is only 31 microtesla.  The scale, while atom sized on one dimension – is incredible.

Meanwhile over the last year Francisco Guinea of the Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid in Spain, Mikhael Katsnelson of Radboud University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and A. K. Geim of the University of Manchester, England predicted what they termed a pseudo quantum Hall effect in strained graphene. This is the very quantization that Crommie’s research group has experimentally observed. Boston University physicist Antonio Castro Neto, who was visiting Crommie’s laboratory at the time of the discovery, immediately recognized the implications of the data, and subsequent experiments confirmed that it reflected the pseudo quantum Hall effect predicted earlier.

This is pretty cheerful stuff.  Crommie observes, “Theorists often latch onto an idea and explore it theoretically even before the experiments are done, and sometimes they come up with predictions that seem a little crazy at first. What is so exciting now is that we have data that shows these ideas are not so crazy. The observation of these giant pseudomagnetic fields opens the door to room-temperature ‘straintronics,’ the idea of using mechanical deformations in graphene to engineer its behavior for different electronic device applications.”

The catch in all the excitement is the nanobubble experiments performed in Crommie’s laboratory were performed at very low temperature.  Crommie notes that the pseudomagnetic fields inside the nanobubbles are so high that the energy levels are separated by hundreds of millivolts, much higher than room temperature. Thus, thermal noise would not interfere with this effect in graphene even at room temperature.

Normally, electrons moving in a magnetic field circle around the field lines. Within the strained nanobubbles, the electrons move in circles in the plane of the graphene sheet, as if a strong magnetic field has been applied perpendicular to the sheet even when there is no actual magnetic field. Apparently, Crommie said, the pseudomagnetic field only affects moving electrons and not other properties of the electron, such as spin, that are affected by real magnetic fields.

There’s a lot of pseudo so far in the press release and the paper’s abstract at Science. But the research effort is measuring the Tesla force.  That point focuses attention is a major way.  Getting to 10 Tesla requires lots of power and a source without such a power input thirty times as strong is prey worthy of the best minds in science.  Should the effect make it beyond microelectronics in scale to say motors, the impact would be huge.

The long term potential isn’t known in precise terms.  There is a great deal of further exploration and experimentation to come.  Yet the early theory ideas have borne fruit – by accident.

The serendipitous post doc remains un named, but add to paper’s author list Castro Neto and Francisco Guinea, Sarah Burke, now a professor at the University of British Columbia; Niv Levy, now a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institute of Technology and Standards; and graduate student Kacey L. Meaker, undergraduate Melissa Panlasigui and physics professor Alex Zettl of UC Berkeley.  It’s a paper that might be worth the reading fee for the inventive engineer.

Here is the original: New Energy and Fuel

Two new studies with international participation might change the way scientists view the crucial relationship between Earth’s climate and the carbon cycle. The reports explore the global photosynthesis and respiration rates — the planet’s deep “breaths” of carbon dioxide, in and out.  The researchers say that the new findings will be used to update and improve upon traditional models that couple together climate and carbon.

Well . . .  Lets look at the press release info. The two reports were published online by the journal Science at the Science Express Web site on July 5th. Science is published by The American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the nonprofit science society.  Still, when it comes to the global warming crown the AAAS isn’t leading the ‘get it right’ crowd at all.  Anyway . . .

Led by Christian Beer from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, along with colleagues from 10 other countries around the world, the first study looks at Earth’s Gross Primary Production (GPP), which represents the total amount of carbon dioxide that terrestrial plants breathe in through photosynthesis each year. With a novel combination of observations and modeling, they estimate the total amount of carbon dioxide that the world’s plant life inhales annually to be 123 billion tons.

The other group led by Miguel Mahecha, also from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, and another international team of researchers believes they’ve settled a long-standing debate over the effects of short-term variations in air temperature on ecosystem respiration, or the Earth’s exhalation of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. They show that the sensitivity of ecosystem respiration to short-term variations in temperature is similar around the world. The researchers also suggest that factors other than temperature, such as the slow, ongoing transformations of carbon in the soil and water availability, appear to play crucial roles in long-term ecosystem carbon balances.

Mahecha’s group looks to be working on the actual carbon cycle loop and the variables that affect the rates vegetation operates.  Beer’s group is going for the big numbers, novel or new, the field is rife in opportunities in the assumptions, omissions and errors.  The math may be impeccable but the assumptions are going to be suspect from the start.  Maybe not due to the team, but the Climategate fraud casts a very long shadow.

The press release groups the two studies with the hope of selling the idea the study findings shed more light on the global cycle of carbon into and out of the atmosphere and how those processes are coupled with Earth’s ever-changing climate. The researchers analyzed vast amounts of climate and carbon data from around the world, and they say their results should help to improve the validity of predictive models and help resolve how climate change might affect the carbon cycle — and our world — in the future.

Beer sensibly says, “An understanding of the factors that control the GPP of various terrestrial ecosystems is important because we humans make use of many ecosystem services, such as wood, fiber, and food.  Additionally, such an understanding is important in the context of climate change as a consequence of carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels because vegetation greatly modulates the land-atmosphere exchanges of greenhouse gases, water, and carbon dioxide…”  All very well reasoned and reasonable.

Beer and his colleagues pooled large amounts of data from FLUXNET, an international initiative established more than 10 years ago to monitor exchanges of carbon dioxide between Earth’s ecosystems and the atmosphere, with remote sensing and climate data from around the world to calculate the spatial distribution of mean annual GPP between 1998 and 2006.

The Beer led researchers highlight the fact that uptake of carbon dioxide is most pronounced in the planet’s tropical forests, which are responsible for a full 34 percent of the inhalation of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Savannas then account for 26 percent of the global uptake, although the researchers note that savannas also occupy about twice as much surface area as tropical forests.

Well, NO.  Looking back up at the beginning the report is only looking at the terrestrial activity, all of Oceania is being ignored.   Someone needs to have a talk with the press office.

The Beer led researchers found rainfall also plays a significant role in determining the gross global carbon dioxide uptake. They suggest that rainfall has a significant influence on the amount of carbon that plants utilize for photosynthesis on more than 40 percent of vegetated lands, a discovery that stresses the importance of water availability for food security. According to the study, climate models often show great variation, and some of them overestimate the influence of rainfall on global carbon dioxide uptake.

Biomass Growth Chart By Temperature and Precipitation. Click image for the largest view.

No one is dialing in the atmospheric humidity, which has a huge impact, too.

But Beer sums up with; “We reached a milestone with this paper by using plenty of data from FLUXNET in addition to remote sensing and climate reanalysis. With our estimation of global GPP, we can do two things — compare our results with Earth system process models and further analyze the correlation between GPP and climate.”

It sounds good but doesn’t look solid, still a theory looking for statistics and the stats aren’t good enough, by far.

Mahecha and his team of researchers also relied on the global collaboration within the FLUXNET network during their investigation of ecosystems’ sensitivity to air temperature. Compiling and analyzing data from 60 different FLUXNET sites, the researchers found that the respiratory sensitivity to temperature of the world’s ecosystems, commonly referred to as Q10, is actually quite set in stone — and that the Q10 value is independent of the average local temperature and of the specific ecosystem conditions.  This group looks much more sensible – the conclusion matches standard agronomy know how.  Farmers know and count up the heat units they get to predict yields.  Decades of experience make the process a certainty.

Which makes one wonder – when the press release asserts experts have debated the effect that air temperature has on global respiration, or the collective metabolic processes of organisms that return carbon dioxide to the atmosphere from Earth’s surface. Most empirical studies suggest that such ecosystem respiration around the world is highly sensitive to increasing temperatures, while the majority of predictive models suggest otherwise. Scientists say that global air temperatures may rise due to the presence of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

But, this new result suggests that the temperature sensitivity of the natural exhalation of carbon dioxide from ecosystems has been overestimated and should be reevaluated.

Mahecha and his team considered the processes of the 60 different ecosystems on the exact same time-scale in order to nail the global mean Q10 down to a value of 1.4. Their new, standard value for various ecosystems’ sensitivity to air temperature suggests a less pronounced short-term climate-carbon feedback compared to previous estimates.  The study might settle a controversy – suggesting that previous field studies failed to disentangle processes acting on different time-scales.

Mahecha says, “Our key finding is that the short-term temperature sensitivity of ecosystem respiration to air temperature is converging to a single, global value.  Contrary to previous studies, we show that the sensitivity of ecosystem respiration to temperature variations seems to be independent from external factors and constant across ecosystems. In other words, we found a general relationship between variation in temperature and ecosystem respiration… Our findings reconcile the apparent contradictions of modeling and field studies.”  Thank you, sirs.

Its reported that the two studies can allow for more precise predictions of how Earth’s warming climate will affect the exchange of carbon between our ecosystems and the atmosphere — and vice versa. They provide scientists with important tools for better understanding the world’s ecosystems and how the human race continues to influence and alter them.

But there isn’t much new in the work.  Crop scientists, agronomists, farmers, gardeners and herbalists have all known for generations that warm humid rainy weather is better for biomass growth than cool dry droughts.  Actually everyone knows that.

Mahecha’s group may well straighten some things out.  Beer’s group cuckolds some more bizarre modeling.  Maybe this is progress.  But it challenges the practical food consuming critters on earth – we’re grateful for every bit of atmospheric carbon dioxide – cutting CO² back sounds sometimes like planetary genocide.

Source: New Energy and Fuel

GrandCare – an assistance system for independent seniors, their families and care partners – was featured just yesterday is not just one, but two stories in the New York Times.

Technologies Help Adult Children Monitor Aging Parents: In the general scheme of life, parents are the ones who keep tabs on the children. But now, a raft of new technology is making it possible for adult children to monitor to a stunningly precise degree the daily movements and habits of their aging parents. The purpose is to provide enough supervision to make it possible for elderly people to stay in their homes rather than move to an assisted-living facility or nursing home – a goal almost universally embraced as both emotionally and financially desirable. Read more »

The Technology for Monitoring Elderly Relatives: For those with advanced physical ailments, the ability to contact emergency personnel may not be enough. It wasn’t for Jean Roberts, a 79-year-old retired nurse who had a brain aneurysm 20 years ago, and now suffers from a seizure disorder. She and her daughter, Carol, 52, who is also disabled, set up a system of customized sensors from GrandCare Systems. Read more »

To learn more about how GrandCare can benefit your family, contact Home Controls at 800-266-8765 to find a local authorized dealer near you.

• To become an authorized dealer, email gcsales@homecontrols.com or click here.

Here is the original post: Home Controls

• Wrist-top computer watch with altimeter, barometer, compass, and GPS navigator
• Offer improved, faster GPS fixes for navigating to a spot or hiking a specific path
• Altimeter displays current elevation and vertical ascent and descent rate
• Barometer helps you predict changing conditions; built-in digital compass
• Water-resistant to 330 feet; 3 daily alarms; 2-year warranty

Product DescriptionX10 Military GPS WatchAmazon. com Product DescriptionSmall and lightweight, the Suunto X10M wrist-top computer watch combines an altimeter, barometer, compass, and GPS navigator, making it a terrific companion for outdoor enthusiasts of all stripes. The X10M–which builds on Suunto’s decade of experience in creating cutting-edge outdoor devices–stands above most other wrist-top computers thanks to its improved, faster GPS fixes. Even under heavy foliage, you can use the X10M to plot your treks, navigate to a certain spot, or get back to your car, all while keeping your hands free to hold a hiking stick or water bottle. Once back at home, you can share your treks on Google Earth, or use the Suunto Trek Manager PC software to create new routes and plan new journeys. The Suunto X10M also includes a built-in altimeter, which displays your current altitude and your vertical ascent and descent rate. Accurate to within 30,000 feet, the altimeter is an extremely valuable tool for mountaineering, backcountry skiing, and wilderness travel. The altimeter contributes to your excursion in several ways. If you’re standing on or near an obvious geographic feature, such as a ridge, trail, or creek, the altimeter can alert you to your current elevation and help you find your position on a topographic map. Similarly, if you plan on climbing a slope to a certain elevation and then traversing, the X10M can help you stay on course. And, of course, the X10M captures all your altitude information in its integrated logbook, making it easy to analyze your performance when creating a training routine. The Suunto X10M watch includes an altimeter, barometer, compass, and GPS navigator. The X10M’s barometer, meanwhile, measures and records air pressure to help you predict changing conditions–from sunny skies to hair-bending electrical storms. The barometer helps you decide whether to bring a soft shell or rain shell jacket when the skies look ominous, or even when to high-tail it back to the car. In general, low pressure brings inclement weather, while high pressure brings stability and clear skies. If you’ve arrived at camp and notice the pressure starting to plunge, it’s probably a good idea to secure the tent and crawl in. Likewise, if you’re on a climb, it would be prudent to find shelter and retreat. Even at home, the X10M’s barometer can look beyond office walls, skyscrapers, and nearby hills to help you plan for upcoming activities. And no outdoor watch is worth its salt without a digital compass, a great tool for keeping track of your direction while skiing, hiking, or exploring a new city. Simply point the top of the watch toward your intended destination and lock it in. Other features include an Activity Mode that records your speed, distance, and altitude information, along with any memory points you define along the way; a Track Back mode that guides you back the same way you came; a long-lasting battery; up to 50 routes, 25 tracks, and 500 waypoints; water-resistance up to 330 feet; and all the standard watch functions, including a 12/24-hour display, a stopwatch, a calendar clock, and three daily alarms. As with all Suunto wrist-top computers, the X10M carries a two-year warranty. Specifications: Altitude alarm: Yes Vertical speed: Yes Temperature compensation: Yes User-removable logbook files: Yes Resolution: 1 meter Altitude range: 1,600 to 29,500 feet Logbook function: Yes Stopwatch: Yes Max number of split times in memory: 29 Automatic magnetic declination adjustment: Yes Guided calibration: Yes Heading in degrees: Yes Declination setting: Yes Cardinal directions: Yes Bearing tracking: Yes North-South indicator: North indicator Distance measurement: Yes, via GPS GPS resolution: 3 feet Routes: 50 Speed: Yes Tracks: 25 Waypoints: 500 Water resistance: 330 feet Menu-based user interface: Yes Display: Dot matrix Backlight type: LED Software: Suunto Trek Manager Time: 12/24 hours GPS time synchronization: Yes Calendar clock: Yes Dual time: Yes Daily alarms: 3 Absolute barometric pressure: Yes Weather memory: 7 days Weather alarm: Yes Trend graph: Yes Temperature range: -5 to 140 degrees F Sea level pressure: Yes Battery power indicator: Yes Rechargeable battery: Yes Warranty: 2 years About Suunto Suunto was founded in 1936 by outdoors man and a keen orienteering enthusiast, Tuomas Vohlonen, who had long been bothered by a problem: the inaccuracy of traditional dry compasses and their lack of steady needle operation. Being an engineer with an inventive turn of mind, he discovered and patented the production method for a much steadier needle, better readings, and a new level of accuracy. By 1950 the company was exporting compasses to over 50 countries around the world, including Canada and the United States. In 1952, Helsinki was hosting the Olympic Games, and the torches carried to light the Olympic flame were Suunto products. The next step was improving the stability and accuracy of marine compasses. The first marine compass, the Suunto K-12, was launched onto the market in 1953. In 1957, Suunto started manufacturing hypsometers, which measure the height of trees. In the 1960s, the compass range grew further and Suunto introduced its first diving compass–initiated by the divers themselves. A British sports diver attached a Suunto compass to his wrist and found that the device also worked underwater. Thanks to his feedback and initiatives, the new business category was found. Suunto’s exports and business grew steadily and Suunto then focused on combining its strength in precision mechanics with new skills in electronics. Accuracy, reliability, and ruggedness have been Suunto’s key values from the very beginning of the company history. Today, Suunto is a leading designer and manufacturer of sports instruments for training, diving, mountaineering, hiking, skiing, sailing, and golf. True to its roots, Suunto is today the world’s biggest compass manufacturer. Prized for their design, accuracy and dependability, Suunto sports instruments combine the aesthetics and functionality of watches with sport-specific computers that help athletes at all levels analyze and improve performance. Headquartered in Vantaa, Finland, Suunto employs more than 500 people worldwide and distributes its products to nearly 60 countries. The company is a subsidiary of Helsinki-based Amer Sports Corporation with the sister brands Wilson, Salomon, Atomic, Precor, and Mavic.
Suunto X10M Wrist-Top GPS Computer Watch with Altimeter, Barometer, Compass, and GPS

You might have seen those shake and charge flashlights on sale.  They’ve come a long way since the first ones only a few short years ago.  Now the impressive Japanese Firm Brother Industries has developed small vibration-powered generators that can replace the little AA and AAA batteries.  This is good.

Brother's Battery Sized Generator and Capacitor. Click image for more info.

Called a “Vibration-powered Generating Battery,” put inside a remote or other low power device, the ‘battery’ charges up with some shaking.

Brother Industries said, as quoted by Hideyoshi Kume at the  Nikkei Electronics site, “The new generator will semipermanently eliminate the need to replace batteries and contribute to reducing the amount of wastes.”  Semipermanently?  These things must wear out someday.

Brother Industries has ensured the versatility of the generator/capacitor/battery by employing the shapes of commonly used batteries.  At the rated volts and amps the little generator can directly replace conventional batteries.

More accurately, the generator can be used for devices that do not continuously consume electricity and have power consumption of about 100mW, the company said. For example, the power consumption of a normal remote is 40 to 100mW.  There’s a go for you.  There’s several dollars worth of AA and AAA sitting here in the living room right now.

Brother Industries has prototyped the generator in the AA and AAA battery sizes. Inside the battery-shaped case, there is an electromagnetic induction generator charging an electric double layer capacitor with a capacitance of about 500mF. The average output of the AA-size generator is 10 to 180mW at the frequency range of 4-8Hz.  Maybe not TASER class density, but enough for a lot of things of which there are a lot in every household.

The Japanese were able to see the new generator at the Techno-Frontier 2010, an exhibition that ran from July 21 to 23, 2010, in Tokyo.  On display was a TV remote control, a remote for lighting equipment and an LED flashlight using the generator.

Is this a big deal?  Not on the personal level, but widespread adoption would have a noteworthy impact.  It also goes to show the Japanese skill at making thing ever smaller and compact with ever increasing quality.

This writer has had pretty fair luck with Brother products and will continue the consideration.  Now if they’d just fix the coyote howl when my printer starts up . . .

Original post: New Energy and Fuel

Occidental Petroleum is running a very clever and funny ad supporting and informing about what petroleum is used for as well as natural gas, gasoline and diesel.

As you’ve seen in the video lots of things will disappear.  They even missed important stuff like the concrete foundation of the house, the asphalt roadway and the elastic holding up the boxer shorts.  It could have been funnier if you tolerate crudeness with a smile.

But seriously, life as its known in the developed world would stop.  No gas for the car, no diesel to bring food into the city, no jet fuel for travel and mail, no natural gas or heating oil for warm homes and California will be dark.  300 million people won’t be supportable.

275 million will be left out of the food chain.  Do you think they won’t be looking for answers?  Would a gulf oil drilling moratorium get food close enough for meal?  The idiocy at high levels of government is astonishing.  Foolishness knows no limit in today’s media saturated silly society.

That said, oil coming up way short would have tens of millions looking for how the political elites blew the modern world apart.  It might be a very good idea to be, well armed, really.  Folks are going to be hungry and angry. At desperate – lives will be lost. Those with – will be attacked by those without.

It might be very self interested (self preserving) to be “pro oil”.   For many reasons beyond just jobs, profits, taxes and cheap energy, petroleum is crucial.  Start taking it away such that it become too dear the danger would be intense for everyone.

Reading, watching or listening to news or pundits that don’t concern themselves with adequate affordable supplies for everyone is setting up ignorance pointing to risk.

For this writer adequate petroleum supplies is crucial – it will take decades for the alternatives to supplant and replace fossil oil and gas.  Moreover, the economy has to be robust enough for the consumers and producers to buy conservation, efficiency and alternative work devices.  This is going to take a long time.

Screwing it up along the way is senseless and essentially a betrayal.

Thanks to Occidental.  The lighthearted ad just touches, but leaves no scars, suggesting a warning.  A real petroleum shortage will leave scars – from the bloody wounds, too.

Author: New Energy and Fuel

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University of Cincinnati researchers in Ohio are reporting the development of a catalytic hydroboration system for the “highly efficient” reduction of CO2 with a borane and then hydrolysis of the resulting methoxyboryl species to produce methanol (CH3OH) with a good yield.  In short form – the researchers have a system to take CO2 gas and reform it into methanol, the lightest alcohol.

Nickel Catalist for CO2 to Methanol Flowchart. Click image for the largest view.

The new paper published June 14th in the American Chemical Society journal Energy & Fuels reports a highly efficient nickel system for the catalytic hydroboration of CO2 to methoxyboryl species using a simple borane. The reactions operate at room temperature with turnover frequencies 495 h-1 based on B-H at least 1 order of magnitude higher than those of the related reactions.

The improvement comes from the recent development of frustrated Lewis acid-base pair chemistry, which has led to alternative strategies for the reduction of CO2 to the methoxide level given either H2 or H3NBH3 9 as a hydrogen source.

The mechanism involves a nickel formate, formaldehyde, and a nickel methoxide as different reduced stages for the CO2. The reaction may also be catalyzed by an air-stable nickel formate.

It’s quite an involved process.  A look through the paper and the supporting documentation shows the lab effort was precise and over an extensive set of steps – very productive.  The process is also running at near ambient temperatures.  These are very good signs for further progress.   More research is under way to determine the mechanistic details and improve the catalytic efficiencies.  Its quite interesting news when the energy input is considered, too.

Yet there’s an avalanche of problems in those steps, too many to start an examination.  The researchers have managed to get process theory to work.  That’s great. There is also a matter of the chemical forms used – most everything is pure – which is OK, but the scale up would need some tolerances.

Another point is the inputs and wastes from the process are not addressed.  It’s likely that all the chemicals used can be recycled, but just what might be involved in that isn’t explored.

The CO2 source itself isn’t real clear either.  But the science is sound.  Perhaps it’s a starting point for mankind to join the planet’s carbon cycle.

But – getting the hydrogen isn’t going to be free.  The energy required isn’t explained, and most any chemical process of this kind is going to have a long input train from the raw materials to make the required chemicals on to the process itself and then recycle or dispose of the wastes.

Low temperature operation – great news.  Overall a fine effort to get to the goal.  There remain a lot of difficult unanswered questions and measures to take.  The team has a working model for the effort.

Can the new process scale up at economies of scale?  That doesn’t look too promising, but the first step is built and the nickel-based chemistry now has some legs to move on.

CO2 either as an atmospheric gas or a rich effluent source is a rich, diffused and uniform resource if a process can be invented to recycle it back with hydrogen to make a fuel product lots of the anti CO2 crowd would lose their issue.

Original post: New Energy and Fuel