The Energy Blog

Konarka Sets Stage for Large Volume Production

Konarka Technologies, developer of Power Plastic™ dye-sensitized solar cells has signed a non-exclusive licensing and joint development agreement for large-scale production with Renewable Capital Ltd of London, UK, an investment firm that identifies and invests in renewable technologies. Renewable Capital has committed resources, capital and equipment to their development activities. This includes the enlistment of services from Coatema, a world-renowned manufacturer of first-of-kind coating equipment. 

As part of the agreement, Renewable Capital will have ongoing access to Konarka’s dye-cell technology, as it is developed. It anticipates the technology will scale to several hundred megawatts.

Konarkaq has licensee rights to dye-sensitized solar cell technology from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL).   The EPFL's dye-sensitized technology was developed by the world-renowned scientist, Dr. Michael Graetzel, and enables photovoltaic technology to create energy across a broad spectrum of light, both indoors and outdoors. Konarka significantly enhanced the technology and process development based on the company's own inventions and exclusive, worldwide licensing rights to proprietary processes that enable production at lower temperatures, serving as the foundation for extremely low manufacturing costs.   As a result, Konarka leveraged its own intellectual property in conjunction with the EPFL license, to expedite the commercialization of its photovoltaic (PV) technology.

The Case for Nuclear Fuel Recycling

A little noticed item in the popular press was a study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Economic Assessment of Used Nuclear Fuel Management in the United States.  This privately funded study concludes that large scale nuclear fuel recycling integrated with a repository such as Yucca Mountain costs about the same in the short term, but is more attractive for long-term nuclear fuel management. The following was digested from their press release and the study.

The recycling relies on existing technology ― with appropriate modifications ― and can provide an operational transition to future technology developments such as Advanced Fuel Cycles and fast reactors. The technology assumed for the study is based on that used at at AREVA’s existing European plants (La Hague and Melox).

The study reports that recycling, as part of a portfolio strategy in which an integrated treatment and recycling plant complements a repository offers specific benefits including:

• Increasing the capacity of Yucca Mountain by a factor of 4 by recycling newly discharged fuel within four years and cooling the vitrified high level waste for 25 years at the recycling facility.
• Providing a comparable cost of disposal while eliminating the need for a second repository during the 50 years of recycling plant operation.
• Creating an effective long term hedge on rising fuel costs by providing 20-25 percent of the annual nuclear fuel needs in the U.S. through recycled products.
• Reducing used fuel inventory at reactor sites in the short term by removing the newly discharged, hotter fuel for recycling.
• Eliminating the need for additional storage at reactor sites while recycling some of the older legacy fuel in dilution with new fuel.

Wind Energy Sets Records

From an American Wind Energy Association’s (AWEA) press release:

As the U.S. wind energy industry stayed on pace for another record year to install more than 3,000 MW, Texas, with a cumulative total that now stands at 2,370 MW, for the first time topped historic leader California with  2,323 MW, as the top state in cumulative wind power capacity, according to the AWEA Second Quarter Market Report.

AWEA forecasts that the industry remains on track to install more than 3,000 MW of new wind capacity, which would decisively eclipse the previous record of 2,431 MW set in 2005. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that slightly less than 10,000 MW of new natural gas plants will be brought online in 2006, and that less than 400 MW of new coal- and oil-fired generating plants will be added, making wind power second only to natural gas in new capacity and new power generation for the second year in a row.

Solar Companies Announce Continued Progress

Two solar companies made announcements in the past couple of days that continue to portray the progress that the solar industry is making.

SolFocus, a developer of solar concentrator technology (see earlier post) announced that it had closed $25 million in financing that it will use to accelerate large-scale reliability tests, to ramp up its production of solar modules, to secure a long-term supply of photovoltaic cells, and to accelerate development of its second-generation technology.  SolFocus' concentrators magnify the light 500 times, which is about the maximum that can be used without generating excessive heat. The startup is ramping up its pilot plant from 3 to 5 megawatts. The company intends to have a 100-megawatt manufacturing facility in India operating at the end of next year.  They then intend to replicate that plant in China, Europe and somewhere in the Americas.

Its second-generation concentrator, which will have a higher number of cells and is more compact, is expected in two or three years. SolFocus has signed a volume supply agreement with a leading supplier of high efficiency triple-junction PV cells. The agreement is the largest to date in the CPV industry and will support SolFocus' field test series and first phase of active deployments through 2007. The company, which currently has 15 employees, has 15 positions posted and will be adding another 10 soon.

Evergreen Solar (Nasdaq: ESLR), producer of String Ribbon wafers (see previous post), announced it second quarter results which included:

• EverQ, their 30 MW German manufacturing joint venture, recorded a net profit for the month of June, its first month of operation.
• The Marlboro factory is running 100 percent on thin wafer (I believe 100 micrometers), setting the stage to begin conversion of EverQ's factory to thin wafer during the third quarter.
• Their Quad Ribbon platform - Evergreen Solar's next-generation technology - has successfully grown thousands of String Ribbon wafers in pilot production.

SolFocus, Palo Alto, CA
Evergreen Solar, Marlboro, MA

Myers Motors' New NmG (No more Gas) Electric Vehicle

For those of you who have said that you would buy an electric car if it was available, here it is. Part car, part motorcycle, Myers Motors' (privately owned) new NmG (No more Gas) vehicle.

Manufactured entirely in Tallmadge, Ohio, the NmG is the nation's only all-electric, highway-legal vehicle that can hit 70 mph and costs less than $25,000, said Dana Myers, founder and president of Myers Motors. The NmG is a fully enclosed for all weather driving, single passenger vehicle with two front wheels and a single drive wheel in the rear. Charging takes four to six hours. It costs about 2 cents a mile for the electricity used to charge the batteries.

Most people drive fewer than 12 miles to work, so the NmG can be useful for commuters. It also can be driven in a high-occupancy-vehicle lane.

Houston, MS High School Wins Dell-Winston School Wins Solar Car Challenge

The Houston, Mississippi (population 4,079) Sundancer solar car team won the Dell-Winston School Solar Car Challenge open division championship trophy at Texas Motor Speedway for the sixth consecutive year. During the challenge’s four days and seven racing periods of three hours each, the Sundancer solar car traveled more than 619 miles (413 laps), at an averaged a speed of almost 30 mph, reached a top speed of approximately 60 mph and completed more laps than any of the 13 other cars competing in the race.

Xethanol Announces 50 MGY Cellulosic Ethanol Plant (updated 4:09 PM July 20)

Xethanol Corporation (AMEX:XNL), announced today that it will construct a 50 million gallon per year cellulosic ethanol plant, scheduled for operation by mid 2007, on the site it previously announced that it is acquiring from Pfizer pharmaceutical in Augusta, Georgia.

It is being designed to run on a variety of feedstocks and they have begun securing the necessary feedstock streams from the forest products industry so that they can run at capacity when they begin production by mid-2007. By combining Xethanol's proprietary technologies with those of PRAJ, they believe that they have achieved their goal of being a low-cost producer of fuel ethanol from cellulosic materials.

The Pfizer site has has millions of dollars in equipment and infrastructure in place and ready to use for ethanol production. This enables the company to save significant time and money in bringing their facilities on line. The Pfizer, 40 acre site includes: an 89,100 square foot manufacturing facility, a 25,000 square foot warehouse facility, 7,300 square feet of laboratory space, and 16,000 square feet of offices and conference rooms. This biomass-to-ethanol facility will be the first of its kind in the region. In addition, CoastalXethanol may produce biodiesel in this facility under Xethanol's sublicense from H2Diesel, Inc.

Evergreen Sales Mounting

Evergreen Solar (NASDAQ: ESLR), manufacturer of solar products using its String Ribbon(TM) wafer technology, said today that it has landed its largest sales agreement to date, a $200 million deal to SunEdison, LLC, a Baltimore company that sells solar-generated power. The agreement calls for Evergreen Solar to ship approximately $200 million of photovoltaic modules to SunEdison, LLC over the next five years. This sales agreement is the companies fifth major contract since November 2005 bringing their total to more than $600 million over the next five years.

In the String Ribbon technique, two high temperature strings are pulled vertically through a shallow silicon melt, and the molten silicon spans and freezes between the strings (diagram left). The process is continuous: long strings are unwound from spools; the melt is replenished; and the silicon ribbon is cut to length for further processing, without interrupting growth. This advantage in material efficiency means String Ribbon yields over twice as many solar cells per pound of silicon as conventional methods. Additionally, the resulting distinctive shape of the solar cell allows for a high packing density.

Ford Hydrogen Internal Combustion Engine

Ford will be the first to deliver a hydrogen internal combustion engine powered vehicle to commercial customers later this year. The ICE will be used in E-450 shuttle buses later this year. Production of the supercharged, 235 hp, 6.8 liter hydrogen fueled V-10 engines has begun; the engine will be tested to same production standards as other Ford engines.

Advantages of hydrogen fueled engines include high efficiency, all-weather capability, and near zero emissions of regulated pollutants and greenhouse gases (CO2).

This engine is specially prepared to burn hydrogen as a fuel but is based on the same modular engine series that powers many Ford products.

American Energy Security Study

The American Energy Security Study (AESS) is the official name of the report referred to in the previous post. In a brief review of the executive summary I picked up the following items that give a little more background about the report.

The American Energy Security (AES) Study shows that the United States can eliminate dependence on oil imports entirely by 2030. It establishes a bold plan to replace approximately five percent of imported oil each year for 20 years, beginning in 2010 (see Figure 1 below). Assuming aggressive implementation beginning in 2007, under the SSEB American Energy Security initiatives domestic liquid fuels production and transportation efficiency savings begin gradually after 2010 and ramp up to produce most of the nation’s liquid fuels requirements by 2030.

To establish U.S. energy security and independence by 2030 all feasible supply and demand options must be aggressively pursued. There is no single answer:

• Transportation energy efficiency improvements are important but, by themselves, can contribute only a small portion of the required solution.
• Renewable biomass fuels are a critical part of the portfolio of required initiatives, but can produce less than one-fourth of the required liquid fuels.
• CTL, oil shale, and EOR will all contribute substantially, and all three technologies must be aggressively deployed.

The U.S. is endowed with the largest alternative oil resources in the world. This includes five hundred billion tons of coal (oil equivalent of approximately 750,000 billion barrels), the potential to sustain 1.3 billion tons of biomass collection/harvesting for liquid fuel production by 2030 (oil equivalent of approximately 4.5 million barrels per day to perpetuity), more than a trillion barrels of oil shale liquid fuels, and 80+ billion barrels of oil stranded in conventional reservoirs that are technically recoverable using CO2 injection and sequestration to enhance oil recovery. These resources rival estimated worldwide conventional oil resources of 1-2 trillion barrels.

Proposed Plan to End Oil Imports

American imports of oil could be eliminated by 2030, a new study claims, if the U.S. adopts an aggressive 20 year program of energy efficiency and commercialization of four already-demonstrated technologies for making transportation fuels.The New York Times reported on Saturday that the study sponsored by a nonprofit group of legislators and governors called the Southern States Energy Board, to be released on Monday, urges a crash program to meet fuel needs without imports. The study, authored by Roger Bezdek, claims that more than a million new jobs would be created and the deficit reduced by $600 billion.

The four technologies are:

1. Coal liquefication which would replace 29% of oil.
2. Use biomass to make syngas which would be converted to liquid fuels by a gasification-Fischer-Tropsch (FT) Process.
3. Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) using CO2 produced by the other processes which would also eliminate CO2 emmisions that cause global warming.
4. Production of oil from shale.

The study indicates that oil prices of $35 to $55 a barrel are necessary for these process to be competitive.

The study does not endorse corn ethanol, but it does anticipate the production of cellulosic ethanol, in a process which it points out is not yet commercial.

Fuel Economy and Biofuels: The Answer to our Liquid Fuels Crises

The Union of Concerned Scientists have two articles in its Clean Vehicles series: Fuel Economy: The Single Most Effective Step for Cutting Oil Dependence , and Ethanol: Frequently Asked Questions which are well worth reading and generally support my views as to what we need to do to reduce our dependence on oil imports. They have put some numbers on the scenario that they develop.

Their conclusion is: "The importance of fuel economy is thereby twofold. First, it delivers bigger savings in the near to medium term. Second, it makes it conceivable that biofuels could almost completely replace gasoline for our cars and trucks in the long term because we would need much less fuel."

The top edge of the blue area on this graph indicates the total gasoline demand for our cars and light trucks under a business-as-usual scenario. 

If our average fuel economy is increased  to 40 mpg in 10 years, we have some modest fuel economy improvements beyond that date, and also add in some policies to help reduce miles traveled, all of the oil in the blue area can be saved. The green area represents the potential savings from ethanol, if everything goes well in growing that industry. In the near term our saving from biofuels is modest, but by the end of the period biofuels nearly replace all gasoline usage. Projected demand would drop to the line between the blue and the green.

Saft Li-ion Batteries to Power Spacecraft

Saft (SAFT.PA), the French battery supplier with US headquarters in Maryland, recently won an award from Boeing to supply Li-ion batteries, using the same electrochemistry as their cells for automotive applications, for the Mobile Satellite Ventures Satellite program. The multi-million dollar contract will mark Saft’s largest U.S. commercial satellite contract for Li-ion batteries and the first commercial satellite program using Li-ion technology for Boeing. The satellites will be among the largest and most powerful ever built and will be provided to Mobile Satellite Ventures (MSV) for an advanced commercial telecommunications network.

Li-ion cells will provide a compact, weight-saving source power to ensure continuous operation of the satellites at times when their solar panels are not in view of the sun. The cells differ from Li-ion cells used in consumer electronics in that they must endure more charge/discharge cycles than commercial cells. These cells are based on the same electrochemistry as Saft's Li-ion cells for automotive applications and must deliver reliable reserve power for 18 years.

Heating and Cooling from the Sun

Harnessing the heating - and cooling - powers of the sun from PhysOrg.com
Imagine heat radiating from the walls of your home on a cold winter night, or the glass in your home's windows emitting cool temperatures on a scorching summer afternoon. Now imagine these systems operating on an endless supply of affordable energy – the sun. Three years ago a team of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute researchers began developing an "intelligent" heating and cooling system that made these seemingly too-good-to-be-true scenarios a possibility.

Developed by Steven Van Dessel, assistant professor of architecture at Rensselaer, the patented Active Building Envelope (ABE) system uses a photovoltaic (PV) system to collect and convert sunlight into electricity. That power is then delivered to a series of thermoelectric (TE) heat-pumps that are integrated into a building envelope (the walls,windows, and roof). Depending on the direction of the electric current supplied to the TE heat-pump system, the sun's energy can actively be used to make the inside space warmer or cooler. An energy storage mechanism is also integrated to collect extra energy for use when little or no sunlight is available.

About BlueFire Ethanol

Perhaps the best kept secret in the ethanol industry is BlueFire Ethanol Inc. an ethanol development company, that has begun trading under the Symbol BFRE.PK. They use the this process for the conversion of municipal solid waste (MSW), rice and wheat straws, wood waste and other agricultural residues to ethanol. Their use of the Arkenol Technology positions it as the only cellulose-to-ethanol company worldwide with demonstrated production of ethanol from these materials. They have an exclusive, North American license of the technology for use in the production of ethanol for the transportation fuel market.

Since 2003, the technology has been successfully used in the IZUMI pilot plant operated by JGC, the licensee of Arkenol for Japan and SE Asia, to produce ethanol for the Japanese transportation fuel market. Over the last 10 years, the initial testing on a vast array of potential feedstock has been completed both in the U.S. and at various locations throughout the world. BlueFire has completed the arrangement of the major commitments necessary to proceed with final development of its first commercial facility which will be sited in California.

Arkenol has developed significant proprietary improvements to a well known conversion technology known as concentrated acid hydrolysis such that the process is ready for commercial implementation. Some of the most important innovations are:

• Flash fermentation
• Membrane distillation
• Chromatographic separation of the acid from the sugars

Roadmap for Development of Cellulosic Ethanol Production

The U.S. DOE recently released a report detailing a roadmap for the development of cellulosic ethanol production.  The report is based on the Biomass to Biofuels Workshop held December 7–9, 2005, in Rockville, Maryland, where more than 50 scientists representing a wide range of expertise convened to define barriers and challenges to the biofuel industry. This report is a roadmap, based on that workshop, for accelerating cellulosic ethanol research, helping make biofuels practical and cost-competitive by 2012 ($1.07/gal ethanol) and offering the potential to displace up to 30% of the nation’s current gasoline use by 2030. While other blogs and news articles have reported on the release of the report, no one has attempted to articulate the roadmap. The following are some brief excerpts from the report.

Fuels derived from cellulosic biomass—the fibrous, woody, and generally inedible portions of plant matter—offer an alternative to conventional energy sources that supports national economic growth, national energy security, and environmental goals. Cellulosic biomass is an attractive energy feedstock because supplies are abundant domestically and globally. It is a renewable source of liquid transportation fuels that can be used readily by current-generation vehicles and distributed through the existing transportation- fuel infrastructure. Ethanol from corn grain is an increasingly important additive fuel source, but it has limited growth potential as a primary transportation fuel.

Achieving the ambitious goal of displacing 30% of the 2004 gasoline demand with biofuels by 2030 will require a rapid expansion of the fuel ethanol industry. Annual U.S. production will need to increase from about 4 billion gallons of corn grain ethanol to about 60 billion gallons per year from a variety of plant materials. 

An annual supply of roughly a billion dry tons of biomass will be needed to support this level of ethanol production. A recent report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and DOE finds potential to sustainably harvest more than 1.3 billion metric tons of biomass from U.S. forest and agricultural lands by mid-21st Century (previous post).

The report found that only 6% of the 1.36 billion metric tons would come from grain, and since only about a billion tons are required, none of the feedstock need come at the expense of food producing acreage.

A Power Grid for the Hydrogen Economy

An article describing a cryogenic, superconducting "SuperGrid" that would simultaneously deliver electrical power and hydrogen fuel is featured in the July issue of Scientific American.com.

The August 14, 2003 power failure that affected 48 million inhabitants of New York, northeastern US and Ontario and an even more extensive blackout that affected 56 million people in Italy and Switzerland a month later--called attention to the susceptibility of our power grids to failure.  A more fundamental limitation of our grid is that it is poorly suited to handle the relentless growth in demand for electrical energy and the coming transition away from fossil-fueled power stations and vehicles to cleaner sources of electricity and transportation fuels.  The following is but a sampling of the information in the report, which you may want to read, to fully understand the problem and the authors solution.

The authors are part of a growing group of engineers and physicists who have begun developing designs for a new energy delivery system they call the Continental SuperGrid. They envision the SuperGrid evolving gradually alongside the current grid, strengthening its capacity and reliability. Over the course of decades, the SuperGrid would put in place the means to generate and deliver not only plentiful, reliable, inexpensive and "clean" electricity but also hydrogen for energy storage and personal transportation.

Super-Grid links crossing several time zones and weather boundaries would allow power plants to tap excess nighttime capacity to meet the peak electricity needs of distant cities. By smoothing out fluctuations in demand, the low-loss grid could help reduce the need for new generation construction.

The Super-Grid could go a long way, too, toward removing one of the fundamental limitations to the large-scale use of inconstant energy from wind, tides, waves and sunlight.

Fuel Cell Energy's Hydrogen Separation Process

FuelCell Energy, Inc. (NasdaqNM:FCEL), has developed a cost-efficient system to separate pure hydrogen from a gas mixture that then can be sold as fuel for hydrogen vehicles or industrial uses. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded FuelCell Energy $1.36 Million to advance this Electrochemical Hydrogen Separator (EHS) project for use with the company's Direct FuelCell(R) (DFC(R)) power plants.

Unlike other means of separating hydrogen, which rely on compression, the company's proprietary EHS technology has no moving parts. FCEL anticipates that their process to be significantly more reliable and efficient than conventional methods and to save up to one-half of the energy required when compared to conventional compression based-methods of hydrogen separation.

A subscale prototype EHS unit is currently operating at the University of Connecticut Global Fuel Cell Center. The subscale EHS system currently produces 1200 liters per hour of pure hydrogen. With the DoD award, the unit will be scaled up by a factor of 25 and will operate in conjunction with a sub-megawatt DFC power plant in Danbury for testing.

Valence Inks Battery Sale

Oxygen S.p.A., a provider of electric transporters, has placed orders for the new U-Charge(R) XP battery systems, based on Saphion(R) lithium-ion technology, from Valence Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq:VLNC). The Italian company selected Valence batteries to power a new line of electric scooters designed for delivery fleets across Europe. Oxygen's initial fleet deployment will start this summer with a major European Postal Service. Saphion technology is the industry's first commercially available, safe, large-format lithium-ion rechargeable battery technology.

The technology enables Oxygen to deliver a solution where their customers can make deliveries for the entire daily route without having to recharge the battery, with a range of up to 85 miles.  Oxygen will use the U-Charge XP Power System in its cargo scooters, which are designed to address the need for low-cost, highly efficient transportation in congested urban areas where quiet, pollution-free, low maintenance vehicles have gained preference. The Oxygen electric scooters feature advanced technologies, such as brushless motor, electronic engine control and regenerative braking to recharge the battery.

The U-Charge Power System Family of products is designed for motive applications such as hybrid and electric vehicles, scooters and wheelchairs and has the same dimensions as the most popular lead acid batteries but with significant increases in performance related to cycle life and weight.

Transfer of manufacturing facilities to Suzhou, China may be starting to payoff for Valence, who has been suffering from cash shortages and has seemed to be taking a back seat to Altair and A123.

Oxygen Orders Valence Batteries to Power a Fleet of Electric Scooters; Scooters With U-Charge(R) XP Power Systems To Be Utilized by Major European Postal Service, Valence press release, July 6, 2006
Valence Technologies, Inc. , Austin, Texas

Ovonics Inks 46 MW Order

United Solar Ovonic, (NASDAQ: ENER), announced that it has signed multi-year cooperative agreements with Spazio Energia and Sunerg Solar of Italy to supply a total of 46 MW of photovoltaic (PV) laminates.

This is a very important order for Ovonics and the thin-film PV industry in general as it is an indication that this technology is being accepted by the marketplace. It is a large order or Ovonics considering their manufacturing capacity, although it is spread out over several years.

Spazio Energia will use UNI-SOLAR^ laminates in Italy to build large-scale PV Solar Parks in the first phase of Italy’s “Gigawatt Scale” PV Solar Park Initiative. Sunerg Solar, a well- known PV distributor and system integrator since 1992, will use the laminates to satisfy the needs of its customers and distribution channels in the Italian market.

Mitsubishi Hybrid Truck with Li-ion Batteries

Mitsubishi Fuso has developed a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) which offers improved fuel economy and lower emissions than conventional vehicles while still providing rugged reliability for day-to-day work.

The new truck combines a small, clean-burning diesel engine, an ultra-slim electric motor/generator and advanced lithium-ion batteries in a drive train that also includes a high-efficiency automated mechanical transmission. The result is a medium-duty truck that achieves up to 30% better fuel economy in delivery applications and also produces significantly less emissions than its standard diesel-only model.

Altair Batteries to be used in EV

Has the lithium revolution arrived?

Today Altair Nanotechnologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALTI), announced that it has received a $750,000 initial order for its fast charge, high powered batteries from Phoenix Motorcars.

The battery packs will be engineered and manufactured at Altairnano's Anderson, Indiana facility and will utilize Altairnano's proprietary nano-lithium ion battery technology.  Phoenix Motor Cars is using the engineering services of Boshart Engineering, Inc., based in Ontario, California, to develop the battery integration, validation, certification and regulatory testing.

"Altairnano's nano-lithium battery technology, when integrated with an optimized electric drive train could provide the impetus to rejuvenate and realize the promise of the electric vehicle vision" commented Daniel Riegert, Chairman of Phoenix Motorcars.  "We are preparing for the manufacture and distribution of several thousand vehicles over the next few years."

New Catalysts for Fischer Tropsch

Professor Alan Goldman and his Rutgers team in collaboration with researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have developed a breakthrough technology that employs a pair of catalytic chemical reactions in the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process to more efficiently convert carbon sources, such as coal to diesel fuel and other synthetic petroleum substitutes.

"With our new catalysts, one can generate productive, clean burning fuels with Fischer-Tropsch, economically and at unsurpassed levels of efficiency" said Goldman, a professor in the department of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers. Goldman further explained that the breakthrough technology employs a pair of catalytic chemical reactions that operate in tandem. This combination of catalysts revamps the FT process for generating synthetic petroleum substitutes, invented in 1920 but never developed to the point of becoming commercially viable for coal conversion.

Coal is converted to petroleum like liquids in a coal to liquids (CTL) process which consists of two major steps: 1) gasification to produce a synthesis gas and 2) conversion of the gas to a liquid syncrude by synthesis over a catalyst in a Fischer-Tropsch process. The FT process requires a feed stream consisting largely of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The feed gas to the FT step is produced in a gasifier by heating the gas to a temperatures greater than than 700^oC.  By carefully controlling the oxygen content the hydrocarbons in the feedstock are broken down to carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The Fischer-Tropsch process converts the feed gas into liquid organic compounds, carbon dioxide and water.  The conversion takes place in the presence of a catalyst, usually iron or cobalt.  The temperature, pressure and catalyst determine whether a light or heavy syncrude is produced.

Simple Combustor Increases Efficiency, Reduces Emissions

Georgia Tech researchers have created a simple combustor (combustion chamber where fuel is burned to power an engine or gas turbine) designed to burn fuel in a wide range of devices ― with next to no emission of nitrogen oxide (NOx) and carbon monoxide (CO), two of the primary causes of air pollution. The device has a simpler design than existing state-of-the-art combustors and could be manufactured and maintained at a much lower cost, making it more affordable in everything from jet engines and power plants to home water heaters.

Called the Stagnation Point Reverse Flow Combustor, the Georgia Tech device, originally developed for NASA, significantly reduces NOx and CO emissions in a variety of aircraft engines and gas turbines that burn gaseous or liquid fuels. It burns fuel with NOx emissions below 1 parts per million (ppm) and CO emissions lower than 10 ppm, significantly lower than emissions produced by other combustors.

A comparison of Georgia Tech’s combustor with a traditional combustor: (L) A traditional combustor mixes fuel and air before they are injected into the combustion chamber. (R) Tech’s combustor injects the fuel and air separately into the combustor.

RE: The False Hope of Biofuels

The Sunday, July 2, edition of the Washington Post had a column titled "The False Hope of Biofuels" which had the basic premise that biofuels could only supply half of our transportation fuel needs by 2025 and that food supplies would be compromised if it did so.  I don't think that any responsible person has argued that we could supply more than 30% of our current transportation fuel requirements, rather a diversity of fuels and conservation methods, featuring plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, will be required to provide relief from our increasingly expensive oil supplies.

In the most authoritative report on this subject "Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply", an ORNL study determined that enough fuel could be produced from biomass to meet more than one-third of our current demand for transportation fuels in the U.S. by 2030. As far as the arguments about land usage, the land necessary for producing the biofuels includes currently unused marginal land on which switchgrass or similar crops could be grown, land that is currently idle, and cellulose products produced from forestry wastes and the like, that do not require any additional land usage, as well as a fraction of the land currently devoted to the production of food, which is currently used to produce food for export or to produce food that is bought by the government to subsidise farmers. This study did not include the very significant amount of fuel that could be made from municiple solid waste, or methane from landfills and animal wastes (manure).

The answer to our increasingly expensive fuels is a diversified utilization of several technologies, not just biofuels.  The combination of biofuels; vehicles that use less fuels, such as energy efficient hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs): those made by Toyota, the Honda Insight and Civic and the Ford Escape Escalade; more importantly plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs); all electric vehicles (EVs); fuels made by coal liquefaction; vehicles running on CNG; our remaining domestic supplies of oil; and gains in efficiency made possible by more widespread use of mass transportation are more than sufficient to supply our transportation needs for the foreseeable future, even after allowing for population growth and land needed for growing food crops.

Diesel Hydraulic Delivery Truck Unveiled

The Environmental Protection Agency recently unveiled a hybrid diesel UPS delivery van that combines a high-efficiency diesel engine with a hydraulic propulsion system, which replaces the vehicle's conventional drivetrain and transmission. Such a vehicle could reduce the fuel costs of package delivery services like UPS by as much as 70 percent and cut harmful emissions.

In laboratory testing, the hybrid achieved a 60 percent to 70 percent improvement in fuel economy and a reduction of more than 40 percent in emissions, versus current UPS trucks. The EPA and UPS plan to conduct real-world testing this year.

A hydraulic hybrid has several advantages. One is that it can accept and deliver huge amounts of energy quickly, which batteries cannot. And its storage ability does not degrade over time, which is a fact of life with batteries available today. Generally speaking, though, hydraulic systems do not store as much total energy as an electrical battery does, because the storage tanks are bulky.

A hydraulic hybrid is more specialized than the gasoline-electric hybrids sold today. It works better on heavier vehicles, and in stop-and-go traffic; backers say the ideal vehicle for this system is a garbage truck, but that it could work well in vehicles as small as S.U.V.'s.