Coal Exports: An Update On Pacific Northwest Coal Fights (via Desmogblog)
This is a guest post by Josephine Ferorelli, originally published at Occupy.com. There is not enough room in the national headlines for all the battles between fossil fuel expansion projects and climate activists occurring right now. But the Keystone XL proposal’s public comment period ends on April…
But there are limits that could hold wind back from growing
A new study from Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences says that the generating capacity of large-scale wind farms isn’t quite as high as scientists previously thought.
The study was led by Harvard applied physicist David Keith, who showed that we may not have access to as much wind power as once thought. Keith is an internationally renowned expert on climate science.
According to Keith’s study, individual wind turbines each create a “wind shadow,” which is where air is slowed by the drag on the turbine’s blades. Wind farms with as many turbines packed into an area as possible but with just the right amount of spacing in between them are optimal for decreasing this drag.
However, the larger these wind farms are, the more they communicate and regional-scale wind patterns are even more important. Keith said previous generating capacity of large-scale wind farms ignored the drags and these wind patterns.
Keith’s study said that the generating capacity of large-scale wind farms that are larger than 100 square kilometers could peak anywhere from 0.5 and 1 watts per square meter. Prior estimates put these figures at 2 to 7 watts per square meter. 
“If wind power’s going to make a contribution to global energy requirements that’s serious, 10 or 20 percent or more, then it really has to contribute on the scale of terawatts in the next half-century or less,” said Keith.
But there are limits that could hold wind back from growing. Keith said that if wind were to exceed 100 terawatts, it would have a huge impact on global winds and eventually climate — which could negatively affect climate more than doubling CO2.
“Our findings don’t mean that we shouldn’t pursue wind power—wind is much better for the environment than conventional coal—but these geophysical limits may be meaningful if we really want to scale wind power up to supply a third, let’s say, of our primary energy,” said Keith.
“It’s clear the theoretical upper limit to wind power is huge, if you don’t care about the impacts of covering the whole world with wind turbines . What’s not clear—and this is a topic for future research—is what the practical limit to wind power would be if you consider all of the real-world constraints. You’d have to assume that wind turbines need to be located relatively close to where people actually live and where there’s a fairly constant wind supply, and that they have to deal with environmental constraints. You can’t just put them everywhere.”
Keith concluded that we’ll need to find sources for tens of terawatts of carbon-free power “within a human lifetime” in order to stabilize the Earth’s climate.
“It’s worth asking about the scalability of each potential energy source—whether it can supply, say, 3 terawatts, which would be 10 percent of our global energy need, or whether it’s more like 0.3 terawatts and 1 percent,” said Keith.
Source: Harvard University
Feb. 24, 2013 — A new method of harvesting the Sun’s energy is emerging, thanks to scientists at UC Santa Barbara’s Departments of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, and Materials. Though still in its infancy, the research promises to convert sunlight into energy using a process based on metals that are more robust than many of the semiconductors used in conventional methods.
The researchers’ findings are published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
“It is the first radically new and potentially workable alternative to semiconductor-based solar conversion devices to be developed in the past 70 years or so,” said Martin Moskovits, professor of chemistry at UCSB.
In conventional photoprocesses, a technology developed and used over the last century, sunlight hits the surface of semiconductor material, one side of which is electron-rich, while the other side is not. The photon, or light particle, excites the electrons, causing them to leave their postions, and create positively-charged “holes.” The result is a current of charged particles that can be captured and delivered for various uses, including powering lightbulbs, charging batteries, or facilitating chemical reactions.
“For example, the electrons might cause hydrogen ions in water to be converted into hydrogen, a fuel, while the holes produce oxygen,” said Moskovits.
In the technology developed by Moskovits and his team, it is not semiconductor materials that provide the electrons and venue for the conversion of solar energy, but nanostructured metals — a “forest” of gold nanorods, to be specific.
For this experiment, gold nanorods were capped with a layer of crystalline titanium dioxide decorated with platinum nanoparticles, and set in water. A cobalt-based oxidation catalyst was deposited on the lower portion of the array.
“When nanostructures, such as nanorods, of certain metals are exposed to visible light, the conduction electrons of the metal can be caused to oscillate collectively, absorbing a great deal of the light,” said Moskovits. “This excitation is called a surface plasmon.”
As the “hot” electrons in these plasmonic waves are excited by light particles, some travel up the nanorod, through a filter layer of crystalline titanium dioxide, and are captured by platinum particles. This causes the reaction that splits hydrogen ions from the bond that forms water. Meanwhile, the holes left behind by the excited electrons head toward the cobalt-based catalyst on the lower part of the rod to form oxygen.
According to the study, hydrogen production was clearly observable after about two hours. Additionally, the nanorods were not subject to the photocorrosion that often causes traditional semiconductor material to fail in minutes.
“The device operated with no hint of failure for many weeks,” Moskovits said.
The plasmonic method of splitting water is currently less efficient and more costly than conventional photoprocesses, but if the last century of photovoltaic technology has shown anything, it is that continued research will improve on the cost and efficiency of this new method — and likely in far less time than it took for the semiconductor-based technology, said Moskovits.
“Despite the recentness of the discovery, we have already attained ‘respectable’ efficiencies. More importantly, we can imagine achievable strategies for improving the efficiencies radically,” he said.
Research in this study was also performed by postdoctoral researchers Syed Mubeen and Joun Lee; grad student Nirala Singh; materials engineer Stephan Kraemer; and chemistry professor Galen Stucky.
Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
Posted February 23, 2013 – 18:39 by David Konow
With the advent of The Walking Dead, zombies are more popular now than ever before.
Interestingly enough, GiantFreakinRobot and the Huffington Post recently ran a story about biologists developing zombie cells.
No, this is not something out of I Am Legend where a virus gets out and created zombies everywhere, don’t panic, this was an experiment developed in Sandia National Laboratories and the University of New Mexico biology labs where they developed “zombie-like” cells.
As the Post tells us, mammalian cells are coated with silica, and it makes replicas that are nearly perfect to the original. The silica protects the cells, and they can keep living at higher temperatures and pressures than the first living cells. At 400 degrees, the protein of the cell evaporates, but a three-dimensional replica of the “formerly living being” is left behind, thanks to the silica.
The head researcher said, “Our zombie cells bridge chemistry and biology to create forms that not only near-perfectly resemble their past selves, but can do future work.” But as Robot tells us, this is not for the development of creating zombies, thankfully. This is to try and create fossils that we can create fuels from.
“That’s right,” writes Rudie Obias. “Zombie gasoline for cars, boats, and airplanes.” Could this eventually end all energy crises and we’ll never have to go to war with the Middle East over oil again? That would be cool, no? And we thought electric cars and going solar were going to save us.
In other undead news, you read our report on TG about hackers pulling a zombie prank in Montana. The pranksters got onto the local station KRTV, and played an emergency warning that the undead were attacking. This thankfully did not result in wide-spread panic, the TV viewers who saw the warning apparently got the joke, but the FCC didn’t find this very amusing.
In fact, according to Media Bistro, the Federal Communications Commission has been telling TV stations to “take immediate action” and make sure their Emergency Alert Systems are more secure after this zombie hacker prank.”
Again, people got the joke, but you never know. Without a disclaimer that the whole thing’s in fun, maybe there could be an undead panic down the road, especially if The Walking Dead stays on top in the ratings, and zombie cells becomes the energy source of the future.
An array on nano energy harvesters in what the researchers call a “swiss cheese” arrangement. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Rochester)
Feb. 14, 2013 — A new type of nanoscale engine has been proposed that would use quantum dots to generate electricity from waste heat, potentially making microcircuits more efficient.
“The system is really a simple one, which exploits certain properties of quantum dots to harvest heat,” Professor Andrew Jordan of the University of Rochester said. “Despite this simplicity, the power it could generate is still larger than any other nanoengine that has been considered until now.”
The engines would be microscopic in size, and have no moving parts. Each would only produce a tiny amount of power — a millionth or less of what a light bulb uses. But by combining millions of the engines in a layered structure, Jordan says a device that was a square inch in area could produce about a watt of power for every one degree difference in temperature. Enough of them could make a notable difference in the energy consumption of a computer.
A paper describing the new work is being published in Physical Review B by Jordan, a theoretical physics professor, and his collaborators, Björn Sothmann and Markus Buttiker from the University of Geneva, and Rafael Sánchez from the Material Sciences Institute in Madrid.
Jordan explained that each of the proposed nanoengines is based on two adjacent quantum dots, with current flowing through one and then the other. Quantum dots are manufactured systems that due to their small size act as quantum mechanical objects, or artificial atoms.
The path the electrons have to take across both quantum dots can be adjusted to have an uphill slope. To make it up this (electrical) hill, electrons need energy. They take the energy from the middle of the region, which is kept hot, and use this energy to come out the other side, higher up the hill. This removes heat from where it is being generated and converts it into electrical power with a high efficiency.
To do this, the system makes use of a quantum mechanical effect called resonant tunneling, which means the quantum dots act as perfect energy filters. When the system is in the resonant tunneling mode, electrons can only pass through the quantum dots when they have a specific energy that can be adjusted. All other electrons that do not have this energy are blocked.
Quantum dots can be grown in a self-assembling way out of semiconductor materials. This allows for a practical way to produce many of these tiny engines as part of a larger array, and in multiple layers, which the authors refer to as the Swiss Cheese Sandwich configuration (see image).
How much electrical power is produced depends on the temperature difference across the energy harvester — the higher the temperature difference, the higher the power that will be generated. This requires good insulation between the hot and cold regions, Jordan says.
Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
Posted February 13, 2013 – 06:45 by Emma Woollacott
Korean engineers have developed a new wireless power transfer technology for railways, harbor freight and airport.
The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the Korea Railroad Research Institute (KRRI) today successfully tested it out on railroad tracks at Osong Station.
The technology supplies 60 kHz and 180 kW of power remotely to transport vehicles at a stable, constant rate, they say. It was developed originally as part of an electric vehicle system introduced by KAIST in 2011 known as the On-line Electric Vehicle (OLEV).
The first models, a bus and a tram, tap 20 kHz and 100 kW power at an 85 percent transmission efficiency rate, while keeping a 20cm air gap between the underbody of the vehicle and the road surface.
Today’s demonstration of the technology in a train shows that OLEV can be used successfully in larger-scale systems.
“We have greatly improved the OLEV technology from the early development stage by increasing its power transmission density by more than three times. The size and weight of the power pickup modules have been reduced as well,” says Professor Dong-Ho Cho of KAIST.
“We were able to cut down the production costs for major OLEV components, the power supply, and the pickup system, and in turn, OLEV is one step closer to being commercialized.”
KAIST and KRRI plan to apply the wireless power transfer technology to trams in May and high speed trains in September.
Posted February 13, 2013 – 07:00 by Randy Woods, EarthTechling
The goal of many green designs for houses is to make them appear part of the landscape.
In the Netherlands, the firm 123DV has created a home that is far too linear to be called organic, but still manages to feel as it is part of the hill upon which it sits, especially since the hill itself is also man-made.
The “Bridge House,” as it is known, is located on a wide, grassy knoll in a park near the town of Achterhoek. Like most of the landscape in the Netherlands, it has been shaped by both new and ancient human forces. Though the house is utterly modern in shape and design, it uses the traditional Dutch “terp” method of building a low mound and partially embedding the cellar in the earth to harness the geothermal properties of the surrounding soil.
The simple box shape appears to sit lightly atop the hill, but it is truly part of the earthworks, with most of the lower floor buried in the terp mound. Only a small trapezoidal section of the foundation is revealed in a shallow trough that is cut into the gently sloping hillside, framing the house’s main entrance.
The original intent of the terp style of building was to protect houses and entire villages from incoming tides before the massive dike systems of Holland were constructed. Today, the terps are used more for temperature control. By harnessing the earth’s thermal storage properties, the half-buried house is kept cool in the summer and warm in winter without needing extra electricity.
In fact, the Bridge House has enough green design elements to be completely self-sufficient, should the need arise. In addition to the geothermal system in the roof and marble floors, drinking water is supplied by an on-site well, solar panels supply all the needed electricity, wastewater is treated in a septic field, and rainwater is collected for reuse on the landscaping, which includes wildflowers, 1,000 rhododendrons and 17,000 trees that were all planted on the property by hand.
Even the extensive use of floor-to-ceiling glass—always a thermal bane of modern design—is mitigated somewhat by the inclusion of “heat-mirror glass.” This double-paned glass includes a reflective coating that reflects part of the sun’s rays and blocks excess heat from entering.
Offshore wind is a huge resource, but it can’t yet compete with fossil fuels.
Big blade: The forms for the 80-meter turbine blades that Vestas is developing stretch into the distance.
Blade Dynamics, a six-year-old company that’s partly owned by American Semiconductor, a wind turbine designer and supplier of wind farm electronics, says that it has developed technology that will make possible the world’s largest wind turbine blades. It’s demonstrated the technology by manufacturing 49-meter blades, and now the Energy Technologies Institute, a partnership between the U.K. government and major corporations such as BP, Shell, and Caterpillar, has given the company nearly $25 million to build 100-meter blades. They could enable 250-meter-tall wind turbines that would tower over the Washington Monument, which stands a mere 169 meters tall. The largest wind turbine blades now are 75 meters long (see “A Mighty Wind Turbine ”).
The effort is no mere record-setting spectacle. Finding affordable ways to make the enormous wind turbine blades is one of the biggest challenges to making offshore wind competitive with fossil fuels, and leading wind power companies, including GE and Vestas, are developing technology to solve the problem.
Some of the best winds for generating power are found offshore, where wind can be steadier, faster, and less turbulent than on land. Wind turbines only make up about a third of the cost of offshore wind farms—installation costs are the major expense, as they involve enormous, specialized ships and are subject to delays from bad weather. Using larger wind turbines reduces the number of wind turbines needed, decreasing installation and maintenance costs (see “Building Bigger, Better Wind Turbines ” and “The Great German Energy Experiment ”).
One problem with building very large wind turbines is that the cost of making the blades is skyrocketing. As wind turbines get bigger, the loads on the blades, and therefore their weight, goes up exponentially. The conventional way for making blades involves forms that are as long as the blades themselves. The forms and other equipment needed to make them are becoming so big and specialized that there are few suppliers, which increases prices for manufacturing equipment. Making sure the blades are formed accurately also gets more and more difficult as blades get longer.
Some major wind turbine manufacturers are sticking with the large forms, but are adopting carbon-reinforced fiberglass blades and new blade designs to offset some of the manufacturing cost increase. They’re also counting on savings in installation and other costs to make the business case for larger wind turbines. Siemens, for example, is using large forms for its 75-meter blades, as is Vestas, which is developing 80-meter blades for a wind turbine that will be available next year.
While manufacturers like Vestas are using carbon-reinforced blades, Blade Dynamics is making blades entirely out of carbon fiber. The company has developed proprietary ways to make 12- to 20-meter sections of carbon fiber blade and then splice them together seamlessly—eliminating the need for large forms. Some previous attempts at modular blades involved bolting blade sections together, but this created stress points within the blades that make them too weak.
Carbon fiber is more expensive than fiberglass, so for a given length, the blades will be more expensive. But David Cripps, senior technical manager at Blade Dynamics, says the use of carbon fiber can improve the overall economics of wind turbines in several ways. By making the blade in smaller sections, it’s possible to make more precise aerodynamic structures, improving performance, he says. Also, because the blades weigh much less than fiberglass ones, it’s possible to put longer blades on existing wind turbine designs. For example, the company’s 49-meter blade weighs no more than a conventional 45-meter blade specified by a wind turbine’s original design. Longer blades gather more wind, allowing the turbines to generate more power at lower wind speeds, increasing revenue.
The lighter blades also make it possible to design new wind turbines that have lighter and less expensive components, such as the drive shaft, tower, and foundation. “Instead of a 24-ton rotor, you might have a 15-ton rotor. That’s substantial weight to save on the end of a long cantilevered tower,” Cripps says.
The development effort is part of American Superconductor’s strategy of bringing 10-megawatt wind turbines to market (offshore wind farms typically use 3.6-megawatt turbines or, more rarely, six-megawatt ones). It’s reducing the weight of the wind turbine generator with the help of superconductor materials, and is developing a 10-megawatt turbines that it says will weigh about as much as five-megawatt ones, to keep installation costs down.
Air travel accounts for a significant portion of carbon emissions.
Wing it: NASA has built a remote-controlled prototype of its hybrid wing design.
Aerospace engineers have long known that ditching a conventional tubular fuselage in favor of a manta-ray-like “hybrid wing” shape could dramatically reduce fuel consumption. A team at NASA has now demonstrated a manufacturing method that promises to make the design practical.
Combined with an extremely efficient type of engine, called an ultra-high bypass ratio engine, the hybrid wing design could use half as much fuel as conventional aircraft. Although it may take 20 years for the technology to come to market, the manufacturing method developed at NASA could help improve conventional commercial aircraft within the next eight to 10 years, estimates Fay Collier, a NASA program manager.
The manufacturing technique lowers the weight of structural components of an aircraft by 25 percent, which could significantly reduce fuel consumption. The advances are the culmination of a three-year, $300 million effort by NASA and partners including Pratt & Whitney and Boeing.
There are two key challenges with the flying wing design. One is how to control such a plane at low speeds. NASA previously addressed this by building a six-meter-wide remote-controlled test aircraft (the X-48B) to demonstrate ways to control hybrid wings. Based on those tests and wind tunnel tests, NASA built a larger remote-controlled aircraft that started test flights last year.
The second challenge is building a full-scale version of the aircraft with pressurized cabins that is structurally sound. One reason tubular airplanes have persisted is that it’s relatively easy to build a tube that can withstand the forces acting on it from the outside during flight while maintaining cabin pressure. The hybrid wing design involves a flatter, box-like fuselage that blends with the wings. The flatter structure, which includes some near-right angles, is much more difficult to build in a way that’s strong enough and light enough to be practical.
NASA’s manufacturing process starts with preformed carbon composite rods. The rods are covered with carbon fiber fabric and stitched into place. Fabric is then stitched over foam strips to create cross members. The fabric is impregnated with an epoxy to create a rigid composite structure.
Sections of a fuselage built with the technique were tested and shown to withstand up to the forces that would be applied to a finished aircraft. Tests also showed that when enough pressure was applied to cause the parts to fail, the stitching used to make the structure stopped cracks from spreading—a key to avoiding catastrophic failure in flight.
The researchers are now building a 30-foot-wide, two-level pressurized structure that will be used in an attempt to validate the manufacturing approach. That structure is scheduled to be finished by 2015.
To achieve a 50 percent reduction in fuel consumption, the hybrid wing design will need to incorporate an advanced engine design. Collier says ultra-high bypass engines are a good match. In an ultra-high bypass design, the front fan on the engine is far larger than the core of the engine, where air is compressed and combustion takes place. Such large fans can be difficult to mount under the wing, as engines are mounted in most conventional airliners. The hybrid wing design involves mounting the engines on top of the plane, rather than under the wings (The top-mount design also cuts noise levels.)
NASA has helped Pratt & Whitney develop prototype ultra-high bypass engines, which are slated to go into commercial use for the first time next year, starting on Bombardier’s C-Series aircraft. NASA is further optimizing the engines to take advantage of the top-mount design in the hybrid wing airplane.
No matter how many times you watch The Matrix, the creepiest part is seeing the whole of humanity hooked up to pods to act as living power generators for their robot masters. Now Germany-based designer Dennis Siegel has created a kind of mini version of this idea that he calls an Electromagnetic Harvester.
The tiny device allows him to draw redundant energy from household appliances, mobile devices, and even outside aerial electrical lines. An LED light indicates when power is effectively being drawn in, and that power is conveniently stored in what appears to be a common AA battery. According to Siegel, it takes the Electromagnetic Harvester about one day to fully charge one of the batteries, depending on the strength of the electromagnetic field being sourced.
You can see video of the Electromagnetic Harvester in action in the video below.
Via DesignBoom
For the latest tech stories, follow DVICE on Twitter
at @dvice or find us on Facebook
Electromagnetic Harvester from Dennis Siegel on Vimeo.
Follow the link for a video demo -> http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/05/04/sharks-with-laser-beams-attached-to-their-heads-dr-evils-dream-comes-true/
Making life easier by being organized a bit better
My life after reporting.
Longtime Austin artist Jaime Cervantes create eye-catching concert posters.
The Doctor is In... with his random musings
The web log of "Weird Al" Yankovic
Making my life Greener and Learning new Things
WordPress.com is the best place for your personal blog or business site.
Interesting Things 