Technology Trends

The small town of Galena, Alaska, is tired to pay 28 cents/kwh for its electricity, three times the national average. Today, Galena “is powered by generators burning diesel that is barged in during the Yukon River’s ice-free months,” according to Reuters. But Toshiba, which designs a small nuclear reactor named 4S (for “Super Safe, Small, & Simple”), is offering a free reactor to the 700-person village, reports the New York Times (no reg. needed). Galena will only pay for operating costs, driving down the price of electricity to less than 10 cents/kwh. The 4S is a sodium-cooled fast spectrum reactor — a low-pressure, self-cooling reactor. It will generate power for 30 years before refueling and should be installed before 2010 providing an approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Read more…

Here is the status of the deal as told by Reuters.

Galena officials met with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. If the commission approves the plan, the reactor would be the first new one permitted in the United States since the early 1980s, according to an Alaska Public Radio Network report on Thursday.

Energy to power electricity is important to Galena. Winter temperatures can dip below minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 51 Celsius). Daylight is scarce because of the short days during the winter.

Galena is powered by generators burning diesel that is barged in during the Yukon River’s ice-free months. That is costly and carries its own environmental risks because diesel can spill.

Toshiba, which designs a new 10-megawatt nuclear reactor, offered to install one of these in the hope that other isolated towns will follow, explains the New York Times.

Toshiba offered Galena a free reactor if the town would pay the operating costs, estimated at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, about the national average for power. In December, the City Council voted unanimously to take it.

Galena looked at other sources of energy, such as coal, which pollutes, and solar power, but the sun is not very present at this kind of latitude. So it decided to take the nuclear path.

Here are some details about the 4S reactor.

Toshiba calls its design the 4S reactor, for “super-safe, small and simple.” It would be installed underground, and in case of cooling system failure, heat would be dissipated through the earth. There are no complicated control rods to move through the core to control the flow of neutrons that sustain the chain reaction; instead, the reactor uses reflector panels around the edge of the core. If the panels are removed, the density of neutrons becomes too low to sustain the chain reaction.

Is this really a Super-Safe nuclear reactor?

The design is described as inherently safe, but it does have one riskier feature: It uses liquid sodium, not water, to draw heat away from the core, so the heat can be used to make steam and then electricity.

Designers chose sodium so they could run the reactor about 200 degrees hotter than most power reactors, but still keep the coolant depressurized. (Water at that temperature would make steam at thousands of pounds of pressure a square inch.) The problem is that if sodium leaks, it burns.

Anyway, if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approves it — which could cost millions of dollars to Toshiba — the 4S reactor could be installed by 2010. It will use uranium enriched to 20 percent and generate power for 30 years before needing to be disposed of and replaced.

If you’re really interested by this 4S reactor to be installed in Galena, you should read “Public Information and Outreach in Galena, Alaska,” a document prepared by the Washington, D.C., firm Shaw Pittman LLC (PDF format, 20 pages, 360 KB). The above images come from this document.

Sources: Reuters, February 3, 2005; Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times, via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 3, 2005; Shaw Pittman LLC, March 23, 2004

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The use of ocean waves energy is in its infancy today, but can lead to clean, affordable and renewable electrical power. Right now, it’s probably 15 years behind wind energy, but it has a vast potential. For example, experts estimate that 0.2 percent of the ocean’s untapped energy could power the entire world. And Oregon may lead future of wave energy with a project of the deployment of 200 buoys, each of them about 12 feet wide and 12 feet tall. These buoys, located off Reedsport, Oregon, could be installed for an estimated initial cost of $5 million and would produce 50 megawatts, enough to power the business district of downtown Portland. But Oregon is not the only state looking at wave energy technology. Other coastal states and several other countries are also searching to produce clean electricity from ocean waves. Read more…

Let’s start with some quotes from the leading researchers about wave energy at Oregon State University (OSU).

“The world’s oceans are an extremely promising source of clean energy,” said Annette von Jouanne, an OSU professor of electrical engineering. “The technology is still in experimental stages, but we’ve made enough progress in the past couple years that it’s time to start planning a working research and demonstration facility.

“The development of wave energy right now is probably 15-20 years behind wind energy, which is just now starting to achieve some optimal production technologies,” said Alan Wallace, the co-principal investigator at OSU on these projects, and a professor of electrical engineering.

“And just like wind energy, these systems will be more expensive at first, and then the cost will come down and become very competitive,” Wallace said. “But this is really groundbreaking research that can be of enormous value to society, and it’s amazing all of the people who want to get involved.”

So what’s the goal of the current OSU project?

The OSU engineers say that a buoy about 12 feet wide and 12 feet tall, rolling up and down in the ocean swells could produce 250 kilowatts per unit — a modest-sized network of about 200 such buoys could power the business district of downtown Portland. And the winter, the period of highest wave energy electrical production, also coincides with peak electricity demands in the Pacific Northwest.

“One of the other extremely promising possibilities with wave energy is the ability to scale these systems either up or down in size, whatever you need to fit the electrical demand,” von Jouanne said. “Small systems could even be used with individual boats at anchor to generate their own electricity.”

But, as says the Oregonian (reference below), Oregon is not alone.

Several other nations are looking at wave energy technology, including Japan, Australia, China, Sweden, India, Portugal, Ireland and Norway. In addition to Oregon, other coastal states looking into wave power include Maine, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii and California.

[And] AquaEnergy Group in Washington state has proposed a wave energy pilot plant that will use buoys about three miles off the Olympic Peninsula to generate electricity.

You’ll find more information about this project by following these links:

• Waves power future
  By Mary Ann Albright, Corvallis Gazette-Times, Oregon, February 5, 2005
  
• Electrical experts plot ways to use waves’ potential
  By Richard L. Hill, The Oregonian, February 2, 2005
  
• The O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory at OSU
  
• The Motor Systems Resource Facility (MSRF) at OSU
  
• The prototype buoys of the AquaEnergy Group Ltd.

Sources: David Stauth, Oregon State University news release, via EurekAlert!, February 2, 2005; and various other websites

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Once again, I’m amazed by the creativity of scientists. Researchers at Cornell University have made a brilliant and environmentally friendly discovery: plastics made from orange peel and a greenhouse gas. By adding a zinc catalyst to a mix of citrus fruits, such as oranges, and carbon dioxide, they found a way to make a new polymer called polylimonene carbonate, very similar to polystyrene, a petroleum-based plastic. This is a double whammy: it will reduce existing carbon dioxide, almost certainly responsible for the global warming effect, while reducing future emissions. Of course, time will pass between this discovery and its practical applications. But ultimately, this will greatly beneficial to all of us. Read more…

A Cornell University research group has made a sweet and environmentally beneficial discovery — how to make plastics from citrus fruits, such as oranges, [which contain limonene oxide ]and carbon dioxide.

Limonene is a carbon-based compound produced in more than 300 plant species. In oranges it makes up about 95 percent of the oil in the peel.

In industry, explains Geoffrey Coates, a Cornell professor of chemistry and chemical biology, the orange peel oil is extracted for various uses, such as giving household cleaners their citrus scent. The oil can be oxidized to create limonene oxide. This is the reactive compound that Coates and his collaborators used as a building block.

The other building block they used was carbon dioxide (CO₂), an atmospheric gas that has been rising steadily over the past century and a half — due largely to the combustion of fossil fuels — becoming an environmentally harmful greenhouse gas.

By using their catalyst to combine the limonene oxide and CO₂, the Coates group produced a novel polymer — called polylimonene carbonate — that has many of the characteristics of polystyrene, a petroleum-based plastic currently used to make many disposable plastic products.

The above diagram shows the very simple process of making polymers by adding a catalyst to a mix of limonene oxide and carbon dioxide (Credit: Cornell University)

And here is Coates’s conclusion.

“Almost every plastic out there, from the polyester in clothing to the plastics used for food packaging and electronics, goes back to the use of petroleum as a building block,” Coates observes. “If you can get away from using oil and instead use readily abundant, renewable and cheap resources, then that’s something we need to investigate. What’s exciting about this work is that from completely renewable resources, we were able to make a plastic with very nice qualities.”

The research work has been published by the Journal of the American Chemical Society (Vol. 126, No. 37, September 22, 2004, Pages 11404-11405, Link).

Here is a direct link to the abstract of this paper called “Alternating Copolymerization of Limonene Oxide and Carbon Dioxide.”

For more information, you can check these pages about Geoffrey Coates and his research group.

Here is what Coates says about his research on polymers created from renewable resources, and more specifically about the copolymerization of CO₂ and epoxides.

Carbon dioxide is an ideal synthetic feedstock since it is abundant, inexpensive, nontoxic, and nonflammable. Although it is estimated that Nature uses CO₂ to make over 200 billion tons of glucose by photosynthesis each year, synthetic chemists have had embarrassing little success in developing efficient catalytic processes that exploit this attractive raw material. There has been considerable recent interest in the development of catalysts for the alternating copolymerization of carbon dioxide with epoxides to produce aliphatic polycarbonates. Due to the low cost and accessibility of the monomers and the attractive properties of polycarbonates, the development of new, efficient initiators for this polymerization process is a significant scientific goal. We have recently discovered a new class of well-defined, highly active zinc-based catalysts that copolymerize carbon dioxide and epoxides under exceptionally mild conditions. These catalysts are remarkable since they are several orders of magnitude more active than the current commercial catalysts.

Let’s hope that this discovery quickly leaves the lab…

Sources: Sarah Davidson, Cornell University news release, January 17, 2005; and various websites

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Researchers at the University of Toronto (U of T) have designed an infrared-sensitive material made of nanocrystals so small they were able to tune them to catch the Sun’s invisible rays. In “Nanotechnologists’ new plastic can see in the dark,” you’ll discover that it’s the first time that a light-sensitive material works in the invisible light spectrum. This opens the way to a broad range of applications, from clothing to digital cameras that work in the dark. But the real breakthrough is that it will permit to catch five more times energy from the Sun, up to 30 percent from the 6 percent achieved today by the best plastic solar cells. Hats off to these researchers…

Here is the somewhat lyrical opening paragraph of the U of T news release.

Imagine a home with “smart” walls responsive to the environment in the room, a digital camera sensitive enough to work in the dark, or clothing with the capacity to turn the sun’s power into electrical energy. Researchers at the University of Toronto have invented an infrared-sensitive material that could shortly turn these possibilities into realities.

Professor Ted Sargent, from Nortel Networks and U of T, explains the process.

“We made particles from semiconductor crystals which were exactly two, three or four nanometres in size. The nanoparticles were so small they remained dispersed in everyday solvents just like the particles in paint,” explains Sargent. Then, they tuned the tiny nanocrystals to catch light at very short wavelengths. The result — a sprayable infrared detector.

Existing technology has given us solution-processible, light-sensitive materials that have made large, low-cost solar cells, displays, and sensors possible, but these materials have so far only worked in the visible light spectrum, says Sargent. “These same functions are needed in the infrared for many imaging applications in the medical field and for fibre optic communications,” he says.

You might think that concrete is a boring material. Not at all. In a very well-documented article, “Concrete Nation,” Science News tells us how the limits of this humble material are being pushed. You can now find concrete that bends like metal and which is five times as strong as regular concrete without any reinforcing steel bars. Or you can use concrete which doesn’t need a vibration machine to remove the air bubbles inside, which can save lots of time during construction. There are also translucent concrete or concrete incorporating transparent elements, allowing to build floors lit from below. And by adding titanium dioxide to cement, you obtain a self-cleaning concrete that remains the same color for centuries and can even clean the air by breaking down dangerous pollutants. Fascinating, isn’t?

Before going further, let’s start by some illustrations. The pictures and the legends below come from the site of a current exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., Liquid Stone: New Architecture in Concrete (Macromedia Flash needed).

Below are computer-generated images of the hypothetical Mound Builder Museum designed by Building Studio from Memphis, Tennessee (Macromedia Flash needed).

And this one shows another museum, the MUCEM, in Marseille, France, which will be completed by 2009.

Now, let’s look at a concrete that bends like metal.

For instance, consider some of the new materials developed by concrete giant Lafarge, headquartered in Paris.

Vic Perry leads the company’s North American operation producing Ductal, one of Lafarge’s newest concrete products (Macromedia Flash needed). Unlike regular concrete, which is brittle and can rupture suddenly under a heavy load, Ductal can bend. “It will deflect and show signs of cracking before it fails,” says Perry. “You can see in advance that you’ve got a problem.”

What’s more, Ductal is five times as strong as regular concrete. That extra oomph comes from the addition of small fibers dispersed throughout the matrix. These fibers, made of either steel or polymer, reinforce the concrete and eliminate the need for reinforcing steel bars, or rebar. A bridge made out of Ductal can be lighter and thinner than a traditional bridge, Perry says.

Because of an aging workforce, there is also the need to reduce the amount of labor during construction.

In response to this concern, Lafarge has developed Agilia. According to the company, laying a 60-cubic-meter slab of regular concrete — enough for a floor in an office building — requires eight people and takes about 8 hours. Placing the same-size slab of Agilia could require as few as two people and take a couple of hours.

Normally, after concrete is poured, the mason passes a vibrating machine over the surface to squeeze out all the air bubbles. It’s a loud and time-consuming process. However, Agilia contains a mix of additives: superplasticizers that keep the concrete fluid and other chemicals that cut down on the water needed. These enable the concrete to consolidate under its own weight without mechanical vibration.

Other concerns, such as global warming, also lead to concrete innovations. Do you know that the cement industry produces 7% of the global human production of carbon dioxide? There are now efforts to replace cement by ‘greener’ materials. And new kinds of concrete are specifically designed to reduce pollution.

Scientists at the Italcementi Group in Bergamo, Italy, have developed a self-cleaning concrete that keeps buildings from turning black from pollutants in the atmosphere. Luigi Cassar and his colleagues at the research branch of Italcementi made the concrete by adding particles of the white pigment titanium dioxide to the cement component.

When titanium dioxide absorbs ultraviolet light, it becomes highly reactive and breaks down pollutants that come into contact with the concrete’s surface. The reactive material can kill bacteria and fungi and also break down pollutants such as nitric oxide, sulfur dioxide, and many volatile organic compounds that contribute to concrete’s darkening.

After reading about all these innovations, do you still think that the ubiquitous concrete is boring?

Sources: Alexandra Goho, Science News, Vol. 167, No. 1, Jan. 1, 2005, p. 7; and various websites

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Researchers from the Netherlands, France and Portugal are working together on a European Union research project called H-Alpha Solar. And they have developed very thin flexible solar panels that can be woven into fabrics, reports the Scotsman in this article. In about three years, you’ll be able to wear jackets that will recharge your phones while you walk. Or you’ll become a very happy camper under a tent covered with flexible films of solar modules. No more batteries to carry! And there are even more good news. This will not empty your wallet. This technology is cheap, about $2 per watt. Read more… UPDATE (December 17, 2004): An alert reader named Julien posted a comment about this entry. A company based in Switzerland, Flexcell, is already selling flexible, custom-designed solar cells and modules. So you don’t have to wait for three years to buy some.

The Scotsman decided to start its article with a touch of humor.

Mobile phone users left talking to themselves when their battery runs out in the middle of a call could soon see an end to their frustration as scientists perfect a way to recharge electrical equipment while on the move.

Researchers are investigating ways flexible solar panels can be sewn into clothing and other textiles so electrical equipment can be recharged without being connected to a mains supply.

According to the New Scientist magazine, the project could soon lead to a tent whose flysheet charges batteries all day so campers can have light all night, or a roll-out plastic sheet which powers cells to operate a DVD player.

The European Union research project called H-Alpha Solar is at the origin of this technology.

For more information about the H-Alpha Solar project, you can read this EUROPA press release about “European research on photovoltaics and biomass” or this presentation named “H-Alpha Solar: Thin film, silicon based, plastic foil Solar Modules”(PDF format, 12 pages, 1.18 MB). Below are some pictures extracted from this presentation.

Now, let’s return to the Scotsman for some more details about the technology.

Gerrit Kroesen, a physicist at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, who led the development team, said: “This technology will be a lot easier to handle than the old glass solar panels.”

His team has made its solar cells flexible simply by making them very thin, but the advance has also involved a degree of compromise in their ability to produce electricity efficiently. While cutting-edge solar panels now operate at an efficiency of about 20 per cent, the new flexible cells are only 7 per cent efficient. However, the manufacturers believe that the reduction in the generating capacity is worth accepting for a cell they believe will be more useful and robust.

So you’ll wear jackets with solar panels in three years. But will this be expensive? Not at all, according to the researchers.

A projected full-scale manufacturing plant would produce panels at a cost of under £1 per watt (about $1.94 or 1.45 euro). As such, an A4 sized panel sewn into the back of a jacket and costing less than £7 (about $13 or 10 euros)would charge a mobile phone during a summer stroll in the countryside. Provided mobile users kept within range of the transmitting masts that relay a call to the networks, phones would never again be out of action.

Is this good or bad? You’ll decide.

Sources: James Reynolds, The Scotsman, December 16, 2004; and various web sites

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The holiday season is coming, and you’ve probably already bought some lights and decorations for your Christmas tree, your house or even your street. But did you know that the market for light bulbs is a $12 to $15 billion one? Now, several companies making light-emitting diodes (LEDs) want a piece of this market, claiming that LEDs are more efficient than light bulbs and could save a staggering $17 billion a year in energy costs. In “Switching off bulbs for LEDs,” the San Jose Mercury News reports that in ten years, you’ll go to your Wal-Mart store to buy LEDs instead of light bulbs, thanks to fantastic improvements in performance by the LED industry. And did you know that each decade since the first LED appeared in 1962, prices have fallen by a factor of 10 while performance has grown by a factor of 20? In the world of LED engineers, this is known as Haitz’s Law, named after retired Agilent scientist Roland Haitz. Read more…

Here are the opening paragraphs of the Mercury News article.

How many engineers does it take to permanently unscrew a light bulb? At San Jose’s Lumileds Lighting, the answer is hundreds.

Lumileds, a joint venture of Agilent and Philips Electronics, makes semiconductor chips known as light-emitting diodes. LEDs are found everywhere, from the tiny flashes on digital cameras to the blue lights that illuminate the Arc d’ Triomphe in Paris at night. And if all goes right, Lumileds will one day see its LEDs replace the common light bulb.

Federal studies estimate that replacing light bulbs with white LEDs could save $17 billion a year in energy costs, or the equivalent of 30 power plants. That could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 155 million tons annually.

LEDs consume less power, don’t use harmful pollutants such as mercury and last 10 times longer than conventional lights. They cost more at the outset, but over time they save money in electrical bills and maintenance.

I’m sure you’re a bit skeptical here. But as you can see below, this technology can be used in extremely different environments. Both images come from this image gallery.

The article then describes the history of the LED industry in a very informative way, including the extraordinary gains in performance during the last 40 years.

Each decade, LED prices have fallen by a factor of 10 while performance has grown by a factor of 20. This phenomenon, known as Haitz’s Law after former Agilent scientist Roland Haitz, is the LED equivalent of Moore’s Law in the chip industry, which holds that chip performance doubles every 18 months.

The image above comes from “Powering Next-Generation Solid-State Lighting,” an article published on May 1, 2004 by Paul Greenland and Werner Berns, from National Semiconductor Corp. in Power Electronics.

But will we switch to LEDs in our houses? Right now, they’re still too expensive for the home market and are not bright enough. This could change in ten years if Haitz’s Law continues to be valid.

Anyway, the LED market for illuminations is already a big one.

The high-brightness LED market is expected to grow from $2.7 billion in 2003 to $6 billion in 2008, according to market researcher Strategies Unlimited in Mountain View. About 50 percent of the market consists of cell phones and other mobile devices. About 18 percent is automotive, while outdoor signs account for 23 percent of the market. Illumination, for now, is a scant 5 percent of the market, said Bob Steele, an analyst at Strategies Unlimited. “LEDs are chasing after a $12 billion to $15 billion light bulb market,” he said.

Sources: Dean Takahashi, San Jose Mercury News, December 6, 2004; and various web sites

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