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Fuel Cells Turns Waste Into Electricity

Waste not, want not...even when it comes to electricity.

Waste treatment plants may soon have a new way to treat wastewater that will also generate electricity. Oregon State University has developed a method using microbial fuel cells that can generate 10 to 50 times more electricity from waste treatment plants than methods that use similar cells. 

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Currently, waste treatment plants use a process called "activated sludge" to speed up the decomposition process of solids in waste water. This uses microbes to break down organic material. During this process, anaerobic organisms (that don't require oxygen) convert organic materials to methane.

It's effective but has environmental drawbacks because methane is a greenhouse gas.

OSU's microbial fuel cell uses microorganisms to break down the particles directly on an anode, which generates electrons and protons. These transfer from the anode to a cathode (terminals where electricity flows in and out) inside of the fuel cell which creates an electric current. 

Engineers on the project say the method was improved by reducing the space between the anode and cathode and using advanced microbes. This made it possible to produce more than two kilowatts per cubic meter of waste.

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So, why is this important? According to a press release from OSU, 3 percent of electrical energy in the United States and other countries is used to treat waste water. Most of that electricity comes from coal, oil or gas.

A fuel cell process could make it so that waste treatment plants can create their own electricity to power their facilities.

If this process is put into place, treatment plants could even sell the excess electricity. Now we can't just focus on the wonders of sewage, this process can also be used for breweries, animal waste, dairy byproducts and water treatment plants.

A full pilot study will be underway soon in the hopes of moving the concept towards commercial use.

via Engadget

Credit: Oregon State University 

 

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Nanotech Tank Could Boost Natural Gas Vehicles

One of the major obstacles to making natural gas powered cars cheaper is storing the stuff. Natural gas used in automobiles has to be stored at high pressures, on the order of 3,500 pounds per square inch. that requires strong and big tanks.

3M says it may be able to solve part of that problem. Using carbon composite and nanoparticles, the company says it can build tanks that are strong and small enough for use in vehicles.

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The carbon composite is made of woven threads of carbon, like a rug, held together with epoxy. The nanopartices are put into the epoxy to add strength and stiffness. To finish it off, the walls of the tank are lined with plastic. 

Anything that could cut the size of a compressed natural gas (CNG) tank would be welcome, since in most vehicles the tanks are so large that they take up a good portion of the trunk space. The lack of capacity in the average car also limits the range, and since there are only a tiny number of CNG filling stations.

That's been a major reason why consumers haven't taken to natural gas cars and the big buyers have been fleets, such as city bus companies, where range matters less.

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3M has its sights on other technologies, though. Rick Maveus, the company’s global business manager for advanced composites, told the New York Times that 3M is also looking ahead to hydrogen power. That's an even bigger challenge than natural gas, since the pressure to store useful amounts of hydrogen has to be even higher, on top of requiring cryogenic temperatures.

Image: Wikimedia / U.S. Navy Photo by Photographer's Mate 2nd Class Susan Cornell

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iPhones Powered by Hydrogen Fuel Cells?

Apple has applied for two hydrogen fuel cell patents. Citing consumer awareness about fossil fuel's environmental and political impact, the move indicates the company has been looking into a new system to recharge their portable device batteries for over a year.

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"As a consequence of this increased consumer awareness," one application stated, "electronics manufacturers have become very interested in developing renewable energy sources for their products, and they have been exploring a number of promising renewable energy sources such as hydrogen fuel cells."

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The application goes on to say: "Hydrogen fuel cells have a number of advantages. Such fuel cells and associated fuels can potentially achieve high volumetric and gravimetric energy densities, which can potentially enable continued operation of portable electronic devices for days or even weeks without refueling."

Using hydrogen fuel cells to power mobile devices is nothing new. Horizon's MINIPAK and Toshiba's Dynario have been on the market for years, yet they aren't exactly small enough to integrate with mobile phones unless you're going for the Zack Morris look, 80's brick cell phone included.

However, Apple says their sleek fuel cell design would be able to eliminate the need for a bulky battery pack.

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The patent applications were published by the US Patent & Trademark Office last week. The first patent, "Fuel Cell System to Power a Portable Computing Device", was filed in August 2010, while the second patent, "Fuel Cell System Coupled to a Portable Computing Device" was filed in April 2011, suggesting Apple has had their eye on this technology for a while.

Adrianna Williams/Corbis

[Via GizMag]

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Meet The Fuel of the Future: Bugs

Archaean bacterium Credit: Corbis

In talking to ARPAe chief Arun Majumdar last week, I asked him about the future of transportation fuels.

Even with more hybrids and electric vehicles on the road, the U.S. Energy Information Administration says the American driver will rely on liquid fuels for the next 20 years. Corn-based ethanol needs big subsidies and is of dubious environmental benefit.

So to break the stranglehold of foreign oil, scientists and engineers are developing something called electro-fuels. The alternative fuel comes from running a charge of electricity through a solution containing strange microorganisms that feed on harmful ammonia or hydrogen sulfides. The charge induces to the organisms to convert carbon dioxide into the same kind of fuels we use to run our cars.

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These bugs make the conversion without petroleum, biomass or sunlight –- all in an enclosed cell. The DOE is funding 15 labs across the country to find the best electro-fuel solution, and of course at a reasonable cost. Vice President Biden recently gave a nod to Boulder, Colo.-based OPX Biotechnologies, which claims it will produce its first renewable chemical product, BioAcrylic, at lower cost than petro-acrylic with a 75 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The company's second product is diesel fuel bio-processed from carbon dioxide and hydrogen, according to its website.

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A team at North Carolina State University is combining enzymes from one microbe that grows at 75 degrees Celsius (167 F) with a second one that feeds off hydrogen. This genetic marriage produces precursors to biofuels like ethanol and butanol.

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Majumdar told me only biofuels capture 1 percent of the energy from sunlight, while these new electro-fuels are approaching 100 percent efficiency.

The DOE has been under the gun with a Congressional and Federal investigation into the failure of solar tech Solyndra, as well as planned budget cuts to the very research program that Majumdar is so ecstatic about. It would be too bad if promising research -- even high-risk research -- gets scuttled by the S.S. Solyndra.

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Water Converts Wood to Biofuel

Making biofuels from food crops is controversial because it can raise the cost of corn and grain. But making the alternative fuel from the part of the food crop that doesn't get eaten, such as the stalks, or from waste wood is expensive, as well as chemical- and energy-intensive.

A start-up company called Renmatix says it has an answer: Use water to extract the sugars.

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The process, which involves supercritical water, isn’t that exotic. In fact, it's already used to decaffeinate coffee and extract hops to make beer. Supercritical water is basically water heated beyond its boiling point under high pressure. At that point, the water becomes something between a liquid and a gas.

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What Renmatix does is put wood chips in a chamber with the supercritical water. This breaks off some of the sugars, the ones with five carbon atoms. (Ordinary table sugar has 12 carbon atoms.) The wood is then sent to another chamber to release the remaining sugars (which have six carbon atoms).

What’s left is lignin, a component of wood, which can be burned to provide energy for the whole process. (A diagram of the system can be found here.)

Once the sugars are extracted they can be fermented into biofuels, which are largely ethanol. Ethanol can be mixed with gasoline to work in most current cars. It's widely used in Brazil, where it's made from sugarcane.

But that’s the problem: It's a lot easier to get sugars from food, such as corn. Producing biofuels without stressing food supplies or putting more land under cultivation (and irrigation) will be a tall order; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed that the country produce 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022, 16 billion gallons of which has to be cellulosic biofuel. The Renewable Fuels Association says the current production is about 13 billion gallons. That’s why companies such as Renmatix are looking for ways to use the stuff that people don’t eat.

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Other companies use different methods to pull the fuel from plant material. South San Francisco, Calif.-based Solazyme uses algae and says it can use several kinds of feedstock. Envergent Technologies, a division of Honeywell, uses a fast-heating process. KL Energy has a demonstration plant in Wyoming that uses a heat pretreatment process and the addition of enzymes to break down the feedstock.

Renmatix says the fact that it needs no additional chemical treatments or enzymes (which are commercially available but expensive) is its big advantage. The company has been operating a demonstration plant in Kennesaw, Ga., and is breaking ground on a research facility in King of Prussia, Pa. The big question will be whether Renmatix can make the process work on a scale large enough to operate profitably.

Via: Renmatix, The New York Times

Image: Renmatix

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Nanotech-Enhanced Fuel Cells to Provide Cleaner Coal

The idea of clean energy may conjure up images of vast fields filled with windmills slowly churning away or an entire cityscape covered with solar panels. But this idyllic vision must cede to a more realistic one where we accept that fossil fuels -- at least for the short term -- will continue to play a major role in energy production.

In this spirit, there has been much research to increase the dismal efficiency and the environmental cleanliness of coal power plants. One major innovation to this end has been the solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC). Instead of just burning lumps of coal to heat water and drive turbines, the fuels cells oxidize the coal in a more controlled way, resulting in a much higher efficiencies and lower emissions.

By the anodes are typically constructed of a material that eventually gets gunked up with carbon buildup, causing the anodes to degrade over time.

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A solution to the problem has been proposed by a team of scientists led by Meilin Liu at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The team has found a way to embed the material with barium oxide nanostructures that prevents the carbon from building up and deactivating the anode. According to Nanowerk, the structures oxidize "the carbon as it forms, keeping the nickel electrode surfaces clean even when carbon-containing fuels are used at low temperatures."

The team hopes that because the solution builds on previous technology, it will be easily integrated into existing systems. Liu has high hopes for the technology and tells Nanowerk "This could ultimately be the cleanest, most efficient and cost-effective way of converting coal into electricity."

Credit: Creativ Studio Heinemann/Westend61/Corbis

 

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New Solar Plant Shines Even At Night

It’s the thing that seems to bother most people whenever solar power is discussed: “What happens at night?” The most sophisticated solar plants have found ways to compensate for the lack of sunlight during the night by coupling solar plants with other energy sources or by storing some energy during the day to be used at night. But now a new power plant developed by Torresol Energy in Spain has claimed to offer once and for all a reliable 24-hour solution to solar energy.

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The Gemasolar plant (above) uses hudreds of mirrors to reflect concentrated sunlight toward a central tower, where water is heated to steam, which drives a turbine that produces electricity. This scheme is becoming increasingly more popular than the traditional photovoltaic (PV) cell systems because of lower costs and comparable efficiency. The CSP systems also have the advantage of being easily integrated into existing power plants that already use turbines.

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During the day, energy is stored by heating up large tanks of molten salt composed of a mixture of 60 percent potassium nitrate and 40 percent sodium nitrate. The molten salt is able to retain a very large amount of heat -- enough to drive the plant for 15 hours without sunlight. Although molten salt has been used in other plants to store heat energy, the efficiency achieved by Torresol is new.

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The plant has a production capacity of 19.9 Megawatts and although this is relatively small as far as power plants go, the fact that the plant runs continuously means that the effective production is comparable to a traditional 50 Megawatt solar power plant. 

Credit: Torresol Energy

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GE to Build First Hybrid Natural Gas-Wind-Sun Power Plant

Renewable energy sources are often overlooked in commercial power production not because the technology is lacking, but because the solutions are not economically viable. This is especially true of solar power. Although an increasing number of products use solar energy, there is currently very little commercial power that is generated from solar power plants.

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In May, GE announced a new type of power plant that ambitiously combines solar with natural gas and wind energy technologies in a way that could make renewable energy economically viable. The 530-megawatt plant is expected to debut in Turkey in 2015. It will combine the recently announced FlexEfficiency 50 power plant (above) -- which runs on wind power and natural gas -- with a solar thermal system by eSolar -- which uses an array of mirrors to concentrate sunlight and heat water to drive turbines.

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Paul Browning, the vice president of GE’s thermal products division says that solar thermal energy is "the most cost-effective form of solar energy available today." As well, the sharing of some of the equipment between the eSolar plant and the FlexEfficiency 50 system is expected to provide an extra efficiency boost. GE tells Technology Review that although the combination of solar energy and natural gas turbines has been tried before, the addition of wind is a new innovation.

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The clever combination of these different energy sources may prove to be one of the keys to making renewable energy a ubiquitous fixture in the global energy grid.

Credit: GE

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New UPS Vehicles 1,000 Lbs Lighter

These days fuel efficiency is not far from anyone’s mind. Hybrid Vehicles are becoming more and more popular and companies are finding ways of squeezing more energy out of the existing systems. This is especially the case for shipping and delivery businesses, such as UPS, whose costs are fundamentally linked to transportation.

The company has previously flirted with the idea of hybrid vehicles, but now it has taken a drastic step in a different direction. It announced a new fleet of vehicles called CV-23s that are designed to be 1,000 pounds lighter and 40 percent more fuel efficient than their older models. The dramatic decrease in weight was possible by using composite panels for the body instead of steel. These materials have the advantage of being tougher as well as much lighter than more traditional materials.

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Because of the lower vehicle weight, UPS was also able to use a smaller, 150 horsepower engine to achieve the same performance that was possible with a 200 hp engine on the older P70 steel models. According to Daily Tech, the new CV-23s are expected to “save the company 44,000 gallons of fuel per year and reduce carbon emissions by 457 metric tons per year.”

The only drawback to these impressive changes is that the new vehicles are expected to have 630 cubic feet while the older less efficient vehicles can accommodate about 700 cubic feet. This seems to be a negligible price to pay for the remarkable overhaul. 

Credit: UPS

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Using Exhaust to Increase Fuel Efficiency

One of the more embarrassing facts about modern automobile engines is how inefficient they are at harnessing the energy from fuel. It's estimated that two thirds of the energy contained in gasoline is wasted as heat. One obvious solution is to reuse this heat to generate more energy.

The traditional way of converting heat to electricity involves devices called thermoelectrics. These are semiconductor materials, such as bismuth telluride, that are highly responsive to differences in temperature, which have electrical potential. The problem with these devices is that they can be expensive and inefficient at high temperatures.

However BSST, a Californian company, has created ‘Thermoelectric Generators’ using different semiconductor materials treated with hafnium and zirconium, which they claim are much cheaper and about 40 percent more efficient than their telluride counterparts.

In fact, automobile companies including BMW, Ford and Chevrolet are set to test this technology by the end of this summer. According to Technology Review, the company has performed computer simulations on a Chevrolet Suburban test vehicle and calculated a 3 percent increase in fuel economy.

A major factor in the performance of these thermoelectric generators is directly tied to the effectiveness of the thermoelectric materials used. The company is currently trying to hone in on the most efficient fabrication process so that they can pump out these generators with a high level of confidence.   

Naturally the efforts to increase fuel efficiency are very expansive and include more than just exhaust heat recycling, but it seems that the performance boost afforded by this new technology is making a big enough splash to garner the attention of some of the biggest players in the automobile industry.

Credit: General Motors

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