Thorium – one great solution to our CO2 problem

Imagine a world with safe, CO2 free energy that’s available 24/7. Science fiction? No, science fact. In the 1950’s and 60’s, scientists explored designs for a Thorium-based nuclear reactor. Unlike today’s uranium-based reactors, a thorium reactor is unpressurized (can’t explode), has minimal waste, and inherently safe, with the fuel draining into a storage tank if power is lost. Here’s a quick TED talk video that explains this technology more:

So, why was this promising technology abandoned in the 60’s? To understand this, you need to understand our society at the time. We were in the midst of the Cold War, and, well, one byproduct of uranium-based power plants is plutonium, which makes great bombs. Thorium reactors didn’t. End of story.

One other great part about thorium, is that it’s currently considered a waste byproduct when mining for rare earth minerals, and is incredibly abundant on this planet. This is not a difficult fuel to obtain.

More info at Treehugger, Smartplanet’s coverage on Japan’s efforts here, and more discussion of the safety of thorium here. Lastly, there’s a great website on this topic, appropriately named EnergyFromThorium.com.

The following video is much longer but delves into Thorium reactors in more detail if you’re interested:

July 24, 2012

Catalytic-driven hydrogen generation

I’m seeing more and more reports of studies involving the use of catalysts to generate hydrogen. This is a fascinating development, so I’ll be posting more of those here (follow this link for a description of the work CalTech is doing on this). The basic premise is to heat water to a point where an added catalysts splits the water molecules into their oxygen and hydrogen components, the hydrogen is then used as fuel. More importantly, the hydrogen can then be stored for later use. For example, imagine a solar thermal collector used to generate the heat to drive this reaction, with excess hydrogen being stored for use during night. It’s a sort of hydrogen battery, if you will.

This research is still in the laboratory stage, but is an interesting path to sustainable energy solutions which address the energy storage concerns.

June 19, 2012

NREL energy analysis

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has published a study that looks at the extent to which renewable energy can meet the demands of this country over the next few decades. What they found was that existing technologies, that are commercially available today, are more than sufficient to provide 80% of total electricity generation by 2050.

No one wants to pay higher prices for electricity to fund this, but the reality is that the course we’re on is unsustainable and change is inevitable. The sooner we begin that change, the smoother it will go. So what are we waiting for?

June 19, 2012

Deaths by energy source

Forbes has an interesting article looking at the health effects of different energy sources, more specifically, the number of (human) deaths per unit of energy produced. For all the publicity nuclear energy accidents get, it’s worth noting that the mortality rate from nuclear energy is about 90 deaths per tkWhr (trillion kilowatt hour of energy produced), while coal is 170,000 deaths per tkWhr! To be fair, that coal rate is the global average and the US is much better than that (mainly because of existing pollution controls)…but even then, it’s a whopping 15,000 deaths per tkWhr. The complete list:

Energy Source Mortality Rate (deaths/trillionkWhr)

Coal – global average 170,000    (50% global electricity)

Coal – China 280,000   (75% China’s electricity)

Coal – U.S. 15,000    (44% U.S. electricity)

Oil 36,000    (36% of energy, 8% of electricity)

Natural Gas 4,000    (20% global electricity)

Biofuel/Biomass 24,000    (21% global energy)

Solar (rooftop) 440    (< 1% global electricity)

Wind 150    (~ 1% global electricity)

Hydro – global average          1,400    (15% global electricity)

Nuclear – global average            90    (17% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush)

You can read more over at Forbes.com.

June 11, 2012

Advances in Solar Panel Technology

Solar energy technology is advancing fast enough that I’ve decide to lump together several updates into single posts now and then.

To start with, the Frauenhofer Institute has showed off some highly flexible solar panels, placing them on a ski helmet. This may not sound like a big deal, flexible panels have been around for a while, right? Well, not really. Typically, when you see a flexible panel, it can only bend in one direction – around a cylinder, for example. This new technology allows the panel to conform to compound surfaces, like a sphere or, in this case, a ski helmet. For now, testing this on ski helmets is a good, extreme use environment (the solar cells become more efficient with cold, but batteries become less efficient). Just about ever helmet design could benefit the user with this – motorcyclists, construction workers, bicyclists, you name it. The first product, a ski helmet, is targeted for sale at the end of 2012.

Solar cell comparisons invariably come down to one key metric, the efficiency. Going along with this is measuring reflectance, or how much solar energy is reflected and thus unable to be converted into electric energy. Scientists at Natcore Technology have set a new record for this, producing wafers that absorb an incredible 99.7%! This promises to increase solar panel efficiency, which in turn will lower cost and increase adoption of solar energy worldwide.

There are two main types of solar energy devices on the market today – photovoltaic panels that covert visible wavelengths into electric power, and solar thermal that takes the abundant infrared radiation emitted by the sun and uses that heat energy to do the same (via turbines or other methods, or just using the heat directly to heat a house or water heater). Now, Naked Energy has designed a hybrid solar energy system which has solar panels to make electricity, but also pumps water through the tubes to make that heat available for other energy uses (heating a house being the most feasible). It’s not a utility-scale sort of system, but great for home or business users.

April 12, 2012

The PowerPot

Here’s a cool gadget that’s a bit counter to the ‘keep it simple’ philosophy. It’s a thermoelectric device buried under a pot, designed for backpacking use to charge your iPhone and other gadgets (you’re not really keeping it simple if you’re depending on those while backpacking!). So if you really can’t leave those gadgets behind when backpacking, this is the perfect solution to ensure they’re always fully charged. The alternative would be solar panels, though if you assume that you’ll be making a campfire regardless, then this might be more reliable than counting on sunshine. The inventors are currently seeking funding at Kickstarter; cost is $125.

April 5, 2012

Self-sustaining solar-powered Hydrogen generator

Engineers at the University of Delaware have developed a prototype hydrogen generator that has the potential to revolutionize solar energy production. Solar thermal energy is used to vaporize zinc oxide powder. This gas is then reacted with water to produce hydrogen gas and zinc powder (which can then be fed back into the system). The shortcoming of any solar energy system is energy storage, and a system that produces hydrogen gas solves that as the gas can be stored for later conversion to electrical power in a fuel cell.

The system requires further testing but it’s off to a promising start! Read more at Physorg.

April 4, 2012

Electricity From Ambient Heat

While there are many methods of converting heat energy into electrical energy, they’re typically inefficient (thermoelectric) or need to be done at a larger scale (steam turbines). Researchers at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University are showing promising results with a different approach. You see, the atoms in a liquid are in constant motion. They found that when copper ions collided with a strip of graphene immersed in a solution, the collision dislocated an electron out of the graphene, and it then traveled through the graphene strip, essentially replicating the function of a battery and illuminating an LED as a result.

As with any science, further tests are needed to verify the reaction and rule out secondary effects being responsible (such as chemical reactions). If validated, though, this has enormous potential, for it would enable the generation of electrical energy from any heat source (something planet has no shortage of). It’ll be interesting to see if this pans out.

Envia Systems Battery – 400Wh/kg

Electric cars are great, but battery technology continues to be holding them back from mainstream acceptance, the limiting factors being battery capacity and cost. Many companies are working on this problem, and Envia Systems recently announced they’ve achieved an energy density of 400Wh/kg, roughly 2-3X the energy capacity per unit of weight as current batteries on that market and at a lower cost. You can expect to see this on the market around 2015, with the result being 300-mile range electric cars for maybe as little as $20k. Read more over at gigaom.

March 2, 2012

Flexible Thermoelectric Fabric

Thermoelectric devices have been around for a long time, and offer the awesome ability of converting a heat difference (one side of the device cold, the other hot) into electrical energy – or reversing the process and using electricity to create that thermal difference (great for car-powered refrigerators, for example). Now, researchers at Wake Forest University have taken this basic technology and transformed it into a multi-layer, flexible felt-like fabric. Possible applications could include wearable electronics (though the ambient air temperature needs to be significantly lower than body temperature), or simple things like wrapping pipes in this.

Portable electronics have always struggled with their power sources, with design having been a tradeoff between storage capacity and size/weight/cost. Being able to generate energy on the move would be a big benefit.