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14 декабря, 2021
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Category Archives: Hydrogen — Fuel Cells
Recharge Wrap-up: Southwest employees get Zipcar memberships; LA gets more EV chargers
Zipcar Provides the Convenience of Car Sharing to Jet-Setting Southwest Airlines Employees
Partnership includes additional Zipcar locations and Zipcar membership bringing a unique transportation benefit to airline employees
BOSTON, October 10, 2014 – Zipcar today announced a first-of-its-kind partnership with Southwest Airlines to provide Zipcar memberships to nearly 45,000 Southwest and AirTran employees. With access to a Zipcar membership and discounted driving rates Monday through Friday, airline crews will now have the freedom of wheels on the ground when their flights touch down. Additionally, employees will have access to the convenience of car sharing in all Zipcar cities around the globe, including Dallas, where Southwest is headquartered and Zipcar launched this September.
The Southwest partnership will further enable Zipcar to expand its membership base while highlighting a valuable use-case for businesses whose employees need access to cars by the hour or day. To further support this partnership, Zipcar added a variety of vehicles at 27 hotels nationwide and will be looking to expand this program in the coming months. These locations will give Southwest and AirTran crew members the ability to explore their stop-over city or run errands while on a layover. Further, all Zipsters across the country traveling to these hotels will have increased access to convenient and cost-effective car sharing with more wheels in more places.
«Through our partnership with Southwest, Zipcar is able to offer an easily accessible and affordable set of wheels for airline employees who are on the road and away from their daily amenities as well as an increased Zipcar footprint in cities for all our Zipsters,» said Kaye Ceille, president of Zipcar. «As of today, thousands of Southwest employees have taken advantage of this exclusive offer and recognize the value and peace of mind provided by having a Zipcar vehicle available to them in minutes.»
«We are pleased to partner with Zipcar to offer a convenient car sharing service to our employees,» said Dave Ridley, Senior Vice President Business Development at Southwest Airlines. «The ease of use and availability of cars at our crew hotels and cities across the nation means more flexibility for our employees while they are traveling throughout the Southwest Airlines system.»
Zipcar gives its members on-demand access to a variety of cars in hundreds of cities, airports and college campuses worldwide. With Zipcars available 24/7 for reservation via Zipcar’s mobile app, through www.zipcar.com, or over the phone, Zipcar is a smart transportation option for those who need a car by the hour or by the day. Each reservation includes gas, insurance and 180 miles per day.
About Zipcar
Zipcar, the world’s leading car sharing network, has operations in urban areas and college campuses throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, Austria and France. Zipcar offers more than 30 makes and models of self-service vehicles by the hour or day to residents and businesses looking for smart, simple and convenient solutions to their urban and campus transportation needs. Zipcar is a subsidiary of Avis Budget Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: CAR), a leading global provider of vehicle rental services. More information is available at www.zipcar.com.
Schneider Electric and LA County Deploy Major Expansion of EV Charging Infrastructure
PALATINE, Ill. – October 10, 2014 – Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, and the Los Angeles County announce the deployment of 82 Electric Vehicle (EV) EVlink™ charging stations to empower the LA County community to drive EVs. The deployment is an important step forward for LA County, as well as the EV industry overall, as it represents a significant expansion of the EV charging infrastructure in the U.S. and encourages the adoption of EVs as a clean air solution.
With the installation of 82 Schneider Electric EVlink charging stations, LA County is encouraging community members to adopt EVs by making charging options more accessible and convenient. The charging stations allow any model of EV on the market to be charged at facilities across the county utilizing the standard J1772 EV plug. Working with the electrical distributor Associated of Los Angeles, Schneider Electric’s EVlink charging stations have been installed in 34 locations to date – from hospitals to sheriff stations to the Registrar-Recorder’s and Los Angeles Civic Center. The stations are available to the public and installed in locations where the community’s 10 million residents often visit or drive near-by. During the first year of the initial pilot program, EV owners will be able to charge their vehicles for up to four hours free of charge.
«There has been tremendous progress by car makers to socialize buying of electric vehicles, but in order to drive cultural change and mainstream EV adoption, it is critical to build out the charging infrastructure to provide drivers with quick and convenient charging options when and where they need it,» said Mike Calise, Senior Director of Electric Vehicle Solutions, Schneider Electric. «LA County is leading the way in providing their communities with EV charging solutions, enabling their citizens to confidently adopt EVs and promoting a greener method of transportation. We hope other counties will take this lead and pursue similar projects since the sum of multiple county involvements will create a tipping point for the state.»
«We are excited about the positive feedback from the public and employees regarding the implementation of this program as it empowers more of them to drive EVs,» said Marie Nunez, LA County. «We chose Schneider Electric EVlink because it was cost-effective, durable, easy to install, scalable, and driver friendly. These were partnered with Liberty PlugIn, to provide enterprise controls with open source technology for monitoring the utilization at all the EV stations.»
Schneider Electric’s work with LA County illustrates the mutual dedication to building out the EV charging infrastructure to encourage the adoption of EVs for a more sustainable transportation future. Schneider Electric EVlink charging stations are available through Schneider Electric, its distributors and network of contractors. For more information on Schneider Electric’s EVlink products and solutions, please visit http://www.schneider-electric.com/products/us/en/50600-electric-vehicle-charging-stations/.
How Fossil Fuel Interests Attack Renewable Energy
A new report details the efforts of these front groups to eliminate clean energy policies across the country. The fossil fuel lobby aggressively uses lobbying and propaganda to achieve their goals. Self-identified “free market think tanks” are among the most effective advocates for the fossil fuel industry to lobby for policy changes. Dozens of these so-called free market organizations, a majority of which are members of the State Policy Network (SPN), worked to influence state level energy policies and attack the clean energy industry.
These organizations are usually described in neutral, nondescript terms, such as “think tank,” “institute,” or “policy group,” but publicized internal documents from the American Tradition Institute, Heartland Institute, and the Beacon Hill Institute suggest that these types of organizations embrace transactional relationships with the corporate lobbying interests that fund their operations.
The Beacon Hill Institute, a “think tank” based out of Suffolk University (and a Koch-funded member of SPN) submitted a controversial grant request to the Searle Freedom Trust, a prominent conservative foundation, in they expressly stated: “Success will take the form of media recognition, dissemination to stakeholders, and legislative activity that will pare back or repeal [the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (or RGGI)].” In other words, the Beacon Hill Institute proposed to pursue biased economic research to support the express goal to “pare back or repeal” a regional climate change accord — all before the institute performed any research determining the economic effect of the law.
Another example of the pay-to-play nature of these so-called “think tanks” comes from Heartland Institute’s Internal fundraising documents which stated: “Contributions will be pursued for this work, especially from corporations whose interests are threatened by climate [change] policies.”
Despite positioning themselves as ideologically-focused on smaller government, dozens of these organizations aggressively denounce policy investments in clean energy as market-distorting and unnecessary, while remaining silent on the far-larger, decades-old stream of taxpayer dollars and policies supporting oil, gas, and coal interests.
Over the years, government support for fossil fuels has come from a variety of sources: tax deductions, tax credits, direct subsidies, cheap access to public property, pollution remediation, research and development, and entire government agencies devoted to helping promote and assist fossil fuel industry growth. By all credible measurements, fossil fuel subsidies are massive and extremely unpopular, and are flowing to some of the most highly profitable industries on earth. Yet, fossil fuel subsidies go largely unmentioned by these “free market” groups, such as the Heartland Institute, despite their avowed opposition to wasteful government spending.
Fossil fuel-funded front groups operate in multiple areas to influence the policy-making process in their attempts to eliminate clean energy policies. First, groups like the Beacon Hill Institute provide flawed reports or analysis claiming clean energy policies have negative impacts. Next, allied front groups or “think tanks” use the flawed data in testimony, opinion columns, and in the media. Then, front groups, like Americans for Prosperity, spread disinformation through their grassroots networks, in postcards mailed to the public, and in television ads attacking the clean energy policy. Finally, lobbyists from front groups, utilities, and other fossil fuel companies use their influence from campaign contributions and meetings with decision makers to push for anti-clean energy efforts.
Instead of advocating for a fair and free market for electricity, over the past year and a half, fossil fuel front groups have advocated to repeal, freeze, and eliminate pro-clean energy policies across the country on behalf of allies and funders in the fossil fuel industry.
This is an exceprt from a new report, issued today by the Energy and Policy Institute entitled «Attacks on Renewable Energy Standards and Net Metering Policies by Fossil Fuel Interests and Front Groups 2013-2014.» You can download the 35-page report at this link.
EU cutting back on EV, hydrogen infrastructure targets
If only all of us were told that we could meet our goals and obligations by merely being «appropriate.» That’s the operative word being used to describe the European Union’s goals for setting up publicly accessible electric-vehicle charging station and hydrogen refueling station infrastructure by the end of the decade. Turns out, the goals were unrealistic.
The UK estimated it’d be about 64,000 EV stations short of the goal.
The EU has cut the numbers of EV and hydrogen stations that member countries will have to deploy by 2020, since countries have squawked that the numbers couldn’t reasonably be met, according to Auto Express. The UK, for example, estimated it’d be about 64,000 EV stations short of the goal. Now, the EU is saying that deployment of hydrogen and EV stations must reach an «appropriate» number by the end of the decade. How kind.
Taking the teeth out of the alt-fuel-station mandate is unfortunate because Europe recently started showing some solid momentum when it came to advanced-powertrain-vehicle sales, or at least those of the electric-vehicle variety. Through June, European EV sales jumped 91 percent from a year earlier, Automotive News Europe reported last month, citing JATO Dynamics. Nissan Leaf sales were up 56 percent from 2013, while the newer BMW i3 and Tesla Model S plug-ins also helped matters.
In fact, Tesla’s been doing its part to make sure that its customers, at least, have a place to recharge throughout the continent. The California-based company, which installed its first European Supercharger station in Norway in August 2013, took just one year to put in 50 stations throughout Europe.
‘Smart’ lithium-ion battery warns of fire hazard
The new technology is designed for conventional lithium-ion batteries now used in billions of cellphones, laptops and other electronic devices, as well as a growing number of cars and airplanes.
«Our goal is to create an early-warning system that saves lives and property,» said Yi Cui, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford. «The system can detect problems that occur during the normal operation of a battery, but it does not apply to batteries damaged in a collision or other accident.»
Cui and his colleagues describe the new technology in a study published in the Oct. 13 issue of the journal Nature Communications.
Lowering the odds
A series of well-publicized incidents in recent years has raised concern over the safety of lithium-ion batteries. In 2013, the Boeing aircraft company temporarily grounded its new 787 Dreamliner fleet after battery packs in two airplanes caught fire. The cause of the fires has yet to be determined.
In 2006, the Sony Corporation recalled millions of lithium-ion batteries after reports of more than a dozen consumer-laptop fires. The company said that during the manufacturing process, tiny metal impurities had gotten inside the batteries, causing them to short-circuit.
«The likelihood of a bad thing like that happening is maybe one in a million,» Cui said. «That’s still a big problem, considering that hundreds of millions of computers and cellphones are sold each year. We want to lower the odds of a battery fire to one in a billion or even to zero.»
A typical lithium-ion battery consists of two tightly packed electrodes — a carbon anode and a lithium metal-oxide cathode — with an ultrathin polymer separator in between. The separator keeps the electrodes apart. If it’s damaged, the battery could short-circuit and ignite the flammable electrolyte solution that shuttles lithium ions back and forth.
«The separator is made of the same material used in plastic bottles,» said graduate student Denys Zhuo, co-lead author of the study. «It’s porous so that lithium ions can flow between the electrodes as the battery charges and discharges.»
Manufacturing defects, such as particles of metal and dust, can pierce the separator and trigger shorting, as Sony discovered in 2006. Shorting can also occur if the battery is charged too fast or when the temperature is too low — a phenomenon known as overcharge.
«Overcharging causes lithium ions to get stuck on the anode and pile up, forming chains of lithium metal called dendrites,» Cui explained. «The dendrites can penetrate the porous separator and eventually make contact with the cathode, causing the battery to short.»
Smart separator
«In the last couple of years we’ve been thinking about building a smart separator that can detect shorting before the dendrites reach the cathode,» said Cui, a member of the photon science faculty at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford.
To address the problem, Cui and his colleagues applied a nanolayer of copper onto one side of a polymer separator, creating a novel third electrode halfway between the anode and the cathode.
«The copper layer acts like a sensor that allows you to measure the voltage difference between the anode and the separator,» Zhuo said. «When the dendrites grow long enough to reach the copper coating, the voltage drops to zero. That lets you know that the dendrites have grown halfway across the battery. It’s a warning that the battery should be removed before the dendrites reach the cathode and cause a short circuit.»
The build-up of dendrites is most likely to occur during charging, not during the discharge phase when the battery is being used.
«You might get a message on your phone telling you that the voltage has dropped to zero, so the battery needs to be replaced,» Zhuo said. «That would give you plenty of lead-time. But when you see smoke or a fire, you have to shut down immediately. You might not have time to escape. If you wanted to error on the side of being safer, you could put the copper layer closer to the anode. That would let you know even sooner when a battery is likely to fail.»
Locating defects
In addition to observing a drop in voltage, co-lead author Hui Wu was able to pinpoint where the dendrites had punctured the copper conductor simply by measuring the electrical resistance between the separator and the cathode. He confirmed the location of the tiny puncture holes by actually watching the dendrites grow under a microscope.
«The copper coating on the polymer separator is only 50 nanometers thick, about 500 times thinner than the separator itself,» said Wu, a postdoctoral fellow in the Cui group. «The coated separator is quite flexible and porous, like a conventional polymer separator, so it has negligible effect on the flow of lithium ions between the cathode and the anode. Adding this thin conducting layer doesn’t change the battery’s performance, but it can make a huge difference as far as safety.»
Most lithium-ion batteries are used in small electronic devices. «But as the electric vehicle market expands and we start to replace on-board electronics on airplanes, this will become a much larger problem,» Zhuo said.
«The bigger the battery pack, the more important this becomes,» Cui added. «Some electric cars today are equipped with thousands of lithium-ion battery cells. If one battery explodes, the whole pack can potentially explode.»
The early-warning technology can also be used in zinc, aluminum and other metal batteries. «It will work in any battery that would require you to detect a short before it explodes,» Cui said.
Video: http://youtu.be/2vSqnY0zYJY
Ultra-fast charging batteries that can be 70% recharged in just two minutes
Expected to be the next big thing in battery technology, this breakthrough has a wide-ranging impact on many industries, especially for electric vehicles which are currently inhibited by long recharge times of over 4 hours and the limited lifespan of batteries.
This next generation of lithium-ion batteries will enable electric vehicles to charge 20 times faster than the current technology. With it, electric vehicles will also be able to do away with frequent battery replacements. The new battery will be able to endure more than 10,000 charging cycles — 20 times more than the current 500 cycles of today’s batteries.
NTU Singapore’s scientists replaced the traditional graphite used for the anode (negative pole) in lithium-ion batteries with a new gel material made from titanium dioxide, an abundant, cheap and safe material found in soil. It is commonly used as a food additive or in sunscreen lotions to absorb harmful ultraviolet rays.
Naturally found in a spherical shape, NTU Singapore developed a simple method to turn titanium dioxide particles into tiny nanotubes that are a thousand times thinner than the diameter of a human hair.
This nanostructure is what helps to speeds up the chemical reactions taking place in the new battery, allowing for superfast charging.
Invented by Associate Professor Chen Xiaodong from the School of Materials Science and Engineering at NTU Singapore, the science behind the formation of the new titanium dioxide gel was published in the latest issue of Advanced Materials, a leading international scientific journal in materials science.
NTU professor Rachid Yazami, who was the co-inventor of the lithium-graphite anode 34 years ago that is used in most lithium-ion batteries today, said Prof Chen’s invention is the next big leap in battery technology.
«While the cost of lithium-ion batteries has been significantly reduced and its performance improved since Sony commercialised it in 1991, the market is fast expanding towards new applications in electric mobility and energy storage,» said Prof Yazami.
«There is still room for improvement and one such key area is the power density — how much power can be stored in a certain amount of space — which directly relates to the fast charge ability. Ideally, the charge time for batteries in electric vehicles should be less than 15 minutes, which Prof Chen’s nanostructured anode has proven to do.»
Prof Yazami, who is Prof Chen’s colleague at NTU Singapore, is not part of this research project and is currently developing new types of batteries for electric vehicle applications at the Energy Research Institute at NTU (ERI@N).
Commercialisation of technology
Moving forward, Prof Chen’s research team will be applying for a Proof-of-Concept grant to build a large-scale battery prototype. The patented technology has already attracted interest from the industry.
The technology is currently being licensed to a company and Prof Chen expects that the new generation of fast-charging batteries will hit the market in two years’ time. It holds a lot of potential in overcoming the longstanding power issues related to electro-mobility.
«With our nanotechnology, electric cars would be able to increase their range dramatically with just five minutes of charging, which is on par with the time needed to pump petrol for current cars,» added Prof Chen.
«Equally important, we can now drastically cut down the waste generated by disposed batteries, since our batteries last ten times longer than the current generation of lithium-ion batteries.»
The long-life of the new battery also means drivers save on the cost of a battery replacement, which could cost over USD$5,000 each.
Easy to manufacture
According to Frost Sullivan, a leading growth-consulting firm, the global market of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries is projected to be worth US$23.4 billion in 2016.
Lithium-ion batteries usually use additives to bind the electrodes to the anode, which affects the speed in which electrons and ions can transfer in and out of the batteries.
However, Prof Chen’s new cross-linked titanium dioxide nanotube-based electrodes eliminate the need for these additives and can pack more energy into the same amount of space.
«Manufacturing this new nanotube gel is very easy,» Prof Chen added. «Titanium dioxide and sodium hydroxide are mixed together and stirred under a certain temperature. Battery manufacturers will find it easy to integrate our new gel into their current production processes.»
This battery research project took the team of four NTU Singapore scientists three years to complete and is funded by Singapore’s National Research Foundation.
Last year, Prof Yazami was awarded the Draper Prize by the National Academy of Engineering for his ground-breaking work in developing the lithium-ion battery with three other scientists.
From the Editor: It’s Really All About Renewable Energy Projects
At Renewable Energy World, we understand that while we spend lots of time writing about the policies, technologies and intricacies of financing renewable energy, the only measureable result of all of this effort is steel in the ground (or on the roof…or in the water… as the case may be). The growth of renewable energy is measured through projects that deliver power to the grid.
That’s why at the start of every Renewable Energy World Conference, North America we recognize the very best projects that have come online over the past year through our Project of the Year Awards. We look for the most outstanding Solar, Wind, Biomass, Geothermal and Hydro projects and we celebrate them during our Awards Gala and Banquet dinner. We also give out a Readers’ Choice Award that is selected by RenewableEnergyWorld.com readers. The high-end event is open to the public and draws interested renewable energy stakeholders from all across the globe. Last year a delegation from India came to be recognized for the a Project of the Year – the Solar Electrification of 57 Remote Villages in Southern India.
I’ll explain more about what we look for in outstanding projects in the video below. If you’re interested, and I hope you are, please have a listen. Then take some time to nominate a project you have worked on. It’s a simple online form that you can access by clicking here. If you are selected as a finalist, and even if you’re not, I hope to see you in Orlando.
Good Luck!
Lead image: Vintage Typewriter and Blank Paper via Shutterstock
Want more insider tips and tricks about how to submit a project of the year? Come hangout with Sharryn Dotson and me on July 30 at 1PM ET. We’ll be talking about the process for nominations and taking questions from the audience. Bookmark this page (click the link) and come back at the designated time to see our live and unscripted discussion of the awards program!
Beyond LEDs: Brighter, new energy-saving flat panel lights based on carbon nanotubes
Enter carbon electronics.
Electronics based on carbon, especially carbon nanotubes (CNTs), are emerging as successors to silicon for making semiconductor materials. And they may enable a new generation of brighter, low-power, low-cost lighting devices that could challenge the dominance of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in the future and help meet society’s ever-escalating demand for greener bulbs.
Scientists from Tohoku University in Japan have developed a new type of energy-efficient flat light source based on carbon nanotubes with very low power consumption of around 0.1 Watt for every hour’s operation—about a hundred times lower than that of an LED.
In the journal Review of Scientific Instruments, from AIP publishing, the researchers detail the fabrication and optimization of the device, which is based on a phosphor screen and single-walled carbon nanotubes as electrodes in a diode structure. You can think of it as a field of tungsten filaments shrunk to microscopic proportions.
They assembled the device from a mixture liquid containing highly crystalline single-walled carbon nanotubes dispersed in an organic solvent mixed with a soap-like chemical known as a surfactant. Then, they «painted» the mixture onto the positive electrode or cathode, and scratched the surface with sandpaper to form a light panel capable of producing a large, stable and homogenous emission current with low energy consumption.
«Our simple ‘diode’ panel could obtain high brightness efficiency of 60 Lumen per Watt, which holds excellent potential for a lighting device with low power consumption,» said Norihiro Shimoi, the lead researcher and an associate professor of environmental studies at the Tohoku University.
Brightness efficiency tells people how much light is being produced by a lighting source when consuming a unit amount of electric power, which is an important index to compare the energy-efficiency of different lighting devices, Shimoi said. For instance, LEDs can produce 100s Lumen per Watt and OLEDs (organic LEDs) around 40.
Although the device has a diode-like structure, its light-emitting system is not based on a diode system, which are made from layers of semiconductors, materials that act like a cross between a conductor and an insulator, the electrical properties of which can be controlled with the addition of impurities called dopants.
The new devices have luminescence systems that function more like cathode ray tubes, with carbon nanotubes acting as cathodes, and a phosphor screen in a vacuum cavity acting as the anode. Under a strong electric field, the cathode emits tight, high-speed beams of electrons through its sharp nanotube tips — a phenomenon called field emission. The electrons then fly through the vacuum in the cavity, and hit the phosphor screen into glowing.
«We have found that a cathode with highly crystalline single-walled carbon nanotubes and an anode with the improved phosphor screen in our diode structure obtained no flicker field emission current and good brightness homogeneity,» Shimoi said.
Field emission electron sources catch scientists’ attention due to its ability to provide intense electron beams that are about a thousand times denser than conventional thermionic cathode (like filaments in an incandescent light bulb). That means field emission sources require much less power to operate and produce a much more directional and easily controllable stream of electrons.
In recent years, carbon nanotubes have emerged as a promising material of electron field emitters, owing to their nano-scale needle shape and extraordinary properties of chemical stability, thermal conductivity and mechanical strength.
Highly crystalline single-walled carbon nanotubes (HCSWCNT) have nearly zero defects in the carbon network on the surface, Shimoi explained. «The resistance of cathode electrode with highly crystalline single-walled carbon nanotube is very low. Thus, the new flat-panel device has smaller energy loss compared with other current lighting devices, which can be used to make energy-efficient cathodes that with low power consumption.»
«Many researchers have attempted to construct light sources with carbon nanotubes as field emitter,» Shimoi said. «But nobody has developed an equivalent and simpler lighting device.»
Considering the major step for device manufacture—the wet coating process is a low-cost but stable process to fabricate large-area and uniformly thin films, the flat-plane emission device has the potential to provide a new approach to lighting in people’s life style and reduce carbon dioxide emissions on the earth, Shimoi said.
Unique catalysts for hydrogen fuel cells synthesized in ordinary kitchen microwave oven
The world’s rapidly growing demand for energy and the requirement of sustainable energy production calls for an urgent change in today’s fossil fuel based energy system. Research groups worldwide work intensively to develop novel advanced energy conversion and storage systems with high efficiency, low cost and environmental compatibility.
Fuel cell systems represent a promising alternative for low carbon emission energy production. Traditional fuel cells are however limited by the need of efficient catalysts to drive the chemical reactions involved in the fuel cell. Historically, platinum and its alloys have frequently been used as anodic and cathodic catalysts in fuel cells, but the high cost of platinum, due to its low abundance, motivates researchers to find efficient catalysts based on earth-abundant elements.
«In our study we report a unique novel alloy with a palladium (Pd) and tungsten (W) ratio of only one to eight, which still has similar efficiency as a pure platinum catalyst. Considering the cost, it would be 40 times lower,» says Thomas Wågberg, Senior lecturer at Department of Physics, Umeå University.
The explanation for the very high efficiency is the unique morphology of the alloy. It is neither a homogeneous alloy, nor a fully segregated two-phase system, but rather something in between.
By advanced experimental and theoretical investigations, the researchers show that the alloy is composed of metallic Pd-islands embedded in the Pd-W alloy. The size of the islands are about one nanometer in diameter and are composed of 10-20 atoms that are segregated to the surface. The unique environment around the Pd-islands give rise to special effects that all together turn the islands into highly efficient catalytic hot-spots for oxygen reduction.
To stabilize the nanoparticles in practical applications, they are anchored on ordered mesoporous carbon. The anchoring keep the nanoparticles stable over long time by hindering them from fusing together in the fuel cell tests.
«The unique formation of the material is based on a synthesis method, which can be performed in an ordinary kitchen micro-wave oven purchased at the local supermarket. If we were not using argon as protective inert gas, it would be fully possible to synthesize this advanced catalyst in my own kitchen! ,» says Thomas Wågberg.
Wågberg and his fellow researchers have recently received funding from the Kempe Foundation to buy a more advanced micro-wave oven, and therefore they will be able to run more advanced experiments to fine tune some of the catalyst properties.
Daimler a Dozen in Regard to Hydrogen Cars
On October 3, the Wall Street Journal ran an article titled, “Daimler, Renault Chiefs Knock Hydrogen Cars” which isn’t exactly true, especially the Daimler part.
Chief executive of Daimler AG Dieter Zetsche, said that he is concerned about the rollout of the hydrogen fueling infrastructure to support the cars and that all of the major car companies with fuel cell vehicles need to be on the same page.
While Toyota, Honda and Hyundai have gotten much attention for their fuel cell vehicles, it’s Daimler AG that has built the largest fleet of hydrogen cars worldwide. The Daimler Mercedes-Benz B-class F-Cell is pictured above.
According to AutoCar India, “Produced under series production conditions, the Mercedes-Benz B-class F-Cell has already been in day-to-day use with customers in the European and American markets since 2010. Today, the total mileage of the Daimler fuel cell fleet, which now numbers more than 300 vehicles, including numerous research vehicles, reaches far more than nine million kilometres, the company has said.
“Based on the current and pending results, Mercedes engineers expect to identify further potential for optimisation, which will flow directly into the development of the next generation of fuel cell electric vehicles. The company has the clear objective to develop a common drive train in cooperation with Ford and Nissan, and to bring competitive fuel cell electric vehicles in large numbers on the streets by 2017.”
So clearly, Dieter Zetsche is not knocking hydrogen cars as his company currently owns the world’s largest fleet. He simply wants a strategic plan that involves all of the fuel cell car companies with the same vision for rolling out the supporting infrastructure in the months and years to come.
Filed under: Hydrogen Cars
Microgrids: They’re Kind of a Big Deal
For locals participating in the Pecan Street Demonstration in Austin’s suburban town of Mueller, TX, residential carbon footprint data is about as available as square footage. Their home utility consumption is monitored by the Pecan Street Research Institute at The University of Texas-Austin as part of the institute’s efforts to understand how individuals can lower their collective carbon impact and use energy more efficiently.
This technology, known as a smart grid system, has proven to be much more efficient than the traditional electrical grid used throughout the U.S. However, smart grids and the smart meters used to track energy usage of individual homes have come under fire for their ‘invasiveness’ as people have vocalized concerns about the lack of privacy that could accompany this advanced monitoring system. Fortunately for the anti-smart meter crowd, there are other ways to make a community more energy efficient.
On or Off the Grid
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, microgrids are local energy grids with control capability, meaning they can disconnect from the electrical grid and operate autonomously. This feature makes them attractive for community application as it would allow buildings or clusters of buildings to continue to operate in the wake of natural disasters or blackouts in addition to using energy available on the grid during times of non-emergency. Unlike diesel generators, microgrids can draw power from a variety of power sources including local sources like rooftop solar panels or wind turbines or energy from fuel cells and biomass-fired power plants.
California has proven itself to be a major proponent for microgrid application as the state recently announced $20.5 million in grants for microgrid projects that apply renewable integration. Interest in microgrid technology has peaked on the opposite coast with Connecticut’s launch of its first microgrid earlier this year and Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey and New York announcing plans to apply microgrid friendly projects and policies within the year.
So what does all of this new technology mean for the energy industry? The growth of the microgrid industry, which is expected to balloon to $19.9 billion from the $4.3 billion dollar revenue in 2013, will also bring more work for certified professionals with solar training, therefore contributing to the already exponential growth seen in the solar industry The installation of solar panels is a central part of the microgrid revolution happening across the country as power from the panels is an easily accessible and affordable local power source. Additionally, the grids provide work for biomass plants, wind farms, and keep the utility companies busy. With microgrid technology generating interest not only in the states but on a global scale as well, it may not be too long before we see micro-grids implemented on a macro level.