Energy Economy

A new kind of LED, the OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode), provides a brilliant white light that will replace incandescent and flourescent bulbs in many homes and businesses. 20% of all the electricity generated in the United States is used to power light bulbs, and more than 90% of that power is wasted as heat, not light.

A founder of Greenpeace has endorsed nuclear power generation (registration required). The China Syndrome fears of environmentalists have never come to pass. The much cited Three Mile Island failure in fact showed that U.S. reactor designs work--the radioactivity remained within the containment dome. More people die every year from mining coal than have ever died from a nuclear reactor problem.

Scientists at Sandia Labs have created temperatures of 3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit. To put that in perspective, it is only about 15 million degrees Fahrenheit at the center of the sun.

You should read the whole article, but they have been able to duplicate the results consistently. Even more interesting, they don't understand how it is happening. They just know that they can do it over and over again, meaning it's not some one time fluke.

Dean Kamen, one of the most innovative inventors in recent times, has designed breakthrough wheelchairs that can go up and down stairs and is the man behind the two wheeled Segway electric scooter.

NASA has announced a series of new cash prizes for companies that are able to introduce new space systems that meet the agency's specification. Like the popular X Prize that led to the creation of several private spaceship firms and the successful flight of Bert Rutan's SpaceShipOne, these new awards are designed to encourage the development of new space systems developed without the red tape and overhead of government research.

USA Today reports that Ford and GM are going to accelerate the introduction of more E85 cars and trucks, which will run on a mix of 85% ethanol (from corn) and 15% gasoline. Ford is planning to work with ethanol distillers to increase the number of gas stations that offer the alternative fuel, starting in the midwest, where corn is plentiful and where most of the ethanol producers are located.

This report says that Europe is starting to invest again in nuclear power [link no longer available]. Like the U.S., most of Europe stopped building nuclear power plants after the 1970s Three Mile Island disaster.

If you look strictly at deaths directly attributable to nuclear power and compare them to deaths from coal power, coal loses every time. There are mining disasters regularly, with the latest tragedy right here in Appalachia.

In yet another interesting development of the Energy Economy, BMW has unveiled a hybrid gas/steam automobile. In a normal internal combustion engine, much of the energy goes right out of the tailpipe as heat. The BMW design captures up to 80% of the wasted energy, uses it to generate steam, which in turn helps drive the engine.

Skeptics of the Energy Economy tend to hang their hat (with some justification) on the fact that hydrogen is hard to transport and hard to store. But even while there are emerging technologies that may address those twin problems, there are increasing signs that it may not be important.

I wrote recently about the add-on device being used by truckers to generate hydrogen on the fly from water; the hydrogen is injected into the engine cylinders to increase fuel mileage and as a side benefit, create drastic reductions in pollution.

Truckers in the U.S. and Canada are using on-the-go hydrogen generation to cut fuel costs by 10% and as a by-product, pollution is also reduced substantially, with particulate emissions (the black smoke seen from some diesel engines) by up to half.

The hydrogen is generated by a small, bolt-on system that generates hydrogen by electrolysis, which uses electricity from the truck's alternator to strip hydrogen from distilled water. The hydrogen is injected into the fuel-air mix and produces more efficient burning fuel.

Honda has announced a hydrogen generation fuel cell. Designed for home use, the system generates enough hydrogen to fuel a car for around town use, and also generates enough electricity to power an average home. It uses natural gas as a source of fuel.

A vertical axis wind turbine that has been under development for more than ten years is nearly ready for commercial use. Propeller-type wind turbines have been controversial because they are visually ugly, make a lot of noise, can kill birds, and are not all that efficient.

An Israeli company has developed a new process for generating hydrogen right in an automobile, which completely solves the conundrum of transporting, storing, and fueling vehicles with pressurized hydrogen. The system uses metals like zinc or aluminum and plain water. The process heats the metal to a high temperature, where it combines with the oxygen in water to create a solid oxide. What is left behind is hydrogen, which is burned to propel the car.

A Canadian firm is showing off a hydrogen generator that they are using to increase the efficiency of existing gas and diesel engines. Current internal combustion engines are not very efficient, and the pollution caused by them is due largely to poorly burned fuel--much of it goes right out the tailpipe.

It has long been known that adding small amounts of hydrogen to the gas-air mix increases performance and lowers emissions, but the problem has been how to store hydrogen safely in the car, as well as provide a supply.

This firm has built a hydrogen generator that runs on distilled water (easy to supply) and creates hydrogen on demand, bypassing the storage problem completely. The small box is easily fitted in the engine compartment of existing cars. Independent testing shows that the device does increase efficiency (about 10%) and dramatically reduces emissions.

Toshiba has previewed a line of MP3 music players that run on fuel cells powered by alchohol. The players won't be available until 2007, but will have run times that greatly exceed any battery-powered player--run times of 35 hours and 60 hours are quoted.

There is really no information at all about how it works, but some Danish scientists have received a patent for storing hydrogen in pill form.

Apparently, this new process is highly efficient, and can store enough hydrogen for a car to travel about 300 miles in the space of a normal 12 gallon tank. No other hydrogen storage system has come close to the same level of efficiency.

Questions still remain, like how much energy is required to produce the pill form of hydrogen, but it is one more sign that the Energy Economy is gearing up for some boom years.

Catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina are often remembered by a few enduring images. One of them may well be the widely circulated photo of a New Orleans cop, wading through chest high water with an empty gas can, looking for fuel for an emergency generator.

It's unfortunate that we tend not to think very much about worst case scenarios unless we see one somewhere, but it is as good a time as any to review your region's disaster recovery plans, especially with respect to telecommunications.

With most of New Orleans flooded, wireline communications (phone, cable, Internet) are not working. Most wireless Internet systems (e.g. WiFi hotspots) are also out, because electric power and the wired Internet connections that feed them are out.

A laptop fuel cell will be available soon, as reported by Gizmodo.

The fuel cells are powered by methanol (alchohol), making them easy to charge--no hydrogen required. They will pack twice as much power as the lithium batteries that are currently used in laptop computers.

The methanol fuel source is interesting too, because methanol can be refined from corn--no fossil fuels required. As the technology matures, look for fuel cell vehicles powered by corn-derived methanol.

Pop quiz

In a major leap forward for the Energy Economy, Gizmodo reports that a fuel cell-powered motorbike will be offered for sale in 2006.

The bike is lightweight, can go as fast as 50 mph, and has up to four hours of running time--plenty for around town trips.

The timing of this offering is excellent, as sales of mopeds, electric scooters, and other unlicensed motorbikes is breaking records. High gas prices are getting Americans to look at alternative transportation seriously.

And that's why I'm not worried about gas prices.

Much has been made in the past week or two of the rising oil prices, with much prognosticating about inflation, not being able to afford to drive to Walmart (the New York Times), and other mostly negative economic impacts.

For a different view of the situation, the authors of the book Freakonomics, a popular bestseller that deconstructs the economics of a lot of different phenomenona, see no "the sky is falling" scenarios, and in fact, forecast lots of opportunities.