This writer can count among family and friends those who have benefited from love of country, and those who have sacrificed to keep the country safe, free and filled with hope, choice and the prospect of happiness.  For the purpose here country is your own turf, the community in close proximity and the rest of us spread far and wide to each border.  The love is for the people, the scenery, the resources, and the blessings of each place and its occupants.  The country is all of us and the environment around us, a situation uniquely seen from every eye, but in every positive view a joy to behold well worth its defense, protection and considered use.

Americans, so far at least, are still free to hate the government.  It’s a tradition well earned and earning more emotional regard with each passed law.  The past months have seen more law, regulations, compulsory programs and other bits forced on the citizenry with near elitist élan never before seen in American history.  It’s also a show of contempt on the productive, self-sustaining and self-reliant people who occupy this country.  Government knows better than you what’s good for you, and you have to pass the law to find out what’s in it.  Somehow the government world got turned upside down, or more likely ripped apart such that keeping track of what its up to is beyond any citizen.

Labor built this country, digging foundations, setting bricks, pounding nails, wiring in the electricity, and doing all the things from a concept to a finished structure and the lives and production that takes place within.  It goes to responsible conduct, taking risks, working hard and smart and gathering the consequences both good and bad.  America is blessed as the consequences are in the main much more good for everyone than the bad for a few.

Along the way the 20th century saw more and more of the fruits of taking responsibility and the risks and rewards siphoned off with taxes and errors in judgment of a few answered with regulations for all.  Not all of that is bad, but there comes a turning point – which seems to be upon us – and gathering force as a nasty storm.

The eerie thing is the situation was foretold, in a plan set forth by two professors, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, both sociologists and political activists at the Columbia University School of Social Work and educators of one Barack Obama.  Make of that what you will.

The plan simply put is to gain control of American society and its economy by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands.  It’s a crude but brilliant Machiavellian plan to turn the United States into centrally controlled state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for economic survival that can be counted on to always vote for bigger government.

The evidence is vivid, from the health plans 16,000 new IRS agents to join the already unionized Internal Revenue Service, from the stimulus plan a staggering $125 billion went to teachers protecting their union affiliation, billions more to save or create jobs of government employees across the country. The stimulus plans also saved GM and Chrysler so that their employees could keep their unions intact outside of a bankruptcy.

Meanwhile the public employee is said to enjoy a 30% higher income than the private sector employee.  That puts the public servant in a better economic situation than the citizen.  And the number of public employees continues to grow – most as union members.

There was a time just decades ago that irresponsible management bled laboring people who alone had no bargaining power.  A union of people brought some equality to the bargaining of what labor’s share of the production pie was paid for the work to get goods made.  It was an effort worth doing and made the nation richer and stronger as well as building a nation of consumers for a much-expanded economy with vastly larger opportunities.

But as with all good things union efforts went too far and handed manufacturing to people in other countries with labor costs soaking up capital investment that could have keep manufacturing jobs and made them better paying.

Union growth has nearly abandoned the private sector as opportunities have evaporated.  Instead the union leadership focused on government personnel, an exploitation too easy to miss with votes and money measured in millions to buy their way.  Labor leadership has never been so fat, so happy and so rich in opportunity, influence and power.

It can’t last.  This summer saw government employees riot to protect their privileged jobs in Greece. When the private sector cash flow shrinks the bloated government has to borrow or suck out even more cash from the economy.  Greece failed and the EU and the U.S. poured in money to keep the rioters off the streets.

One can justifiably hate a government that loses its way.  Sides have been set, those who produce wealth for an economy to function and those who live off the wealth.  Certainly some and likely many government jobs are worth getting done – but not at a 30% premium.  But backing up the situation looks to be a serious and dangerous effort.

This writer doesn’t spend time on the emotion, the hate – better to plot a means to survive, preserve one’s assets, and help the family and friends likely to get caught up in the adjustment.  One can learn a lot from the Greeks again. As the Romans learned to their destruction, democracy is fine until people learn to vote good things for themselves.

Does anyone believe America can vote itself out of this mess?  This writer certainly hopes so.

Have a happy holiday.

The lignin molecules are clumped around the target sugar molecules, forming a barrier the alcohol producing microbes often can’t penetrate.  The lignin could first be exposed to heat and steam or caustic acids and bases to break it down. These extra steps make the process more expensive and often generate hazardous waste.  The process consumes time, materials and energy all adding to the facility cost and operating expense – the reasons behind ethanol not being on schedule with U.S. policy to take transport market share.

A team of researchers from the University of Florida and the biotechnology company Chesapeake-PERL Inc. of Savage, Md. have isolated two enzymes termites use to break up lignin.  They’re reporting in a paper published online in the journal Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, a determination that enzymes found in termite salivary tissues may be able to accomplish the same task, and at room temperature.  If so and the costs are not high, the enzymes work quickly and require no massive facility costs – a breakthrough could be at a hand.

The study follows more than two years of work to identify nearly 7,000 genes associated with the termite gut. The researchers are wading through the genes to identify which ones are associated with enzymes that could be useful, and they are hopeful that many more such exciting discoveries are yet to come. That makes for a bit of surprise a salivary enzyme turned up further down tract and has been identified and sourced back up the tract.

University of Florida entomologist Mike Scharf, who led the research said, “Once we figure out the best way to integrate this sort of enzyme into the process, it could drop the cost of producing cellulosic ethanol significantly.”

James Preston, a UF microbiology professor who studies enzymes in bacteria that break down plant material said, “This is definitive and original research that could realistically be a significant contribution to green energy. It’s this kind of work that keeps pushing cellulosic ethanol toward practicality.”

From the study abstract: two gut laccase isoforms (RfLacA and RfLacB) were sequenced from the termite Reticulitermes flavipes. Phylogenetic analyses comparing translated R. flavipes laccases to 67 others from prokaryotes and eukaryotes indicate that the R. flavipes laccases are evolutionarily unique. Alignments with crystallography-verified laccases confirmed that peptide motifs involved in metal binding are 100% conserved in both isoforms. Laccase transcripts and phenoloxidase activity were most abundant in symbiont-free salivary gland and foregut tissue, verifying that the genes and activities are host-derived.

Using a baculovirus-insect expression system, the two isoforms were functionally expressed with histidine tags and purified to near homogeneity. ICP-MS (inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry) analysis of RfLacA identified bound metals consisting mainly of copper ( 4 copper molecules per laccase protein molecule and  3 per histidine tag) with lesser amounts of calcium, manganese and zinc. Both recombinant enzyme preparations showed strong activity towards the lignin monomer sinapinic acid and four other phenolic substrates.

By contrast, both isoforms displayed much lower or no activity against four melanin precursors, suggesting that neither isoform is involved in integument formation. Modification of lignin alkali by the recombinant RfLacA preparation was also observed. These findings provide evidence that R. flavipes gut laccases are evolutionarily distinct, host-derived, produced in the salivary gland, secreted into the foregut, bind copper, and play a role in lignocellulose digestion. These findings contribute to a better understanding of termite digestion and gut physiology, and will assist future translational studies that examine the contributions of individual termite enzymes in lignocellulose digestion.

Somewhere between the study and the university press release the jump was made to alcohol fuels.  One can bet with confidence that the biotechnology company Chesapeake-PERL wouldn’t bother unless the target was to get a lower cost lignin process.  Chesapeake-PERL hasn’t updated the company site as of this writing so perhaps in time the clarity of the research to product path will become clearer.

Even in a technically specific explanation the science looks good.  Termites have been a fascinating potential source of information about taking wood fiber apart and getting useful products for decades.  Now genetic testing and steady determined research is getting some results.

Scharf said at the end of the pres release quite sanguinely, “We still have a long way to go before we’re finished. But, in the meanwhile, we can start putting what we have discovered to good use.”

Just so, professor Scharf, and congratulations.

Powdered material called "dry water" could provide a new way to store carbon dioxide in an effort to fight global warming. Click image for the largest view.

Carter explains that the substance became known as “dry water” because it consists of 95 percent water and yet is a dry powder. Each powder particle contains a water droplet surrounded by modified silica, the stuff that makes up ordinary beach sand. The silica coating prevents the water droplets from combining and turning back into a liquid. The result is a fine powder that can slurp up gases, which chemically combine with the water molecules to form what chemists term a hydrate.

Dry water is an unusual substance, which resembles powdered sugar, could provide a new way to absorb and store carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, scientists reported at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society.

The powder shows bright promise for a number of other uses, they said. It may, for instance, be a greener, more energy-efficient way of jumpstarting the chemical reactions used to make hundreds of consumer products. Dry water also could provide a safer way to store and transport potentially harmful industrial materials.

One of the most recent involves using dry water as a storage material for gases, including carbon dioxide. In laboratory-scale research, Cooper and his co-workers found that dry water absorbed over three times as much carbon dioxide as ordinary, uncombined water and silica in the same space of time. This ability to absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide gas as a hydrate could make it useful in helping to reduce global warming, the scientists suggested.  Or as a means to transport and reuse the gas.

Cooper and colleagues demonstrated in previous studies that dry water is also useful for storing methane, a major component of natural gas, and may help expand its use as a future energy source. In particular, they hope that engineers can use the powder to collect and transport stranded deposits of natural gas. Methane also exists on the ocean floor in the form of gas hydrates, a form of frozen methane also known as the “ice that burns.” The powder could also provide a safer, more convenient way to store methane fuel for use in vehicles powered by natural gas. “A great deal of work remains to be done before we could reach that stage,” Carter adds.

In another potential new application, the scientists also showed that dry water is a promising means to speed up catalyzed reactions between hydrogen gas and maleic acid to produce succinic acid, a feedstock or raw material widely used to make drugs, food ingredients, and other consumer products. Manufacturers usually have to stir these substances together to get them to react. By developing dry water particles that contain maleic acid, Cooper and colleagues showed that they could speed up the acid’s reaction with hydrogen without any stirring, resulting in a greener, more energy-efficient process.

Carter points out, “If you can remove the need to stir your reactions, then potentially you’re making considerable energy savings.”

In the ACS report Prof. Cooper’s team describes an additional new application in which dry water technology shows promise for storing liquids, particularly emulsions. Emulsions are mixtures of two or more unblendable liquids, such as the oil and water mixture in mayonnaise. The scientists showed that they could transform a simple emulsion into a dry powder that is similar to dry water. The resulting powder could make it safer and easier for manufacturers to store and transport potentially harmful liquids.

If you’re in the silica business you might want to look into dry water much more intensely.

The report while wide ranging still overlooks the potential that hydrate storage could offer.  Many chemical compounds could hookup with dry water and the storage and reaction possibilities are immense.  Moreover, the silica part of the dry water particle is going to be quite stable offering perhaps some toxic cleanup and storage opportunities as well.

The obstacle might be the price.  The ACS report isn’t discussing the cost of dry water or the mass involved in a unit volume.  Moving the chemical with the dry water mass might be problematic as silica isn’t a lightweight material nor is the water.  But multiples of 3 in the example above for storage might make high value product’s transport quite worthwhile.

It’s early yet in the developing dry water story.  As an idea with solid material ready for testing, research and innovation dry water could get a foothold.  As more chemical interactions become known, or an addition of a catalyst to the silica surface and other add on innovations, dry water may just be getting underway as a business opportunity.

Keep a look out for a mass to volume report, if dry water is light enough, then methane for natural gas internal combustion or fuel cells might get much safer and very attractive.

Should Galembeck get it right, devices that capture electricity from the air – much like solar cells capture sunlight – and using them to light a house or recharge an electric car might be possible.  Scientists already are in the early stages of developing such devices, according to a report presented at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

“Our research could pave the way for turning electricity from the atmosphere into an alternative energy source for the future,” said Galembeck. “If we know how electricity builds up and spreads in the atmosphere, we can also prevent death and damage caused by lightning strikes,” noting that lightning causes thousands of deaths and injuries worldwide and millions of dollars in property damage.  There’s a bunch of power up there for the taking if processes can be built for collection.

An Intense Lightning Strike Over Texas. Click image for the largest view.

The hope of harnessing the power of electricity formed naturally has tantalized scientists for centuries.  Famed inventor Nikola Tesla was among those who dreamed of capturing and using electricity from the air.  Sparks of static electricity formed as steam escaped from boilers. Workers who touched the steam even got painful electrical shocks.  Carpeting and shuffling feet can yield a shock at the faucet.

In the atmosphere electricity forms when water vapor collects on microscopic particles of dust and other material in the air.  But until now, scientists lacked adequate knowledge about the processes involved in formation and release of electricity from water in the atmosphere.  Scientists once believed that water droplets in the atmosphere were electrically neutral, and remained so even after coming into contact with the electrical charges on dust particles and droplets of other liquids. But new evidence suggested that water in the atmosphere really does pick up an electrical charge.

Galembeck a PhD is with University of Campinas in Campinas, SP, Brazil and his colleagues confirmed that idea, using laboratory experiments that simulated water’s contact with dust particles in the air. They used tiny particles of silica and aluminum phosphate, both common airborne substances, showing that silica became more negatively charged in the presence of high humidity and aluminum phosphate became more positively charged. High humidity means high levels of water vapor in the air – the vapor that condenses and becomes visible as “fog” on windows of air-conditioned cars and buildings on steamy summer days.

Galembeck explains, “This was clear evidence that water in the atmosphere can accumulate electrical charges and transfer them to other materials it comes into contact with. We are calling this ‘hygroelectricity,’ meaning ‘humidity electricity’.”
In the future, Galembeck believes, it may be possible to develop collectors, similar to the solar cells that collect the sunlight to produce electricity, to capture hygroelectricity and route it to homes and businesses. Just as solar cells work best in sunny areas of the world, hygroelectrical panels would work more efficiently in areas with high humidity, such as the northeastern and southeastern United States and the humid tropics.

Stretching the idea further, Galembeck said that a similar approach might help prevent lightning from forming and striking. He envisioned placing hygroelectrical panels on top of buildings in regions that experience frequent thunderstorms. The panels would drain electricity out of the air, and prevent the building of electrical charge that is released in lightning. His research group already is testing metals to identify those with the greatest potential for use in capturing atmospheric electricity and preventing lightning strikes.

“These are fascinating ideas that new studies by ourselves and by other scientific teams suggest are now possible,” Galembeck said. “We certainly have a long way to go. But the benefits in the long range of harnessing hygroelectricity could be substantial.”

A little simple observation illuminates the problem.  Moving air with high humidity seems to be the source.  Add in the effects of a thunderstorm and the energy gets concentrated until the atmosphere is saturated and the electrical potential grounds out – in a flash of light and clap of thunder.  The energy is a huge discharge without precise locating beforehand.

On the other hand the amount of electricity in the moist moving air is very thinly spread about.  A means to concentrate or discern the available potential – which might be quite small – needs an engineering feat of great innovation.  The power is out there, no doubt, collecting seems to be the goal.

It doesn’t seem that Galembeck and the colleagues have much new, but the understanding is growing.  What a collector might look like is purely imaginary. As far as this writer knows no functioning collector exists today.  But that doesn’t mean one can’t be designed.

The potential might be significant if a collector can be designed and return on its investment. Today that’s out there.  But if the past fifty years have made anything at all clear “out there” can be very soon indeed.  A little breeze on a hot humid day that a collector could use to power a home would cover a great deal of peak electrical demand.  It’s an idea well worth the imagineering.

Using renewable solar energy and a process of solar conversion the now patented process Solar Thermal Electrochemical Photo (STEP) energy conversion, Dr. Licht is able to easily extract pure metal iron from the two prevalent iron ores, hematite and magnetite, without emitting carbon dioxide. Today, the commercial iron industry emits an estimated 6.8 trillion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, consuming a large quantity of coal and coke for the process.

Electrolytic vs Carbothermic Iron Production. Click image for more info.

Dr. Licht says in the George Washington University press release, “STEP is a new renewable energy process that can capture carbon and makes the materials that society needs without emission of carbon dioxide. We’re developing processes to return the atmosphere to pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide.”

With more than 20 years of study, Dr. Licht has come to understand the efficient use of sunlight and the chemistry of iron, and found that iron ore at high temperatures is significantly more soluble than previously thought. In his most recent research, Dr. Licht found a new way to use electrolysis – a process that uses electricity rather than chemicals to create a reaction – to covert iron ore to iron metal. This high temperature electrolysis requires little energy, and can be powered through conventional or renewable energy sources to reduce or completely eliminate CO2 emissions. When powered fully by renewables, the electrolysis process is carbon dioxide free, consuming no fuels when converting the ore into metal. By using both solar thermal energy and visible sunlight, the STEP process converts more solar energy than the best solar cells, as it uses excess solar heat (energy discarded by solar cells) to drive iron production.

The process of smelting is to drive off the oxygen in iron leaving an iron residue.  Iron smelting, the reduction of iron oxide ores with carbon, started as early as 3000 BCE, and the Iron age began in the 12th century BCE, with the collapse of the Bronze Age as shortages of tin or copper arose.  Commercial iron today continues to be produced by this millennia old carbothermal process. In the carbothermal process iron oxide is reduced by carbon, via carbon monoxide or hydrogen as intermediate reductants.

Licht’s study demonstrates iron may be formed at an electrolysis potential of as little as 0.9V.  Even if fossil fuel, rather than renewable energy, is used to generate the heat and electricity for iron by electrolysis, it will only emit 0.225 x 11 = 2.5 CO2 per Fe (iron) generated.  This is less than the 7 CO2 per Fe emitted by the existing iron smelting processes.  That is to say the energy needed to heat a batch of iron ore and smelt it with Licht’s process uses 36% as much energy as the current blast furnace, saving 64% of the energy to complete the smelting process.

Licht is not the first to go after the electrolysis path for smelting.  The first research reports date from 1944 and continue through to today.  What Licht offers is the iron ore solution could be solar heated in readiness for electrolysis thus cutting back on the energy needed and successfully separating the iron from the impurities with the electrolysis.

But, and it’s a big but.  Carbothermic smelting is usually a steel production process where carbon from the coke is left in and other elements are added after impurities are driven out.  On a ton basis one suspects that pure iron production is a small fraction of the total iron and steel production.  Even cast iron has added elements.  The idea that Licht has turned an industry on its head is an incomplete conclusion.

There are metallic processes such a powered iron smelting that could benefit from a pure iron product. Powered iron using a much less expensive source of iron could grow hugely offering near perfect metallic alloy steels.  Another use for Licht’s process might be recycling steel, as the product now is steel with all the combined alloys, which presents each produced batch with different alloy content.  Separating and recovery of the added alloy elements in recycling steel would be a superb addition to the process.

Licht has accomplished a significant milestone and the electrolysis method offers great promise.  The amount of iron the human economy uses is enormous and the recycling potential far from 100%.  Iron electrolysis now has a foundation from which to start and the capital intensity looks to be low. Perhaps Licht is kicking off a new iron and steel alloy industry.  As Licht’s research and process gets more grounding more innovation should come.  Shaving of 64% of the energy required, offering a pure product, and allowing for more innovation is an intensely interesting prospect.  Lets hope the good professor and the university have enough sense to be very generous with the patent rights – for progress there is much left to do.

For Canada and the U.S. the oil boom is in the field called the Bakken, a widely spread oil reservoir with top quality oil trapped in a difficult rock right in the center of the North American continent.

Bakken Formation in the Williston Basin. Click image for the largest view.

Geologist JW Nordquist discovered the Bakken in 1953. He described it as an “Oreo cookie” arrangement of hard dolomite rock sandwiched between two darker shale layers.  For decades, petroleum geologists thought the Bakken shale was the source of the oil pools in the wider Williston Basin. But in 1999, Leigh Price, a geochemist working for the US Geological Survey (USGS), wrote a paper proposing that most of the oil from Bakken shale was still trapped in the Bakken Formation. He suggested the “cream” in the Nordquist Oreo cookie contained up to 500 billion barrels of crude, making it a prime exploration target. It is the dolomite “filling” that contains the oil causing all the excitement today, although that oil may have formed in the surrounding shale.  Mr. Price died in 2002, before his paper was published. The USGS was skeptical and for years refused to release the report and their review of it.

Meanwhile, an independent petroleum geologist, Richard Findley, reviewed drilling logs from abandoned Bakken wells and concluded that the operators missed the pay zone by drilling right through the hard oil bearing rock between the two shale layers. He interested Lyco Energy, based in Texas, in his theory.  Lyco brought in the services company Halliburton to try out what were then developing technologies: horizontal drilling; and hydraulic fracturing.

Findley, Lyco and Halliburton discovered and developed the Elm Coulee oilfield of eastern Montana in 1997.  The Elm Coulee oilfield now pumps about 50,000 barrels per day of light, sweet crude and is considered a small part of the larger Bakken field.

Non-USGS geochemist and geologist research has largely vindicated Mr. Price.  Non-government estimates of Bakken oil in place have ranged from 10 billion to 500 billion barrels. The most recent, built with sophisticated computer modeling, suggests 300 billion to 400 billion barrels could be realistic.  Every new well fills in the gaps making the later estimates stronger bases for more investments.

By 2008 in an effort to catch up, the USGS estimated that about 4 billion barrels of oil could theoretically be produced from the US part of the Bakken with current technology It represents enough oil to satisfy US consumers for about six months – hardly a game-changer.

Technology is advancing, so actual oil recovery could vastly exceed initial estimates and the Bakken is still a very young field with little development.

Canada’s Crescent Point Energy has tested a fracturing and water-flood recovery technique that boosts recovery from wells in Saskatchewan to 30 per cent of oil in place. “These mainly untapped resource pools provide Crescent Point with over 5,000 drilling locations and the potential to add over 500 million barrels of reserves,” Scott Saxberg, the company’s president and chief executive, told the Calgary Herald newspaper. “It’s unique that it’s light oil, and in our back yard, and it’s low cost,” he told Canada’s National Post.

Production form the Bakken is relatively economical as well. Costs for producing oil from the relatively shallow wells required to tap Bakken oil pools have fallen to about $5 per barrel, compared with tens of dollars per barrel for extracting tar-like bitumen from Canada’s oil sands and chemically converting it into synthetic light crude.  As a measure of the confidence major investments are underway the Canadian pipeline development company Enbridge is expanding their network to accommodate more oil from the Williston Basin.

The U.S. portion is described as the country’s largest oil deposit outside Alaska, and its biggest and most accessible part is in Canada. The Bakken could prove to be one of the largest oilfields in the world.  The American Association of Petroleum Geologists says it is the biggest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed.

In a reality check, since Drake’s first well over 150 years ago the hunt has been for wells the flow under their own pressure leading to the gushers then followed by pumping.  The hunt goes on today as seen in the BP blow out fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico.

But most any oil basin is going to have oil formations that are not gushers, with huge amounts of more difficult to recover oil.  The list is just being looked at now.  The Bakken may be big, but it’s actually the first of what is likely to be more to come.

That makes the water splitting process much more desirable if the hydrogen and oxygen have their own electrodes and the freed gases come off separately.  One can store hydrogen in a near pure state that must leak to get to oxygen for ignition and can only ignite with a proper mixture.  That’s much, much safer.

MITs Daniel Nocera and his associates have found yet another formulation, based on inexpensive and widely available materials that can efficiently catalyze the splitting of water molecules using electricity in an electrolyzer. This form of electrolyzer uses two different electrodes, one of which releases the oxygen atoms and the other the hydrogen atoms.   They described the advance at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, being held in Boston this week.

Nocera’s report focused on the electrolyzer catalysts – materials that jumpstart chemical reactions like the ones that break water up into hydrogen and oxygen.  Good catalysts already are available for the part of the electrolyzer that produces hydrogen. What are missing were inexpensive, long-lasting catalysts for the production of oxygen. Nocera’s new catalyst fills that gap and boosts oxygen production by 200-fold. It eliminates the need for expensive platinum catalysts and potentially toxic chemicals used in making them.

The new catalyst has already been licensed to newly formed Sun Catalytix, which envisions developing safe, super-efficient versions of the electrolyzer, suitable for homes and small businesses, within two years.

Nocera, along with postdoctoral researcher Mircea Dincă and graduate student Yogesh Surendranath, report the discovery is nickel borate, made from materials that are even more abundant and inexpensive than an earlier find.  In 2008, Nocera reported the discovery of a durable and low-cost material for the oxygen-producing electrode based on the element cobalt.

Nocera is also pointing out a significant observation of his findings, that the original cobalt compound was not a unique, anomalous material, and suggests that there may be a whole family of such compounds that researchers can study in search of one that has the best combination of characteristics to provide a widespread, long-term energy-storage technology.

The research is still at the early stage. “This is a door opener,” Nocera says. “Now, we know what works in terms of chemistry. One of the important next things will be to continue to tune the system, to make it go faster and better. This puts us on a fast technological path.” While the two compounds discovered so far work well, he says, he is convinced that as they carry out further research even better compounds will come to light. “I don’t think we’ve found the silver bullet yet,” he says.

If you’re interested in getting in the hydrogen game Nocera is the guy to catch up with.

In the course of their research Nocera and his team have increased the rate of production from these catalysts a hundredfold from the level they initially reported on cobalt two years ago.

There are concentrated alkali based commercial scale electrolyzers of good efficiency now, but that kind of thing isn’t going work at small scale in residential, commercial, solar driven or remote, off grid kinds of locations.  The alkali units need professional continuous oversight.

Personal Solar Hydrogen Energy System. Click image for more info.

Nocera’s idea is more rational for the individual, “Our goal is to make each home its own power station,” says Nocera. “We’re working toward development of ‘personalized’ energy units that can be manufactured, distributed and installed inexpensively. There certainly are major obstacles to be overcome – existing fuel cells and solar cells must be improved, for instance.”

Such a system would consist of rooftop solar energy panels to produce electricity for heating, cooking, lighting, and to charge the batteries on the homeowners’ electric cars. Surplus electricity would go to the electrolyzer, to break down ordinary water into its two components, hydrogen and oxygen. Both would be stored in tanks. In the dark of night, when the solar panels cease production, the system would shift gears, feeding the stored hydrogen and oxygen into a fuel cell that produces electricity (and clean pure drinking water as a byproduct). Such a system would produce clean electricity 24 hours a day, seven days a week – even when the sun isn’t shining.

The technological barriers are cracking away for Nocera’s idea.  The matter in not so long a time will likely be the capital investment needed to buy the systems.  Its going to have to be cheap, and the solar cell crowd is getting there steadily if not allowing for wind, hail and hurricane weather.  The biggest breakthrough will need to be in the fuel cell.  That’s the main problem.

But there is great potential here.  Nocera’s research isn’t knocking the concentrated alkali systems performance over – yet.  But if he can, then mass production would drive to lower costs even faster.

It’s another race that is getting interesting to watch.

US Grid Interconnection Map with the New Superstation Location. Click image for the largest view. Image Credit: Tres Amigas.

The proposed transmission station called the Tres Amigas SuperStation would allow power to be transmitted as needed among the three independently operating U.S. electricity grids: the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection, and the Texas Interconnection.  These three grid systems supply power throughout the U.S. as well as to people in Canada and Mexico.  It’s a major tool to rationalize power production and consumption demands.

Tres Amigas got approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in March of 2010 to offer transmission services at negotiated rates across the three main arteries of the U.S. electrical grid. The agency is now considering allowing it to build and connect the mega-hub based in Clovis, N.M.  With the approval for services in hand, the likelihood that physically offering the service is quite high.  For many, there is a sense of relief and for others alarm as one company has the handle on the rationalization of the grid.  But the company isn’t named Enron.

FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff’s comments from March are being said to signal that the agency will ultimately support the project.  There remain several aspects are pending approval.

Wellinghoff said in a statement during a hearing, “This project, which is the first of its kind, will allow customers to trade power across the interconnections and to take advantage of opportunities to buy lower cost power from other regions. It may also open a new transmission path for customers interested in tapping the vast renewable energy potential in many parts of the country – Texas, the Southwest, the West and Northwest, the Southeast and the offshore Atlantic.”

Tres Amigas claims its super hub and storage facility would be able to move substantial amounts of power among the three systems. The facility will use Xtreme Power’s grid storage and management technology in an attempt to decrease brown-outs by offering more reliability and stability across the U.S., and enable renewable-energy sources like wind and solar to be better utilized.

Tres Amigas CEO Phil Harris said in part from his statement, “The role of the SuperStation is multi-faceted, but one of the most critical aspects will be ensuring that the input from renewable energy sources is incorporated smoothly into the span of the three grids, while providing reliable, flexible storage.”  Harris is the former head of PJM Interconnection, one of the largest grid operators in the U.S.

TresAmigas Superstation SuperConductor Map. Click image for the largest view. Image Credit: American Superconductor.

The major new technology going to work is using American Superconductor’s direct current superconductor power cables buried underground that will be powered by the company’s high-temperature superconductor wire and high-powered voltage-source AC/DC power converters. American Superconductor has said, obviously, that using underground superconductor cables greatly reduces the loss of energy during transmission compared to existing overhead power lines.  Somewhere the calculation of the energy loss from resistance is more than the power needed to run the superconductor system.

The new station will answer some of the issues of using wind power from the Midwest and solar in the southwest.  Having a fully interconnected national grid can bring much of the renewable energy potential into more complete utilization.  The lowest cost producers get to stay up much longer because the grid covers all four time zones.  Those four hours are a huge opportunity.  Early in the day the low cost west excess power can go east and late in the day low cost east production can flow west.  More complete base utilization should take some pressure off consumers if the savings pass through without being pocketed along the way.

The Tres Amigas plan calls for building a substation with three high-voltage converters able to connect up to five gigawatts, or 5,000 megawatts, worth of electricity from one grid to the others. Underground superconducting power cables would link the three terminals using direct current, rather than alternating current. Tres Amigas would act a broker, distributing and selling power among the three grids.  Just what that pricing power will do to consumers is yet to be seen.  The Wall Street Journal reported that Tres Amigas would burn about $1 billion for the station and startup.  It will have to payoff.

While there is no clear regulatory information on the results to consumers, the capital return for $1 billion would be 10 to 15% charged against the total savings.  One would hope the regulators figured that out and will bring a bit lower billings to consumers – but don’t bet on that.

The other opportunity of a full national grid is it helps make those production ideas for renewable shifting and leveling possible.  Much renewable power is still competitively expensive so getting the power off and used for payment and the investment amortized is in everyone’s long term interest.

This writer isn’t expecting an impact on the electricity bill either more or less.  Even if the new station was to earn 30% or $300 million that would only come to a dollar per citizen per year, less any savings.

The payoff will be in investments for new power plants that will be based on a bigger database, many brownouts and rolling blackouts should be stopped because of generating capacity and the local utilities should be able to look more to distribution upgrades.

It’s a good thing – finally getting very close.

The math and commentary have been published in the August 10th issue of the ACS journal Energy & Fuels. The news, a bit obtuse this writer will admit, is still quite significant.  Coverage is worldwide if seemingly subdued – there aren’t a lot of journalists that are going to realize the significance of reducing the catalyst needs by factors in the 4 to 8 range.

Fractal Branched Fuel Cell Layout. Click image for more info.

It’s still theory for now, using sophisticated math for getting to the point. Stay with me: the process method uses the theorem of equipartition of entropy production to maximize energy efficiency.  The gas supply and water outlet systems, designed to produce entropy uniformly, have a fractal structure inspired by the human lung. The tree-like gas distributor engraved in the fuel cell bipolar plates may eliminate the need for porous transport layers.

Mathematical solutions are provided for the optimal height, macroporosity, and nanoporous column width of the electro-catalytic layer beneath the gas supply system.  The paper shows that the optimal macroporosity of the catalytic layer is equal to 1/2 for the model chosen and that the optimal height of the catalytic layer depends upon the coefficient for first-order reaction kinetics at the cathode, the diffusion constant for oxygen in the gas phase, and the oxygen concentration of the inlet flow.

In lay terms that is trying to say the layout of the passages for the fuel gas, such as hydrogen, and the dimensions of the passages have been identified using the math work by the group. Using the materials discussed in the paper indicates that the amount of catalyst can be reduced by a factor of 4−8, while the energy efficiency can be increased by 10−20% at high current densities.

Typical MEA Layout in a Fuel Cell. Click image for more info.

Compared to passageway layouts such as in a radiator or other ideas, and then trying to get the fuel working through a comparatively massive membrane acting as the porous transport, the lung based distribution with the activity taking place in the distribution routes offers a great increase is using catalyst resources.

Today polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells are usually built with five active layers, all with different characteristic pore sizes. The central layer is a gas-tight ion-exchange membrane (typically Nafion) filled with water, in which protons conduct charge and where water transport takes place by electro-osmosis and diffusion. Two catalytic layers on both sides of the membrane are nanoporous with dispersed platinum, carbon, and polymer; the carbon grains (20-40 nm) form agglomerates of 200- 300 nm size, leading to pores of 20-40 nm inside the grains and 40-200 nm pores in the void space between agglomerates. These three layers comprise the membrane electrode assembly (MEA).

The MEA is covered on both sides with a porous transport layer (PTL), having micrometer-sized pores. Supplying oxygen fast enough through the PTL and the catalytic layer to the active sites can be problematic. The lack of a fast supply leads to gradients perpendicular as well as parallel to the membrane, resulting in loss in potential; clogging of pores by water can give similar losses. The Norwegians work seeks to avoid those problems.  Quote from the paper:

“To find an optimal structure starting from scratch, with all geometrical variables free, is not trivial. It is known, however, that the human lung as a gas distributor is characterized by the very same conditions (as given by eqs 9 and 10). The human lung has two flow regimes: one for convective flow and one for diffusion. The structure is such that the entropy production is constant in both parts, indicating that the entropy production is minimal for the total structure. This is exactly the situation that we want to achieve and why we take the bronchial tree as a source of inspiration…The gas supply system for the fuel cell should be compared to the first part of the bronchial tree.”

A bit of connecting the dots genius in involved here with more than a bit of objective analysis on the problems.

The paper’s authors offer, “The presented methodology is general and applies to any type of catalyst in a nanoporous catalytic layer. . . We have thus presented a method that predicts that significant catalyst savings are possible. . .  The results remain to be validated experimentally by building a cell, proving that a better energy efficiency can indeed be realized in practice for the proposed structure. It is important to establish all cell characteristics, because the loss at low potentials may not only be due to mass-transfer limitations.”

Another look at the two graphics suggests the group should get some funding for proving up the concept.  The issue is fundamentally controlling the fuel and the intersection with the catalyst.  The math looks good, the engineering quite a challenge for the test cell, and the promise quite high for getting fuel cells closer to mainstream use.

Moreover, the authors aren’t playing favorites on the fuel front either; the door is open from hydrogen on up.  The Norwegians have a great idea on the table and congratulations are in order for a very sharp innovation.  It will be very interesting to see how this idea might drive fuel cell costs down.

The LANL press release covers some interesting new ideas that while not saying so appear to be an anticipation of what problems might come up on the way to break even power production.

The IEC system provides an economical and technologically straightforward means to produce fusion reactions in a table-top device.  By confining a plasma in a potential well created by electrostatic fields or a combination of electrostatic and magnetic fields produced either by grids or by virtual cathodes, typically in spherical or cylindrical geometry, ions are accelerated towards the center of the device, where fusion reactions can occur.  The technological simplicity of the IEC system was the basis for its early success – it produced a steady-state neutron yield of 2 × 1010 neutrons/s in the late 1960s.  That’s the bait taken up by the late Dr. Robert Bussard and others – it looks like a leading technology along with Eric Learner’s Focus Fusion.

IEC Device Setup with Grid for POPS. Click image for more info.

As it IEC stands today the break-even point is still a ways off.   The problem, subject to testing the ideas of Bussard and others is thought to be the Coulomb barrier-collision cross section is much greater than the fusion-collision cross section by several orders of magnitude. The ion beams in the IEC device rapidly lose the energy by Coulomb collisions before producing fusion reactions, leading to a net loss in energy.  That’s the historical objection to the Bussard theory.  Whether the physics and the engineering is at hand at the Nebel lead team at EMC2 in New Mexico can get past the matter is a topic of intense interest.

If not, and there could be two views on the honorable Mr. Nebel being both at EMC2 and working on the project at LANL, the LANL work could be to get past the Coulomb barrier if Bussard’s ideas don’t work out or an assumption that Nebel is on both sides of the Coulomb fence.  How much it matters – that depends on Nebel’s honor and determination.  The LANL release on its face shows Nebel is in deep.  Very likely determined, thus if the Bussard theory doesn’t get there, of even if it does – Nebel and the brilliant minds at LANL have a follow-up that should work, too.

The LANL theorists propose a new electrostatic plasma equilibrium that should mitigate the Coulomb matter has recently confirmed experimentally.  This is very good news from any perspective.

The concept now called Periodically Oscillating Plasma Sphere, or POPS requires uniform electron injection into the central region of a spherical device to produce harmonic oscillator potential. An ion cloud in such an environment will undergo harmonic oscillation with an oscillation frequency independent of amplitude. Tuning the external radio-frequency (rf) electric fields to this naturally occurring mode allows the ion motions to be phase-locked. This simultaneously produces very high densities and temperatures during the collapse phase of the oscillation when all the ions converge into the center. Solutions to POPS oscillation have the remarkable property that they maintain equilibrium distribution of the ions at all times. This would eliminate any power loss due to Coulomb collisions and would greatly increase the neutron yield up to more than 100%, resulting in a net energy gain for fusion-power generation.

IEC Devices in a POPS Set. Click image for more info.

Ready?  Here comes the remarkable part: In practice the POPS system would use a massively modular system to achieve high-mass-power density as shown in the conceptual drawing in Figure 2. Such a device would contain thousands of tiny spherical IEC reactors within a single reactor vessel to produce a large amount of fusion power (i.e., ~ 100–1000 MW). A modular IEC device would have very high-mass-power density, comparable to a light-water reactor, while maintaining conventional wall loads (~ 1 MW/m2) and being economically competitive with other sources of power.

Farnsworth – Bussard and the new developers have taken the basic physics way up in scale from a tabletop device.

The POPS oscillation being experimentally measured for the first time, confirms the scientific basis for a POPS-based fusion device. The harmonic potential well is created by electron injection. Ions in the potential well undergo harmonic oscillation. By applying radio frequency fluctuation to the grid voltage, the LANL team was able to phase-lock the POPS oscillation and to measure the resonance behavior of the ions.

The goal, the route to which is explained in more technical detail in the press release is a much longer ion life in the IEC potential well.  The LANL team has taken a lifetime of 0.5 millisecond up to 2.5 milliseconds, a five-fold increase that portends a much greater life and chance of fusion collisions.

The LANL team involving the Plasma Physics Group parts P-23 and T-15 is hard at an alternative to the Bussard concept still using the old Farnsworth principles and it seems following the theoretical path. The experiment offers a solution to the main objection, over coming the Coulomb barrier that many think Bussard has overcame in his work.  Whether or not who’s idea is working, the LANL group has done the IEC community a service – putting a major blotter over the Coulomb barrier objection with experimental data to show.  Moreover the LANL POPS idea adds some compression to the natural velocity that IEC uses to get the atoms to fuse.

If anything is clear, from a funding standpoint, on to a very cheap source of power generation, overlooking IEC for a few millions of dollars for tens of billions for the ITER tokamak idea seems now, well, foolhardy.