Hydrogen Technology Steams Ahead

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ScienceDaily (July 17, 2009) — Could the cars and laptops of the future be fuelled by old chip fat? Engineers at the University of Leeds believe so, and are developing an energy efficient, environmentally-friendly hydrogen production system. The system enables hydrogen to be extracted from waste materials, such as vegetable oil and the glycerol by-product of bio-diesel. The aim is to create the high purity hydrogen-based fuel necessary not only for large-scale power production, but also for smaller portable fuel cells.

Dr Valerie Dupont from the School of Process, Environmental and Materials Engineering (SPEME) says: “I can foresee a time when the processes we are investigating could help ensure that hydrogen is a mainstream fuel.
“We are investigating the feasibility of creating a uniquely energy efficient method of hydrogen production which uses air rather than burners to heat the raw product. Our current research will improve the sustainability of this process and reduce its carbon emissions.”
A grant of over £400k has been awarded to the University by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) within a consortium of 12 institutions known as SUPERGEN Sustainable Hydrogen Delivery.
Hydrogen is widely considered to be a potential replacement for fossil fuels, but it is costly to extract. There are also often high levels of greenhouse gases emitted during conventional methods of production.
The system being developed at Leeds – known as Unmixed and Sorption-Enhanced Steam Reforming - mixes waste products with steam to release hydrogen and is potentially cheaper, cleaner and more energy efficient.
A hydrocarbon-based fuel from plant or waste sources is mixed with steam in a catalytic reactor, generating hydrogen and carbon dioxide along with excess water. The water is then easily condensed by cooling and the carbon dioxide is removed in-situ by a solid sorbent material.
Dr Dupont says: “It’s becoming increasingly necessary for scientists devising new technologies to limit the amount of carbon dioxide they release. This project takes us one step closer to these goals – once we have technologies that enable us to produce hydrogen sustainably, the infrastructure to support its use will grow.”
“We firmly believe that these advanced steam reforming processes have great potential for helping to build the hydrogen economy. Our primary focus now is to ensure the materials we rely on - both to catalyse the desired reaction and to capture the carbon dioxide – can be used over and over again without losing their efficacy.”
Adapted from materials provided by University of Leeds.

Blind Can Take Wheel With Newly Designed Vehicle

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ScienceDaily (July 15, 2009) — A student team in the Virginia Tech College of Engineering is providing the blind with an opportunity many never thought possible: The opportunity to drive.

A retrofitted four-wheel dirt buggy developed by the Blind Driver Challenge team (http://www.me.vt.edu/blinddriver/) from Virginia Tech's Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory uses laser range finders, an instant voice command interface and a host of other innovative, cutting-edge technology to guide blind drivers as they steer, brake, and accelerate. Although in the early testing stage, the National Federation of the Blind -- which spurred the project -- considers the vehicle a major breakthrough for independent living of the visually impaired.
"It was great!" said Wes Majerus, of Baltimore, the first blind person to drive the buggy on a closed course at the Virginia Tech campus this summer. Majerus is an access technology specialist with the National Federation of the Blind's Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, a research and training institute dedicated to developing technologies and services to help the blind achieve independence.
Majerus called his drive a liberating experience, adding that he drove before on Nebraska farm roads with his father as a guide in the passenger seat.
Sitting inside the vehicle, a blind driver can turn the steering wheel, stop and accelerate by following data from a computing unit that uses sensory information from the laser range finder serving as the 'eyes' of the driver, in addition to a combination of voice commands and a vibrating vest as guides. A member of the Virginia Tech student team sat next to Majerus in the passenger seat to monitor the system's software operations.
"It's a great first step," Majerus added. "As far as the differences between human instructions and those given by the voice in the Blind Driver Challenge car, the car's instructions are very precise. You use the technology to act on the environment -- the driving course -- in a very orderly manner. In some cases, the human passenger will be vague, "turn left" -- does that mean just a small turn to the left, or are we going for large amounts of turn?"
Also driving the vehicle was Mark Riccobono, also of Baltimore, the executive director of the Jernigan Institute, who also is blind. He called his test drive historic. "This is sort of our going to the moon project," he said
In 2004 Jernigan Institute challenged university research teams to develop a vehicle that would one day allow the blind to drive. Virginia Tech was the only university in the nation to accept the nonprofit's call two years later, said Dennis Hong, director of the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory, part of the Virginia Tech mechanical engineering department. The National Federation of the Blind provided a $3,000 grant to launch the project.
"I thought it would be a very rewarding project, helping the blind," said Hong, the current faculty adviser on the project. "We are not only excited about the vehicle itself, but more than that, we are excited about the potential of the many spin-off technologies from this project that can be used for helping the blind in so many ways."
The team will bring the Blind Driver Challenge vehicle to the National Federation of the Blind's Youth Slam summer camp event held July 26 through Aug. 1 in College Park, Md. There, the team hopes to have teenagers who would be obtaining their driver's licenses, but cannot because of their blindness, drive the buggy.
Youth participants also are expected to remote control drive miniature cars. Additionally, the car is expected to ride in a National Federation of the Blind-sponsored parade in Washington D.C.
"I most look forward to learning as much as I can from these bright young students," said Greg Jannaman, who led the Virginia Tech student team in his senior year and graduated in May with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. "Blind students from across the nation apply to be selected to attend this summer camp. While we are there to provide an educational experience for them, I can only imagine the invaluable feedback and fresh new ideas that they will provide in return."
Jannaman is excited about the vehicle's success. "There wasn't a moment's hesitation with any of our blind drivers, whereas blind-folded sighted drivers weren't as quick to let go of their preconceptions," said Jannaman of Hendersonville, Tenn. "The blind drivers actually performed better than their sighted counterparts. An overwhelming sense of accomplishment overcame me as I simply rode along while Wes and Mark successfully navigated the driving course without my assistance."
Early models of the Blind Driver Challenge vehicle relied more on technologies for fully autonomous vehicles, previously developed by Virginia Tech mechanical engineering students as part of the DARPA Urban Challenge (http://www.vt.edu/spotlight/achievement/2007-10-29_victortango/2007-10-29-victortango.html). The student team redesigned the vehicle so that the blind motorist has complete control of the driving process, as any sighted driver would.
This change in approach led to new challenges, including how to effectively convey the high bandwidth of information from the laser sensors scanning the vehicle's surrounding environment to the driver fast enough and accurate enough to allow safe driving. As a result, the team developed non-visual interface technologies, including a vibrating vest for feedback on speed, a click counter steering wheel with audio cues, spoken commands for directional feedback, and a unique tactile map interface that utilizes compressed air to provide information about the road and obstacles surrounding the vehicle.
Riccobono knows of mock ups and non-working "blind driver car" set-ups from the past, but says this is the first working vehicle to put the blind and visually impaired in control of the steering wheel. "Blind people have brains, the capacity to make decisions," he said. "Blind people want to live independent lives, why would they not want to drive?"
Even once the technology is perfected, laws now barring the blind from driving and public perception must be changed, Riccobono said. "This is the piece that we know will be the most difficult," said Riccobono, adding that the car must be near-perfected before the National Federation of the Blind can truly push the car to law-makers and the general public. He said this effort will take millions of dollars in development.
The 2009-10 student team already is planning major changes to the technology, including replacing the dirt buggy vehicle with a fully electric car commonly used by traffic officers in downtown city centers. The all-electric vehicle would reduce the vibration which can cause problems to the laser sensor, and it will provide clean electric power for the computing units and that is better for the environment.
Hong is a National Science Foundation CAREER Award recipient. He received his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1994, and his master's and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering from Purdue University in 1999 and 2002, respectively.
Adapted from materials provided by Virginia Tech.

Physics Of Bumpy Roads: What Makes Roads Ripple Like A Washboard?

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ScienceDaily (July 9, 2009) — Just about any road with a loose surface — sand or gravel or snow — develops ripples that make driving a very shaky experience. A team of physicists from Canada, France and the United Kingdom have recreated this "washboard" phenomenon in the lab with surprising results: ripples appear even when the springy suspension of the car and the rolling shape of the wheel are eliminated. The discovery may smooth the way to designing improved suspension systems that eliminate the bumpy ride.

"The hopping of the wheel over the ripples turns out to be mathematically similar to skipping a stone over water," says University of Toronto physicist, Stephen Morris, a member of the research team.
"To understand the washboard road effect, we tried to find the simplest instance of it, he explains. We built lab experiments in which we replaced the wheel with a suspension rolling over a road with a simple inclined plow blade, without any spring or suspension, dragging over a bed of dry sand. Ripples appear when the plow moves above a certain threshold speed."
"We analyzed this threshold speed theoretically and found a connection to the physics of stone skipping. A skipping stone needs to go above a specific speed in order to develop enough force to be thrown off the surface of the water. A washboarding plow is quite similar; the main difference is that the sandy surface "remembers" its shape on later passes of the blade, amplifying the effect."
Washboard road is familiar to drivers of back country roads the world over but also appears in some other surprising places in nature and technology. Just about any time a malleable surface is acted upon by a sideways force, you will get ripples. Washboard road is analogous to the little ripples that form on wind- or water-driven sand at the beach, and to the moguls which develop on ski hills. Motocross bikes and snowmobiles also make ripples. Washboard can also cause tiny bumps on steel railway tracks and even the read head in a hard disk can sometimes hop along the surface of the disk to make a washboard pattern.
In addition to Morris, the research collaboration includes lead author Anne-Florence Bitbol and Nicolas Taberlet of Ecole Normale Superieure in Lyon and Jim McElwaine of the University of Cambridge. Experiments were done in Cambridge and Lyon and results published in Physical Review E on June 26, 2009.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Toronto.

Best Possible Cut From Gemstones With New Machine

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ScienceDaily (June 26, 2009) — Emeralds, rubies and the likes are referred to as colored gemstones by experts. They sparkle and shine with varying intensity, depending on the cut. A new machine can achieve the best possible cut and extract up to 30 per cent more precious stone from the raw material.

“We were astounded when our customer, Markus Wild, approached us and we were not at all certain whether mathematics could offer a solution for the very complex problem of volume optimization of gemstones,” says Dr. Anton Winterfeld from the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM. Jointly with his colleague Dr. Peter Klein, he will receive one of the 2009 Joseph von Fraunhofer prizes for the development of GemOpt, a new industrial process for the volume-optimized utilization of colored gemstones.
In contrast to diamonds, there are innumerable combinations of types and proportions of cut, and types of facet patterns for colored gemstones. When chosen correctly, the interplay of these variables ensures the luster in the stone, its shine. Sometimes just a few facets are sufficient to make a gemstone sparkle, sometimes several hundred. The task was to set limits on what seemed to be infinite and to calculate the optimal volume. The mathematical approach, which finally resulted in a solution, originated from the area of general semi-infinite optimization.
This involved a new type of algorithm, which had until now only been theoretically defined. The team at the ITWM continued to develop this approach and implemented it for this specific problem. The result is an outstanding achievement, also in scientific terms. The second essential part of GemOpt is process control, which Dr. Peter Klein has worked out. For this he ascertained precisely how raw gemstones behave when processed and transferred his findings to the control unit of the machine.
The machine runs fully automatically. First of all, the raw stone is measured. On the basis of these data, the computer calculates optimal embedments, proportions and facet patterns for different basic geometries. The customer then opts for one of the proposed solutions and the machine begins cutting. The process control unit is finely balanced, so that the machine does not split the stones as it cuts them.
The system then moves seamlessly on to the polishing step. The 17 axes ensure that the stone can move along any desired path. The machine cuts the facets to ten micrometers exactly – the stones are therefore perfectly geometric. A further advantage is that the machine can produce identical stones – ideal for necklaces. Cutting with the machine can result in up to 30 per cent more weight. This puts a significantly higher price on the stone.
Adapted from materials provided by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.

Getting your V6 to act like a V8, while saving gas

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The history of engine improvements in the U.S. has tended primarily in one direction: raw horsepower. Engines have gotten bigger and more powerful over time—and that's certainly what automakers have used as a key selling point. But U.S. automaker Ford has decided to take turbocharging and direct fuel injection in another direction: fuel efficiency.Yesterday, Ford began production of what it's calling the EcoBoost engine: a new gasoline motor that employs turbocharging, direct fuel injection, variable timing in the valves that control fuel and exhaust flow to make a smaller, lighter six-cylinder engine perform like an eight-cylinder engine.* When these technologies are combined, "you can now significantly downsize the engine," says mechanical engineer Dan Kapp, Ford's director for power train research. "The fuel efficiency comes from a much smaller displacement engine providing equal or, in most cases, superior performance to the engine you're replacing."In essence, the new engine works by using the turbocharging to deliver more air to the fuel burning chamber, variable valve timing to fully flush exhaust gas after combustion in the chamber and then direct injection to overcome any knocking issues.

The company estimates the new engines—which will begin appearing in the Lincoln MKS and MKZ and the Ford Flex and Taurus this summer—can deliver at least 10 percent more miles-per-gallon and therefore reduced emissions of carbon dioxide. By 2013, the company plans to produce 1.3 million vehicles with EcoBoost engines in them, including 90 percent of all Ford vehicles sold in the U.S.Of course, such cars will be more expensive than current models, though Kapp declined to specify a price tag, saying only that fuel savings could pay for it "on the order of two years or less" at today's fuel prices. That’s compared to much longer payback times for diesels or hybrids (which Ford is also producing). Ultimately, the EcoBoost engine will also have to cope with alternative fuels, and Ford plans in the longer-term future to move more towards hybrids and electric vehicles. But for the next decade or so, Ford will be relying on these engines to meet some of the new fuel efficiency targets announced this week and reduce pollution. "What Ford is doing uniquely here is leveraging [EcoBoost] to deliver fuel efficiency through aggressive downsizing [of the engine] as opposed to the performance type approach," Kapp says. But it remains to be seen whether a car company that has spent years and millions of advertising dollars touting the horsepower that can be gained from such improvements (at the expense of fuel efficiency) can convince customers to change direction too.
Image 1: Lincoln MKZ engine. Copyright 2009—Ford Motor Company and Wieck Photo Database

Battery-powered Vehicles To Be Revolutionized By New Technology

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ScienceDaily (May 11, 2009) — Thousands of small electric scooters, bicycles and wheelchairs throughout Europe and Asia are powered by LifePO4 –- a material used in advanced lithium-ion batteries developed by Université de Montréal researchers.

"It's a revolutionary battery because it is made from non-toxic materials abundant in the Earth's crust. Plus, it's not expensive,'" says Michel Gauthier, an invited professor at the Université de Montréal Department of Chemistry and co-founder of Phostech Lithium, the company that makes the battery material. "This battery could eventually make the electric car very profitable."
The theory will soon be tested, since the 100 percent electric Microcar that's set to debut in Europe this year will be and powered by the LifePO4 battery.
Phostech Lithium's production plant in St. Bruno, Quebec, produces the black LifePO4 powder, which is shipped across the world in tightly sealed barrels.
"The theoretical principle behind the battery was patented by a University of Texas professor in 1995. However, without the work of local chemists such as Nathalie Ravet, we couldn't have developed it," says Phostech Lithium engineer Denis Geoffroy.
Süd-Chemie, a leading specialty chemistry company based in Germany, first invested in Phostech Lithium in 2005. Now, just four years later, Süd-Chemie's total Canadian investments have reached $13 million and it stands as the 100% owner of Phostech Lithium. Phostech's St. Bruno plant began to produce LiFePO4 in 2006 with 20 employees and a 400 metric-ton capacity. Since then, Phostech has nearly doubled its staff.
"It is a battery that is much more stable and much safer," says Dean MacNeil, a professor at the Université de Montréal's Department of Chemistry and new NSERC-Phostech Lithium Industrial Research Chair in Energy Storage and Conversion. "In addition, it recharges much faster than previous batteries."
The NSERC Research Chair, funded in part by Phostech Lithium, will help investigate ways to improve the LifePO4 battery.
For Gauthier, Phostech Lithium is the product of academia and the business world coming together. "Even if we knew that lithium, iron and phosphate were theoretically promising materials, we had to make them efficient. We had to find the right voltage and maintain the right charging and discharging properties. This is where the university played a major role."
Adapted from materials provided by University of Montreal.

Will America's Power Grid Be Able To Keep Pace With Future Demand?

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ScienceDaily (May 8, 2009) — America's power grid today resembles the country's canal system of the 19th Century. A marvel of engineering for its time, the canal system eventually could not keep pace with the growing demands of transcontinental transportation.

More than 150 years later, America's infrastructure is again changing in ways that its designers never anticipated. Distributed and intermittent electricity generation, such as wind power, is rapidly expanding, new smart meters are giving consumers more control over their energy usage, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles may someday radically increase the overall demand for electricity.
The evolution of America's energy needs has forced scientists and engineers to re-examine the operations, efficiency and security of the national power grid. The creation of a more secure and efficient national power grid requires significant innovations in the way we transmit electricity and monitor its use.
To better assess the challenges facing the power grid, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory hosted a workshop that brought together power system and modeling experts from federal agencies, national laboratories and academia.
"Modeling and simulation have proved to be effective tools for the power industry on many levels," said Mark Petri, Argonne's technology development director and one of the workshop's organizers. "We need to develop a comprehensive and integrated approach that will enable us to better understand the full implications of an evolving power grid as we plan for future demand and power sources."
The workshop centered on the need for new methods to simulate the national power grid by modeling the creation and flow of electric power as well as the grid's connection to other critical infrastructures, such as transportation, gas, water and communications. Through detailed simulations of how electric power is supplied and transferred around the country, researchers can bolster not only the grid's security but also its reliability, efficiency and resiliency.
"Implementing smart grid technologies on a large scale will not be trivial," Petri added. "The challenges go beyond technical and economic issues. The smart grid technologies could fundamentally change how national power grid systems operate and respond to disruptions."
Because of the great diversity of ways in which electricity is created, distributed and consumed, engineers face a challenge in creating reliable models of large power networks. They have to deal with the intermittent nature of some of the sources (like wind or solar), optimize how power is transmitted and balance economic, security and environmental priorities when finding solutions.
"In the short-term," Petri said, "these simulations could help devise ways to solve the problem of grid congestion, which currently costs consumers many hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Even small improvements in grid efficiency that better models and simulations would produce would make the investment cost-effective."
The workshop, which was sponsored by U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate, identified barriers that a national grid simulation capability would need to overcome to be effective. The findings of the workshop appear in the report "National Power Grid Simulation Capability: Needs and Issues." According to Petri, an operational plan for a national power grid simulation capability that engages industry to better understand their needs, capabilities and concerns would support a more secure and reliable electric power grid system for the future.
Adapted from materials provided by DOE/Argonne National Laboratory.