Hyundai has leased 15 ix35 FCEV’s to Copenhagen for use as municipal vehicles, taking delivery of the cars in the spring 0f 2013. Experts characterize the deal between Hyundai and Copenhagen as a “win-win” for both parties. Considered one of the greenest cities in the world, the Danish capital aggressively pursues its goal of becoming 100 percent carbon neutral by 2025, and implementation of FCEV technology plays a key role in achieving that goal. For their part, Hyundai gets a real-world proving ground for what they believe will ultimately surpass battery-electric technology with its inherent range limitations and lengthy “refueling” time.

Advantages and challenges of fuel cell vehicles

Fuel cells power a vehicle when hydrogen reacts with atmospheric oxygen through a “fuel cell stack,” producing electric power to drive a motor. The only waste product is water. FCEVs have a range similar to gasoline-powered cars (the ix35 has a range of about 365 miles) and can be refueled in minutes — much faster than the hours required for a battery-electric. That’s assuming there’s a hydrogen refueling station anywhere nearby. And therein is the rub. With a battery-electric car, the fuel source is ubiquitous, even if it doesn’t get you very far. Add to that the current estimated initial price tag of $88,000 for a FCEV and the principal challenges to fuel cell technology becomes apparent.

But Hyundai and other FCEV developers are confident those challenges will be met — and soon: “We aim to reduce prices of fuel-cell vehicles to match battery cars by 2020-2025,” says Hyundai’s director in charge of fuel cell research Lim Tae-won. With plans from companies like Germany’s Linde to half the cost of building hydrogen refueling stations and carmakers like Hyundai aiming to cut that $88,000 price tag in half as it rolls out up to 100,000 FCEV’s by 2020, Tae-won sees FCEV’s as ultimately a better choice than battery-powered cars.

Main image credit: Revolve Eco-Rally/Flickr

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Known as thermoelectric generators, the material generates an electric charge from temperature variations across its two ends. So, for instance, the heat from the hot exhaust gases from your car could be used to generate electricity before escaping from the end of your tailpipe, making your car more efficient. But waste heat is everywhere and scientists envision many potential applications for thermoelectric materials.

As with much of today’s technology, from Tang to heat-absorbing sportswear, thermoelectric generators have a head start in space-based applications. The Mars Curiosity is powered by heat harvested from the radioactive isotope plutonium-238 dioxide. For as long as the isotope produces radioactive heat, Curiosity will have electricity. Of course, that’s fine for a robot explorer on Mars, but what of our more Earthly needs?

The first hurdle for the general application of thermodynamic material is efficiency. Until now, generators have typically retained only 10 percent of the energy from heat. The new design reported in Nature uses an optimized form of lead telluride that effectively doubles the efficiency of the thermoelectric generator, making them easier to mass-produce as well. The problem with lead telluride is its toxicity, making it unsuitable for commercial applications.

Nonetheless, this week’s revelation in thermodynamic generator technology is a big step forward. One day your tailpipe, if you still have one, could be a source of energy.

Of course, entropy and the second law of thermodynamics dictates there will always be some waste heat. There’s no free lunch, but we can certainly make the cost much more efficient.

Main photo credit: Arthur Caranta/Flickr

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The $10 million HPC will advance the lab’s work in materials research and serve to develop a better understanding of biological and chemical processes. The ability to use high performance computing for modeling and simulation will allow research into fully integrated energy systems that otherwise would be too costly, if not impossible, to study directly. The petascale capability of the HPC means the system can perform 1 million billion calculation every second, making it the world’s largest computing capacity dedicated solely to renewable energy and efficiency research.

NREL’s new HPC will not only be the world’s biggest, baddest HPC data center for energy research, it will be the most energy-efficient one as well. Data centers typically consume vast amounts of energy, producing waste heat in the process. According to 2009 data from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program, the average data center runs at a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.91. The NREL HPC is designed for an annualized PUE of 1.06 or better. Efficiency is further enhanced by the facility’s compact design, which results in shorter electrical cable and plumbing lines, as well as a new technology that uses warm water to cool the servers.

“This unique capability sets NREL apart in our ability to continue groundbreaking research and analysis,” said NREL Director Dan Arvizu. “In partnership with HP and Intel, NREL is acquiring one of the most energy efficient, high performance computer systems in the world for our research.”

Much of the waste heat that is produced will be used to heat the offices of the Energy Systems Integration Facility and other buildings on the NREL campus. Overall, the HPC data center is expected to provide a significant reduction in both energy consumption and operating cost.

“The industry is more and more cognizant of the amount of energy being used in our nation’s data centers,” said NREL Computational Science Center Director Steve Hammond. “NREL’s new HPC data center in the ESIF will set the standard for sustainable and energy efficient computing. The data center will have a world-leading PUE and reuse nearly all waste heat generated. Most data centers do only one or the other, not both.”

The new HPC system will be deployed in two phases based on HP ProLiant SL230s and SL250s Gen8 servers with Intel eight-ccore Xeon E5-2670 processors. The first phase will begin in November 2012 and reach full petascale capacity by summer 2013.

 Main image credit: SmithGroup JJR/National Renewable Energy Laboratory

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Over-hunting for its fur combined with habitat destruction from human development drove the river otter to near extinction by the 1930s. By the late ’70s the river otter was added to the “Red List of Threatened Mammals of Japan” as critically endangered. The last official sighting of a Japanese river otter was in 1979 along the banks of the Shinjo River in Susaki, Kochi Prefecture.

An adult river otter grew to about 110 centimeters (43 inches) in length, including a tail of up to 50 centimeters (20 inches), sporting a thick, lush coat of fur and short webbed feet. The typical diet for a Japanese river otter consisted mainly of fish, crab and shrimp, but they also dined on eels, sweet potatoes, watermelons and beetles.

Hope after extinction?

Official survey records from the Ministry of the Environment indicate the river otter disappeared from the northern island of Hokkaido in the 1950s and on the main island of Honshu in the 1960s. In the early 1990s research teams assembled in Kochi Prefecture, located in the southwestern part of the island of Shikoku, to see if they could find evidence of surviving otters. In March 1992 the researchers found hair and excrement that was determined to have come from an otter — perhaps the last official evidence of a surviving Japanese river otter.

But Yoshihiko Machida, professor emeritus at Kochi University, isn’t quite ready to sound the death knell for the Japanese river otter, citing reports of confirmed otter droppings found as late as 1999:

“I think it is possible that they still exist, and I want to continue my investigations,” he said in response to the declaration of the otter’s extinction.

Hope springs eternal.

Main image credit: SmileStudio/Shutterstock.com

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In its study, NREL defines what is technically achievable considering topographic limitations, land-use and environmental constraints for each state. Using state-level maps and tables incorporating available land area, installed capacity in gigawatts, and electric generation in gigawatt-hours for each technology, the study lays out in detail the broad “sense of the scale regarding the potential for renewables and which technologies are worth examining,” says report co-author Anthony Lopez.

“Decision-makers using the study will get a sense of scale regarding the potential for renewables, and which technologies are worth examining,” said Lopez. “Energy modelers also will find the study valuable.”

The report “normalizes” its assessment of the six clean energy technologies, unifying methods and assumptions in the comparison to give a clear picture of the technical potential for renewable energy across the country.

Some states and regions stand out for particular technologies. For instance, Hawaii has the most potential for offshore wind; the Lone Star State is prime for Texas-sized utility-scale PV solar (with California on its boot heels); the Rocky Mountain states roil with geothermal energy; the Great North of Alaska and the northwest offer the most potential for hydropower. In all, “it looks like every state has something to work with,” says Lopez.

According to the study the U.S. has 481,800 terawatt-hours of potential generating capacity from all renewable energy sources combine – 212,224 gigawatts. Those are big numbers, and more than enough to meet our current needs.

Of course, it isn’t as easy as simply mapping potential. The report  does not take into account economics and market forces, and the question of energy transmission remains- getting the power where it is needed. But the NREL study makes clear the potential of clean energy to transform the nation into a leader of the new energy economy – if we are up to the challenge.

Main image credit: fotopedia.com
Map credit: National Renewable Energy Laboratory

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March 23, 1989, was a day that held great promise for two scientists working at the University of Utah, and for the world. That was the day Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann called a press conference to display the world-changing breakthrough of cold nuclear fusion, a bountiful and “free” source of energy.

Working in secret for more than five years using $100,000 of their own money, Pons and Fleischmann conducted their research in a basement laboratory at the University of Utah. At the March 1989 press conference, Pons and Fleischmann displayed “tabletop cold fusion,” a simple experiment involving an insulated glass jar with “heavy water” (deuterium oxide) inside. Immersed in the heavy water were two electrodes: one a coil of platinum wire, the other a rod of palladium. When a small voltage was applied to the electrodes, the deuterium oxide broke into its constituent parts of oxygen and deuterium, a form of hydrogen. Some of that hydrogen was absorbed into the palladium rod. Pons and Fleischmann believed that, after some time, this reaction would pack deuterium atoms so tightly in the palladium that fusion would occur.

Much excitement ensued after that press conference; scientists sought to replicate the ground-breaking results of the Pons-Fleischmann experiment. At first, many thought they had, but within a year or two the predominant result of most studies showed no signs of nuclear fusion.

Unfortunately for the pair of scientists, the excitement of releasing what they had hoped to be momentous breakthrough became an example of the dangers of “science by press release.” As the late scientist and astronomer Carl Sagan famously said, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Pons and Fleischmann’s rush to reveal a breakthrough cast the pair from the scientific establishment, and cold fusion research slowed to a crawl. Even after being shunned by the scientific community, the duo continued to research and defend their theory.

Fleischmann “was an extraordinary genius” says his friend Michael Melich, a research professor of physics. The work of discovering cold fusion continues, but only on the periphery of mainstream science — much to the regret of Martin Fleischmann.

Main image credit: Paul Barker/Deseret News

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This prodigious use of energy for IT is the sort of thing that inspires innovators to look for solutions and new pathways to sustainability. Danbury, Connecticut-based IT firm Intertech, in partnership with global construction company Skanska,  recently debuted a “paradigm-shifting” technology called eOPTI-TRAX that promises to exponentially reduce the resources required for cooling data centers.

The principal metric for analyzing data center efficiency is PUE, or Power Utilization Effectiveness. Put simply, PUE is the ratio of power delivered to a facility to the actual power arriving at the servers; the lower the ratio the more efficient the data center.  A 1-to-1 ratio means that every watt of energy delivered to the center is used at the server; eOPTI-TRAX boasts a “mechanical” PUE of 1.012, greatly improving the 1.4 to 1.6 PUE of most other solutions.

Using eOPTI-TRAX can cut the typical 90 watt power consumption of a single server to a mere 0.3 watts. Often innovation comes from adapting a proven technology to a new application. Instead of cooling server racks with evaporative cooling systems that waste “trillions of gallons of water each year” or simply blasting air conditioned air through server rack aisles – both very inefficient – the eOPTI-TRAX system pumps coolant through pipes routed directly into the server racks themselves. Think of how your refrigerator works.

A data center of 1500 servers utilizing eOPI-TRAX draws 500 watts with little water loss. That same center cooled conventionally consumes 90,000 watts, losing 4,300 gallons of water per day.

In a demonstration at Intertech’s “analyst day” participants enjoyed a cool 77 degrees in the “hot aisle” of a data center simulating 130 kilowatt load:

“If someone told you that, on an 88-degree day, you could cool 130 kilowatts of load with 7 kilowatts of cooling energy, most people would say it’s impossible,” said Intertech CEO Earl Keisling. “But we’re doing it.”

The first commercial installation of eOPI-TRAX goes online August 15 for Telus in Quebec, Canada.

Main image credit: bandarji, courtesy Flickr

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The goal, say scientists, is to build huge “microbial factories” that will convert electrical energy from clean sources like wind and solar into methane for fueling transportation and making other chemical compounds for industrial processes. Methane is 20 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, but the methane produced in these microbial factories will be captured and stored, with little of it leaking into the atmosphere, says Alfred Spormann, professor of chemical, civil and environmental engineering at Stanford.

“The whole microbial process is carbon neutral,” he explained. “All of the carbon dioxide released during combustion is derived from the atmosphere, and all of the electrical energy comes from renewables or nuclear power, which are also carbon dioxide-free.”

Instead of fracking and drilling for natural gas, Spormann and his colleagues envision a transportation fleet fueled with truly “green” natural gas made from colonies of methanogens that will metabolize carbon dioxide into methane using emissions-free sources of electricity. From there the gas can be stockpiled and distributed using existing infrastructure. Burning the microbial gas recycles the CO2 back into the atmosphere from whence it came.

“Microbial methane is much more ecofriendly than ethanol and other biofuels,” Spormann said. “Corn ethanol, for example, requires acres of cropland, as well as fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation and fermentation. Methanogens are much more efficient, because they metabolize methane in just a few quick steps.”

Renewable energy storage

Another promising avenue of this research into methanogens addresses one of the more daunting challenges in scaling up renewable energy: storage. Using these microbes to “metabolize electrical energy into chemical energy,” says Spromann, could be a “game changer” if a way is found to “engineer methanogens to produce methane at scale.”

Better living through microbes

Though the concept is simple, significant challenges remain before the technology becomes commercially viable.  ”That’s because the underlying science of how these organisms convert electrons into chemical energy is poorly understood,” says Bruce Logan of Penn State. Nonetheless, researchers like Spormann and Logan work at the cutting-edge of using microbes as a source of clean energy. In an earlier post Revmodo covered Logan’s research in creating energy from wastewater.

Main image credit: Shutterstock.com
Video credit: Stanford University

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The feedstock for these projects will come from trees that have succumbed to beetle infestation, the removal of which will help forest managers with wildfire prevention and improve the overall health of forests. Green energy for heating and electricity is then produced from the wood material in bioenergy plants. The grant money is used by recipients to help pay the expense of permitting and cost analysis for projects and to establish access to engineering services required for final design of the bioenergy systems and facilities.

“The Forest Service works in more than 7,000 communities across the country to support projects that provide green jobs and boost local economies,” said USDA Deputy Under Secretary Butch Blazer. “These grants continue our legacy of improving access to affordable energy for rural schools, community centers, universities and small businesses.”

Nation’s forests provide jobs, economic benefits

The grant program is one example of the economic benefits the nation’s public forests provide local communities, says Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

“Our nation’s forests are a precious natural resource providing multiple economic opportunities that are creating jobs and contributing billions of dollars in economic activity across the country,” said Vilsack. “Nearly 166 million visitors to Forest Service lands helped sustain over 200,000 jobs last year, while restoration and fuel thinning efforts contributed $21 million to local economies, producing 121 million board feet of lumber and 267,000 tons of woody biomass for bio-energy production. Today’s announcement of an additional $4 million for wood-to-energy projects and the opening of an innovative lab will ensure that our forests continue to provide new bio-based manufacturing opportunities that create good, sustainable jobs in rural communities.”

 Woody Biomass Utilization grant recipients

• California Department of Forestry, Sacramento, Calif.
  $124,875
• City of Montpelier, Montpelier, Vt.
  $248,556
• City of Nulato, Nulato, Alaska
  $40,420
• Clearwater Soil and Water Conservation District, Orofino, Idaho  
  $110,000
• Coquille Economic Development Corporation, North Bend, Ore. 
  $145,000
• County of Sullivan New Hampshire, Newport, N.H.
  $250,000
• Evergreen Clean Energy, Gypsum, Colo.
  $250,000
• F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber Company, Columbia Falls, Mont.
  $250,000
• Greenway Renewable Power L.L.C., LaGrange, Ga.
  $250,000
• Longwood University, Farmville, Va.
  $250,000
• Mineral Community Hospital, Superior, Mont.  
  $190,000
• Nippon Paper Industries USA Co. Ltd., Port Angeles, Wash.  
  $250,000
• Oregon Military Department, Salem, Ore.
  $250,000
• Plumas Rural Services, Quincy, Calif.
  $70,125
• Port Angeles Hardwood L.L.C., Port Angeles, Wash.
  $250,000
• Quinault Indian Nation, Taholah, Wash.
  $205,000
• Riley County Schools, Riley, Kan.
  $90,000
• Sanpete Valley Clean Energy L.L.C., Salem, Utah
  $250,000
• Southern Oregon University, Ashland, Ore.
  $250,000
• Yosemite/Sequoia Resource Conservation and Development Council, North Fork, Calif. 
  $134,225

Main image credit: Geograph.org

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Chart from National Snow & Ice Data Center showing arctic sea ice extent

The 2012 sea ice area fell from its maximum to below 5 million square kilometers in only 110 days, the quickest decline in the 33-year record. For nine of those years, the area never made it below 5 million square kilometers. In the years the ice dipped below 5 million, it took on average 159 days from maximum. The previous record was only last year, when the decline took 135 days.

Of course, sea ice area and extent typically decline during the short Arctic summer, from as much as 15 million square kilometers (area) in late spring to 3 million at the start of autumn. The current Arctic sea ice area is now 2 million square kilometers below the 1979-2008 mean, a full month earlier than the previous earliest record in 2007.

Unprecedented Greenland ice sheet melt

Satellite images over Greenland this month indicate surface ice melted over a larger area of the continent than at any time in the 30-year satellite record. According to the data, 97 percent of the ice sheet is estimated to have thawed at some point by the middle of July. It is still too early to determine how much of an affect the current surface thaw will have on overall ice loss and sea level rise.

“The Greenland ice sheet is a vast area with a varied history of change,” said Tom Wagner, NASA’s cryosphere program manager in Washington. “This event, combined with other natural but uncommon phenomena, such as the large calving event last week on Petermann Glacier, are part of a complex story. Satellite observations are helping us understand how events like these may relate to one another as well as to the broader climate system.”

On July 11, the recorded temperature on Greenland’s Summit Camp was 2.2 degrees Celsius (almost 36 degrees Fahrenheit). Summit Camp is located at an elevation of 3200 meters (10,498 ft.) the highest point of the Greenland ice sheet.

Main image credit: public domain images; Arctic sea ice decline chart credit: National Snow & Ice Data Center

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