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We start this month’s Future Energy eNews with an
announcement of an award given to “The 11th Green”
movie www.ChristopherMunch.com , which
the New Yorker has listed as One
of the Best of 2020. Our IRI Members will recall that we
screened this movie at COFE11 in Albuquerque NM in 2019, before
its official launch. Now it is a classic, based on actual real
life events, that traces the US government’s secret programs from
Eisenhower to Obama, with two look-alikes for each of those
Presidents. Even a believable alien is portrayed in the film,
which sticks with you after it is over. I was also just
interviewed by the movie’s writer-director Chris Munch for a
follow-up documentary he is working on at this time. Watch
the trailer and rent the movie today!
Our
Story #1 has an energy discovery from MIT that is hard to qualify
and quantify, since it is in a new category of energy generation
that borders on free energy. As Professor Dubbs states, “this way
of generating energy is completely new” to
draw electrons out of carbon nanotubes by just flowing a solvent
over them. It is electrochemistry but with no wires! Half of the
nanotubes are coated with a polymer and half is not, so that the
electrons will flow from one section to the other freely. With
arbitrary nanotube particles made to be 250 microns, a 0.7 volt
potential is generated in EACH particle, which can be assebled
into arrays to compound the voltage and current. Applications are
just beginning to emerge but micro and nanorobots now seem
possible with their own built in power generation. The
conservation of energy transfer or equivalently, scavenging
energy from the environment is explained in their published
article in Nature Communications, which is
open access. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23038-7 The
title is rather humorous for its inventiveness skirting the free
energy issue: “…an electrically asymmetric carbon Janus
particle”.
Our
Stories #2 and #5 are also quite a hopeful sign for future energy
emerging. Our friend and colleague Ryan
Wood, who
also was a presenter at COFE7 in 2015, has an announcement in
Story #2 about his Electric Fusion Systems’ successful
demonstration with a novel fusion technology that also works in a
small, portable setting. Similar to focus fusion that IRI has
presented in the past at COFE2, this type of nuclear fusion does
not require high pressure as in the tokamak reactors. A related
story is that General Fusion in the UK also has some progress to
report just this week and expects to commercialize their operation
in three years, which would be amazing Story #5 also shows
that the Chinese are further along, even with the old-fashioned
tokamak, that keeps making incremental improvements. Now
achieving 101 seconds of sustained nuclear fusion, the Chinese
tokamak circulating a hot million-degree plasma with a
super-cooled powerful magnetic field in a donut-shaped
containment, is not to be ignored.
Story #3
offers a new glimpse of how solar energy is still a great bonanza
near the earth without an atmosphere to block the rays.
Typically, space solar power generates about ten times the power
per square meter as on the earth, so it is no surprize that a
kilometer high concrete tower built at the north or south pole of
the moon with perpetual sunshiine would be a great way to supply
electricity for the upcoming moon colony. The poles also seem to
contain water ice in shallow craters so the benefit increases for
such a location.
Story #4
is an important and wide-reaching discovery about ammonia. Chemical
& Engineering News have announced that ammonia could replace
lithium with its 9 times energy density, that is also 1.8 times
the energy density of H2 by itself, since it also contains
hydrogen (NH3) as a byproduct which they call “a perfect
commodity for a future hydrogen economy.” The company AmmPower
(CSE:AMMP; OTC:AMMPF) offers the best hope for industrial ammonia
producing units, which can be called “Green Ammonia” that will
also help the fertilizer industry to become carbon-free. Ammpower
is also a rapidly growing company that is expected to reach an
$80 billion evaluation in 2025. We are expecting to see the first
ammonia-fueled supertankers by 2024 and the first vessel by
Viking Energy propelled by ammonia fuel cells. All newly built
ships may start using ammonia power by 2044 according to this
article, all of which is pretty exciting.
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1) MIT has Found a New Way to Generate Electricity
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A new
material made from carbon nanotubes can generate electricity by
scavenging energy from its environment. MIT engineers have
discovered a new way of generating electricity using tiny carbon
particles that can create a current simply by interacting with
liquid surrounding them. The liquid, an organic solvent, draws
electrons out of the particles, generating a current that could
be used to drive chemical reactions or to power micro- or
nanoscale robots, the researchers say.
“This
mechanism is new, and this way of generating energy is completely
new,” says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of
Chemical Engineering at MIT. “This technology is intriguing
because all you have to do is flow a solvent through a bed of
these particles. This allows you to do electrochemistry, but with
no wires.”
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2) New Physics Insights Enable Table-Top Hot Fusion
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BROOMFIELD, Colo., May 25,
2021 /PRNewswire/
-- Electric Fusion Systems (EFS) announced today that
it has successfully demonstrated fusion reactions in a laboratory
setting. EFS is pioneering revolutionary energy technology,
using novel fusion physics that does not emit dangerous
radiation.
The inventors and
co-founders, Ken E. Kopp and Ryan S. Wood, have
found an easier and safer way to generate fusion chain reactions.
Their fusion reactor has been physically reduced in size to a
small, portable, safe device, suitable for a wide range of
applications, unlike traditional approaches to fusion
technology. "We have built a series of experiments
that show fusion reactions on a laboratory table top. This is
confirmed via neutron detection, gamma and optical
spectroscopy that substantiate fusion reactions,"
said Kopp.
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3) Kilometer High Concrete Towers For Solar Power on
the Moon
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Kilometre-high
towers made of lunar concrete and covered in solar panels could
potentially be used to power a crewed base on the moon.
The moon’s
poles have long been eyed for human habitation. Both poles have
regions known as “peaks of eternal light”, where sunlight shines
almost constantly, while the south pole has an abundance of
permanently shadowed craters that contain water ice. These two
features could theoretically provide solar power and liquid water
for a crewed base, but the surface region
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4) Ammonia Holds 9 Times More Energy than Lithium
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The
worldwide shift toward cleaner, greener energy sources once again
appears to be picking up speed.
One of
those alternative energy sources – which appears to have the
potential to provide a tremendous amount of industrial power – may
be something you had never considered: ammonia.
The experts
at Chemical & Engineering News have called ammonia a fuel of the
future that may be “a perfect commodity for a future hydrogen
economy.” And one company could emerge as a leader in the
rapidly-growing Green Ammonia space…
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