We
are reminding every inventor, scientist, engineer, and physicist who
has done significant work in the area of future energy to
submit your abstract, bio, and title for a proposed
slide presentation to iri@starpower.net for
the upcoming Conference on Future Energy (COFE7) to
be held in July, 2015 in Albuquerque NM (seewww.futurenergy.org for
more details).
This
month, we are starting the summary with the Story #5 since
this is a report from the IPCC on the latest
assessment of climate change, which is the main reason IRI continues
to fight for breakthroughs in future energy. I still remember the
guidance that was put forth in one of the very first IPCC reports
that is more relevant today than ever before: With thermal
forcing, the earth's climate will tend to exceed its normal limits at
both ends as the climate oscillates and strives to find a new
equilibrium point. When we fully understand this one point,
the extreme heat the world experienced in the Summer of 2014, which
was the hottest on record, and the extreme cold
which the US has experienced this past November,
which has broken records in some places for being the coldest, are
literally predictable parts of the oscillation trend accompanying
thermal instability in the climate as we continue to add
more and more CO2 to the atmosphere. Though the report from the IPCC
includes the threat of "irreversibility," our institute
aligns itself with the scientists who like to "think big"
and are mostly optimistic even in the face of danger. What the IPCC
hangs its hat on is the CO2 levels which are now inching past 400 ppm
from 300 ppm last century and, if it continues to exponentially
increase, will start to enter the realm where CO2 becomes a "cognitive
impairment" worldwide! No lie, this refers to a recent study
reported in Science News (I strongly advocate the Audible version)
where classrooms have been shown to reach the high hundreds of ppm of
CO2 and students can no longer think clearly. What can we do? One
very powerful solution has been discovered by Hydro Infra
Technologies in Sweden and as our Story #1 reports,
can neutralize any type of CO2, NO2, SO2 exhaust pollutant with a
"Hydo Nano Gas" that is an atomic mixture of hydrogen and
oxygen. Besides a separate effort for absorbing the existing
atmospheric CO2 to bring it back down to a safe 350 ppm level, the
removal of the major contributors of greenhouse gas accumulation will
be a big step in the right direction.
When the government starts to use the phrase
"free energy" in print, which got me in big
trouble in 1999, I start to take notice. Well, our Story
#2 actually uses this phrase in the title of its amazing solar house
experiment that succeeded in providing all of the energy needed by a
family of four for a year from a mix of solar, great
insulation, and a backyard shallow geothermal coil assembly.
A related Story #4 is the surprise Voltserver company
startup which lets homeowners install solar in less than one hour
with light, glue-on panels that withstand winds up to 110 MPH.
Lastly, our Story #3 is a fascinating new development
that shows one more source of electricity can now be utilized.
Triboelectricity is the sparks we get in the winter from carpets but
that also, when harnessed in the form of triboelectric generators can
be stored and create voltage in the range of 130 volts for small
electronics. Perhaps this will be another electricity generator for
our patented electric
antioxidant clothing.
This
is a phenomenal breakthrough which is understated in the article
below. The HNG process resembles Brown's Gas with a stoichiometric
ratio of hydrogen and oxygen that amazingly burns as it combines with
NOx, CO, CO2, and SOx, thus denaturing the pollutants, as seen in the
image below and verified by an independent testing lab, thus
"neutralizing" carbon, nitrogen and sulfur exhausts. Hope
they market it to the US soon. - TV
Hydro
Infra Technologies (HIT), a Swedish clean tech company based in
Stockholm, has developed an innovative patent pending approach
for neutralizing carbon fuel emissions by generating a
novel gas called Hydro Nano Gas (HNG).
In
spite of all the advancement happening in the energy sector, global
economies are still dependent on fossil fuels as the interlinked
chain of costs to completely replace the burning of fossil fuels with
more clean and sustainable options is beyond the financial resources
of even the richest nations.
This
in turn effects the climate change scenario which has been
continuously increasing as more pollution and green house gases are
created from burning fossil fuels on a daily basis.
This dilemma requires a new approach with safe, cost effective and
smart solutions; the solution in sight? Making any fossil fuel
climate neutral - and this is exactly what HIT's Hydro Nano Gas
proposes to do.
Water contains 2 basic elements, Hydrogen and Oxygen. These 2 basic
elements can be split, divided and utilized. Splitting water (H2O) is
a known science. But the energy costs to perform splitting outweigh
the energy created from hydrogen when the Hydrogen is split from the
water molecule H2O. This is where mainstream science usually closes
the book on the subject.
HIT took a different approach by postulating that it was not only
possible but indefinitely sustainable to split water in an energy
efficient way to extract a high yield of Hydrogen at very low
cost.
The
process of creating HNG involves pulsing an range of low energy
frequencies in a very specific sequence into water. The pulsing
treatment effectively manipulates the molecules to line up in a
certain structure which are then put through a splitting process. The
result is HNG.
Being exotic as it is, HNG displays some very different properties
from normal hydrogen. For instance: HNG instantly neutralizes carbon
fuel pollution emissions; HNG can be pressurized up to 2 bars; HNG
combusts at a rate of 9000 meters per second while normal Hydrogen
combusts at a rate 600 meters per second; oxygen values actually
increase when HNG is inserted into a diesel flame; and finally, HNG
acts like a vortex on fossil fuel emissions causing the flame to be
pulled into the centre thus concentrating the heat and combustion properties.
Injecting HNG into a combustion chamber produces several effects that
increase the burn efficiency of the fuels. HNG gasification
effectively burns unburned residue/cluster while completing the burn
process quicker. The long term impact of using HNG in the burning of
fossil fuels can provide the balanced solution for the on going
economic-climate change debate.
The new technology is also found to be effective in the treatment of
polluted water; when HNG Nano bubbles are injected into polluted
water, a microbe chain reaction is initiated that rapidly triggers
and boosts the waters' own organic repairing process. While further
testing and validation are required, the discovery creates new
potential in providing solutions to critical areas of global pollution.
HIT is also developing a Smoke Eliminator for all sorts of plants and
facilities. The process reduces the need for smoke analysis as it
results in a clean wet scrubber technology where CO2 becomes a clean
by-product ready to be reused.
Further, a miniaturized version of the standard HNG reactor will help
HIT achieve its goal of gassing 9,000 cubic meters of smoke volume
per second. Using Nano technology, the reactor will see the beginning
of a new technology phase for each HNG application, reports HIT.
The HIT innovation story begins in the 1980's when a small team of
dedicated technicians, researchers and engineers came together to
innovate real world solutions based on the theoretical research
conducted by Nobel prize winner Professor Yuan Tse Lee. The goal was
clear - to 'crack' the Hydrogen code.
In late 2012, after years of on / off research and experimentation,
they finally cracked the code and HNG was born.
HIT
was formed to spread their discoveries to the world as Information
Technology via joint venture partners.
HIT
has also selected SGS - the worlds leading testing/validation and
certification company - to be its' permanent testing-validation
protocol partner, providing certification that enables HIT to expand
into global markets.
Date and
Place: Thursday, October 24, 2014, Commerce Research Library,
Washington DC
Abtstract: The house
(or NZERTF: Net-Zero Energy Residential Test Facility) was
constructed on NIST's Gaithersburg, Maryland campus. During the past
year, this lab-in-disguise was used to demonstrate that a home
similar in size, aesthetics, and amenities to those found in the
Washington D.C. area can generate as much energy as it consumes on an
annual basis while meeting the needs of a virtual family of four.
It's a
grand experiment in "net zero" living-and it's working. But
we can't move in just yet.
The
560-acre campus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST) is a state-of-the-art federal research facility in Gaithersburg,
Maryland, staffed by an elite group of scientists. They work out of
several dozen industrial-scale buildings. But the campus also has one
suburban home-a year old, 2,700 square feet, and sited smack-dab in
the center of the grounds, as if a tornado sucked it up from a nearby
subdivision and dropped it down intact, just inside NIST's main
security gate.
Main
Features of the Net-Zero Home
1. Under
the roof, thick layers of insulation boast an extreme R-value of 75.
2. Solar
panels are situated in an optimal direction, and with an ideal pitch,
to collect sunlight.
3. Beneath
the siding, a black rubber membrane seals the house from outside cold
and heat.
4. Insanely
efficient windows, with an ultralow U-value rating of .2, keep air
leakage to a minimum.
5. The
yard covers a subterranean network of geothermal coils to collect
energy.
6. All
inside lights utilize LEDs or CFLs to keep energy usage low.
It's not a
pleasant place to live. Showers abruptly turn themselves on and off,
and constant clicking noises come from everywhere. It also has a
terribly unwelcoming name: the Net Zero Energy Residential Test
Facility. But that's fine. Nobody is expected to move in-until one
day, perhaps, when friendlier versions are built in our own
neighborhoods and we all live in them. For now, it's an experiment:
How close can we come to building affordable houses, on a mass scale,
that produce as much energy as residents tend to consume during a
given year?
This goal
reaches beyond the increasingly common motif of "greener"
living. It's aimed at the far harder ideal of true sustainability,
which would deliver an enormous environmental payoff. Residences use
about 21% of all the energy consumed in the U.S. They also produce
16% of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions. Change the house, the thinking
goes, and you can help change the future.
Early
results are promising. Researchers marked the first complete year of
the experiment in June, announcing that the home produced slightly
more energy than real-life residents would have consumed-and that was
after a particularly brutal winter.
But creating
a "net zero" home was the easy part. Now comes the big
challenge: building the house at a price people can actually afford.
This house cost $652,000, or roughly $162,000 more than a
conventional, energy-efficient home. That's a high price tag for clean
living.
How do
scientists know that the house creates enough energy for real people,
when no real people live inside? They fill the house with ghosts.
How do
scientists know that the house creates enough energy for real
people, when no real people live inside? They fill the house with
ghosts. "We call them the Nisters. They're a family of four
that's been living here for a year," says Hunter Fanney, an
engineer who has managed the house since it was conceived in 2011.
The Nisters' name comes from the National Institute of
Standar...well, you get the idea.
Save for
the fact that they're the product of a software program, the Nisters act like
typical Americans. They comprise a mom, a dad, and two children, ages
8 and 14. "These virtual people have a minute-by-minute script
of how they live their lives," Fanney explains. They get up
at 6 a.m., roll out of bed to make coffee, then check the
fridge. The kids sleep late and play Xbox. For the most part, the adults
take eight-minute showers-which is to say, showers switch on
automatically and are measured by a large bucket in the stall.
A variety
of combined sensors and emitters stationed around the house,
meanwhile, simulate the energy consumption of the
coffeemaker and flat-screen TV and give off micro-bursts of heat just
as these machines do in the real world. Other sensor emitters mimic
the energy given off by four humans, who in combination put out the
equivalent of about four 60-watt incandescent bulbs. This produces
700 measurements every minute. It's all reported back to the garage,
where computer servers direct the activity.
But the
main focus is on the performance of the house rather than the people
inside. Hot water for showers comes mainly from solar water heaters
on the roof. Electricity for the lights, fridge, stove, and boiler
largely come from solar photovoltaic panels, also on the roof. This
is all available to consumers today, though installation takes some
effort.
The house's
biggest achievement is how it limits what's known as infiltration.
NIST engineers and the house's architects, the Boston firm Building
Science Corporation, went to extreme lengths to keep frigid air from
seeping in during the winter and air-conditioned air from seeping out
during the summer. "Basically, you would like the house to be
like a thermos jug," says Fanning. The house was built with
thicker-than-usual walls, lined with copious amounts of
high-performance insulation and state-of-the-art windows. Above all,
it was wrapped, pretty much from top to bottom, in a black rubber membrane
before putting on the siding and roofing.
The
Nisters' house, therefore, doesn't "breathe" like most
homes do-and without proper ventilation, a home's occupant is in
trouble. The builders, Therrien Waddell, had to create special
circulation systems for fresh air and utilize materials with minimal
levels of what are known as volatile organic compounds, or VOCs,
which get emitted from everything from floor varnish to cabinets.
After all, who wants to live in a superefficient house if it makes
you feel ill?
When NIST
announced its results in June, proving that a smartly built
house can be self-sustaining, environmentalists were thrilled. But
that $162,000 premium remains a difficult issue. Some of the cost is
offset by energy-bill savings (annual bill: $0), says Joshua Kneifel,
an economist at NIST. "But if you're just looking at a purely
economic standpoint-you own this home until you pass away-I wouldn't
say that it's cost effective."
There are
ways to put a more positive spin on this. The price of
energy-efficient materials and skilled labor could likely drop if a
market in net-zero houses scales up. Government incentives could also
help offset costs and lure buyers. California has already set a goal
to have all new houses be net zero by 2020. And Kneifel believes that
the higher resale value of a house that effectively costs nothing to
run could also make the investment attractive.
Still,
scientists working here acknowledge the cost problem and have
adjusted their expectations. "We've learned that you don't have
to get to net zero," Fanney says, "but if you show you can
significantly reduce energy use, you've gone a long
way."
As an
experiment, the Nisters' prototype home is certainly a success. It's
a way to answer, definitively, a lot of energy-efficiency questions.
What if you bulked up the insulation on new residential buildings?
What if you built homes with a slightly different kind of interior
framing that allowed for a tighter envelope? Are solar water heaters
better than gas heaters? This coming year, researchers will measure
the performance of various geothermal energy systems-essentially
coils of fluid-filled pipes, buried in the backyard, that harness the heat energy of the earth. Perhaps
that's more efficient (and cheaper) than solar.
But these
aren't just lessons for the future. NIST research already suggests
that the most logical next step for the average person building a new
home is clear: bulk up on insulation, which gives the most return for
every dollar spent, and forgo the hefty expense of solar panels. It
won't be net zero, but it'll get you into net zero's neighborhood.
When you get there, be sure to wave to the Nisters.
A
house in order: Sensor emitters such as
these are everywhere in the net-zero home-even in its fridge.
The Price of Going "Net Zero"
The
government's test house cost $162,000 more to build than a home of
the same size that conforms to the International Energy Conservation
Code (IECC), the current gold standard of energy efficiency. These
are some of the reasons why.
Building
systems
Net
Zero: $112,000
IECC: $51,500
Difference: $60,500
Reason: Intricate plumbing, electric wiring, duplicate HVAC
system, in-floor radiant heating, and pipe loops that create
geothermal energy.
Concrete
Pouring
Net
Zero: $10,800
IECC: $10,400
Difference: $400
Reason: Additional insulation under foundation and cost of
building in the
radiant heating system.
Exterior
Finishes
Net
Zero: $83,900
IECC: $74,100
Difference: $9,800
Reason: Cost of attaching complex siding and energy-efficient
windows.
Insulation
Net
Zero: $37,800
IECC: $6,500
Difference: $31,300
Reason: High-quality insulation, sometimes double the thickness
of normal houses, requires meticulous application of tape to seal.
Interior
Finishes
Net
Zero: $173,450
IECC: $166,950
Difference: $6,500
Reason: Basement drywall and installation.
Net-Zero
Premiums
Net
Zero: $30,750
IECC: $10,550
Difference: $20,200
Reason: Contractor will be slowed down because the home requires
many unfamiliar, nonstandard processes and applications.
Rough
Framing
Net
Zero: $84,300
IECC: $64,700
Difference: $19,600
Reason: IMore steps in construction and installing insulation
Winter approaches in the Northern
Hemisphere, the air is drier, and triboelectrics, electricity caused
by friction, is a phenomenon you'll probably encounter daily.
Triboelectric generators (TENGs)
consist essentially of two different materials that are rubbed
together. Materials that like to give off electrons, such as glass or
nylon, will donate them to materials that like to absorb
them-materials with the highest electronegativity, such as silicon or
teflon. However, rubbing these materials together causes wear.
So Zhong Lin Wang, a physicist at Georgia Tech and colleagues
developed materials that generate electricity by pressing them
together. The contact surfaces of the materials are corrugated,
and by pressing the materials together, the corrugated structures
enmesh, causing the friction that leads to electricity generation.
"By applying pressure,
those two materials are contacting, and they generate charge by
contact electrification. This contact mode of triboelectric
nanogenerator has less mechanical degradation with excellent
efficiency," says Keon Jae Lee, from the department of
materials science and engineering, at KAIST in Korea. Georgia Tech
announced the invention of the first such device, called a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), in
2012. Lee says that the efficiency of TENGs has been increasing
exponentially.
Lee, Yeon Sik Jung and other
researchers from KAIST and now report that by reducing the size of
the surface nanostructures, they can improve the efficiency of the TENGs even
further. In a TENG consisting of a Teflon layer and a silicate layer,
they produced nanodots, nanogrates, and nanomeshes on the silica
layer using block copolymer self-assembly technology.
(Block copolymers are chain-like molecules with a repeating pattern.
On a surface, they can fold-up together in such a way that a
nanometer-scale pattern emerges.)
The resulting TENGs can produce up
to 130 volts. They report a TENG simply pressed with a finger powering
45 blue 3-V LEDs connected in series.
"This is the first report that
demonstrates the self-assembly phenomenon of block copolymer in
triboelectric nanogenerators for the modulation of
nanostructure," says Lee. "They are very beneficial
because they allow the increase of the contact area and the
frictional electrification."
Ordinarily,
installing and connecting a new array of rooftop solar panels takes
days, weeks, or even months because the hardware is complex and
various permits are needed. Yesterday, on a frigid day in
Charlestown, Massachusetts, researchers completed the process in
about an hour.
Homeowners
can install the system themselves, by gluing it to a rooftop. The
permitting is handled by a combination of electronic sensors and
software that communicates with local jurisdictions and utilities.
Installation
and permit-related expenses currently account for more than half of
the overall cost of a new solar power setup. "By simplifying the
system so that it's like installing an appliance, we envision that
the soft cost will be virtually eliminated," says Christian Hoepfner, director of the
Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems, which developed the
system. Doing so would lower the cost of a typical residential solar
installation from $22,000 to as little as $7,500, he says.
"It's
impressive to see how quickly the installation went up," Fouad Dagher, manager of new products and
services at the utility National Grid, said after the demonstration.
"It makes it easier for consumers and utilities."
Solar
power can be dangerous if not installed properly. Heavy components
may be blown off a roof if not secured properly, and solar panels can
produce potentially deadly voltages if not properly grounded, and
every wire protected.
The
Fraunhofer system uses light, flexible solar panels encased in
durable plastics. The panels can be securely attached to a shingled
roof via an adhesive backing that anchors the panels even in winds up
to 110 miles per hour.
The
solar panels use electrical equipment, developed by the startup VoltServer, that breaks DC power into
discrete, addressed packets, something like the data packets sent
over the Internet. If one of these packets fails to reach its
destination-for example, if someone were to touch a damaged wire, the
current is instantly cut off, preventing injury-a feat demonstrated
by a brave EnerVolt employee at the Charlestown demonstration when he
purposely touched an exposed wire on the new solar installation.
The
whole system is connected to the grid via a plug similar those used
for fast-charging electric cars, which can handle high voltages
safely.
Once
plugged in, the system performs several tests to ensure it's safe.
Hoepfner says the software probably does the job more consistently
than inspectors would. Test information would be sent to the local
utility for approval over the Web.
While
all the hardware exists now, and will go on sale soon, the automated
permitting still needs work. Fraunhofer had preapproved the system
with the authorities, who'd had inspected the process ahead of time.
Commercialization will require developing new standards for solar
power systems.
Homes
will also need preinstalled outlets designed for solar panels,
similar to the high voltage dryer connections in new homes. For now,
installing the outlet will require a trained electrician, though it
can be done in just a couple of minutes via a device that can be
quickly attached to a meter.
Meanwhile,
testing is ongoing to make sure the adhesive will keep the solar
panels anchored in very hot weather. Because the panels are flush
with the roof, rather than mounted on racks that allow air to flow
under them, they get hotter than conventional panels, which also
lowers the amount of power they can produce.
The
Earth is locked on an "irreversible" course of climatic
disruption from the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,
and the impacts will only worsen unless nations agree to dramatic
cuts in pollution, an international panel of climate scientists
warned Sunday.
The
planet faces a future of extreme weather, rising sea levels and
melting polar ice from soaring levels of carbon dioxide and other
gases, the U.N. panel said. Only an unprecedented global effort to
slash emissions within a relatively short time period will prevent
temperatures from crossing a threshold that scientists say could
trigger far more dangerous disruptions, the panel warned.
"Continued
emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and
long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system,
increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible
impacts," concluded the report by the United Nations' Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which draws on contributions
from thousands of scientists from around the world.
The
report said some impacts of climate change will "continue for
centuries," even if all emissions from fossil-fuel burning were
to stop. The question facing governments is whether they can act to
slow warming to a pace at which humans and natural ecosystems can
adapt, or risk "abrupt and irreversible changes" as the
atmosphere and oceans absorb ever-greater amounts of thermal energy
within a blanket of heat-trapping gases, according to scientists who
contributed to the report.
"The
window of opportunity for acting in a cost-effective way - or in an
effective way - is closing fast," said Michael Oppenheimer, a
Princeton University geosciences professor and contributing author to
the report.
The
report is the distillation of a five-year effort to assess the latest
evidence on climate change and its consequences, from direct
atmospheric measurements of carbon dioxide to thousands of
peer-reviewed scientific studies. The final document to emerge from
the latest of five assessments since 1990, it is intended to provide
a scientific grounding for world leaders who will attempt to
negotiate an international climate treaty in Paris late next year.
While
the IPCC is barred from endorsing policy, the report lays out
possible scenarios and warns that the choices will grow increasingly
dire if carbon emissions continue on their current record-breaking
trajectory.
"It's
not too late, but the longer you wait, the more expensive it
gets," Gary Yohe, a Wesleyan University professor who
also participated in the drafting of the report, said in an
interview. Damage to the Earth's ecosystems is "irreversible to
the extent to which we have committed ourselves, but we will commit
ourselves to higher and higher and higher damages and impacts"
if the world's leaders fail to act, Yohe said.
A
succession of IPCC reports since the 1990s have drawn an ever-clearer
connection between human activity and climate change. But Sunday's
"synthesis report" makes the case more emphatically than
before, asserting that the warming trend seen on land and in the
oceans since the 1950s is "unequivocal" and that it is
"extremely likely" - a term that the IPCC uses to denote a
95 percent or greater probability - that humans are the main
cause.
"Human
influence on the climate system is clear," the panel states in a
40-page summary intended for policymakers.
In
late 2013, when the first report of this round of the IPCC's work
came out, skeptics trained their attention on the contention that in
recent years the rate of global warming has seemingly
"paused" or slowed down. But the latest document is fairly
dismissive of that idea, acknowledging that, while the rate of
warming in the past 15 years has indeed been somewhat smaller than
the rate since 1951, "trends based on short records are very
sensitive to the beginning and end dates and do not in general
reflect long-term climate trends."
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