Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The US Government is concerned that huge taxpayer underwritten loan guarantees for renewable energy projects aren’t producing the results they want, so they have decided to step up the effort to give away money, by offering free cash and work space to projects which are too “high risk” to attract investment from venture capitalists, or qualify for other green funding schemes.
For America’s next generation of clean energy innovators, getting started can be the hardest part.
That’s why the Department of Energy is testing a new model for clean energy research and development (R&D) through a program called Cyclotron Road. The goal is to support scientific R&D that is still too risky for private‐sector investment, and too applied for academia.
Participants receive the time, space and capital to pursue their research and the support to find viable pathways to the market. The projects have enormous potential to create economic and social impacts. The program also aims to grow something bigger:
“We’re trying to build a community of the best innovators from across the country who are all working on the hardest problems in energy and climate.” – Sebastien Lounis, Co-founder, Cyclotron Road
Cyclotron Road is sponsored by our Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and Berkeley Lab, one of our 17 National Laboratories. Watch the video to see how we’re supporting these entrepreneurs today and how their technologies might change the world tomorrow.
Read more: http://www.energy.gov/articles/video-getting-started-road-clean-energy
The government website links to the Cyclotron Road website, which provides more information about some of the projects being funded.
For example, take Mosaic Materials:
Critical need: 10% of global energy consumption is used for separations. The majority of chemical separations are carried out via energy-intensive distillations. New materials are needed to switch to low-energy adsorption-based processes, enabling up to an 80% reduction in energy use.
Mosaic Materials wants to create high tech materials which selectively absorb important industrial gasses, to facilitate separation of gasses from byproducts with less work than existing processes.
The only kick is to a large extent, the “competing technology” has already been created.
Competing technology: Zeolite, carbon, and other MOF-based sorbents and membranes are under development to address the same separation challenges.
Zeolites are already extensively used in home oxygen concentrators, for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and other chronic conditions which require ready access to oxygen. The zeolite material selectively absorbs oxygen from normal air, allowing it to be concentrated and pumped to an oxygen mask.
Zeolites are also used in industry for water purification, and for separating other gasses, such as sulphur dioxide.
If there are potential uses for such materials which have not yet been realised, surely it is up to the companies which stand to profit from new innovations to fund the research, rather than the taxpayer picking up the tab.
Another Cyclotron Road project, Spark Thermionics, plans to improve combined heat and power electricity production, to replace solid state systems with a form of vacuum valve technology.
Competing technology: Current practice for directly converting heat to electricity relies on thermoelectric devices, which use thermal gradients within solid-state materials to drive electric current. However, thermoelectrics are limited by parasitic heat losses intrinsic to the solid-state technology itself. The fundamental advantage of thermionic conversion lies in the vacuum gap architecture, a nearly perfect thermal insulator that allows enormous temperature differences between the hot and cool electrodes.
Sounds like a great innovation. But there is already a high efficiency heat engine, developed in 1816, which is used extensively in combined heat and power systems, and which somehow didn’t make it to the list of “competing technology”.
Stirling engines have a high efficiency compared to steam engines, being able to reach 50% efficiency. They are also capable of quiet operation and can use almost any heat source. The heat energy source is generated external to the Stirling engine rather than by internal combustion as with the Otto cycle or Diesel cycle engines. Because the Stirling engine is compatible with alternative and renewable energy sources it could become increasingly significant as the price of conventional fuels rises, and also in light of concerns such as depletion of oil supplies and climate change. This type of engine is currently generating interest as the core component of micro combined heat and power (CHP) units, in which it is more efficient and safer than a comparable steam engine. However, it has a low power-to-weight ratio rendering it more suitable for use in static installations where space and weight are not at a premium.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine
Perhaps I am being unfair, and missing the point of some of these projects. But rather than spending yet more of our grandchildren’s income on long shots, surely it would make a lot more sense, to let America’s world leading venture capital system do what it does best – allocate R&D resources efficiently, to projects which produce the maximum possible return on investment.
The video which introduces Cyclotron Road:
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Ok, why not put it Oak Ridge where real estate, construction, and labor are cheaper? Oh wait! No parochial interest here whatever.
Adsorption techniques are already being used for air separation. The most common technique is PSA (Pressure Swing Adsorption). The problem with these absorption systems is that although they do a reasonably good job for many applications, there are some where only cryogenic distillation can provide the required purity. One very important such application is the fabrication of semiconductor devices. The purity demanded for acceptable semiconductor yield is in the parts per billion range for O2 in H2 or Ar. This is far beyond the capability of any known adsorption technique.
For the record, the mention of Stirling Engines always brings up the idea that heat has to be turned into rotary motion to create electricity.
The thermoelectric generators of course have nothing to do with Stirlings. They are solid state and are pathetically inefficient. 1-2%.
Turning heat into electricity efficiently, compared with a TEG, is the TAG or thermoacoustic generator. This uses a resonant wave traveling back and forth through two heat exchangers for warming and cooling, essentially a long pipe filled with pressurised helium.
These are actually Stirling engines with only one moving part. That part is the magnet that is shaken by the >200 dB sound wave. The design of these things is so well understood that there is a computer program freely available from the Los Alamos website. It is a Stirling engine desiging tool that has boon available for more than 20 years. While experiments continue in Holland and Australia into refining certain approaches to TAGs and thermoacoustic refrigeration (TAR) (which is essentially identical without the magnet) the fundamentals are well understood.
TAG and TAR technologies are far better, cheaper and easier than solid state devices. While that may seem to some to be an ‘opportunity’, it is strange not to use the available technologies rather than chasing the ones that have proven so unyieldingly difficult.
When the TAG is mass produced it will turn every fire in every stove or furnace into a generator far in excess of the solar PV and wind products, plus be available on demand. It will be transformative. Why not support things that already work instead of rolling out things that obviously don’t (yet)?
Support for basic research is great, but commercialisation brings the paybacks which fund further work.
How many startups are backed by or even started by former political aides with no technical knowledge. With weak due diligence at the core of the mandate, the manipulators are encouraged to apply.
Waste, Violations in $25 Mil Program to Fight Climate Change in Guatemala
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2016/05/waste-violations-in-25-mil-program-to-fight-climate-change-in-guatemala/
This one is officially known as Climate Nature and Communities in Guatemala (CNCG) and it’s a tiny slice of the president’s broad and costly initiative to conquer global warming in developing nations. The goal is to conserve Guatemala’s wealth of natural resources and support the country’s efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Since the U.S. launched CNCG in 2013, nearly half of the money allocated has been disbursed to a New York-based nonprofit called Rainforest Alliance that oversees a consortium of environmental, academic and business institutions. This group gets a lot of money from Uncle Sam for its various biodiversity conservation causes and, not surprisingly, there’s lots of waste and mismanagement.
In the Guatemala program the issues are documented in a federal audit that blasts Rainforest Alliance for violating government funding rules by, among other things, failing to contribute its share of costs under this contract. Under the arrangement, the U.S. gives the nonprofit $25 million and it agrees to contribute $3.75 as “cost sharing.” The group’s portion must come from in-kind contributions or other sources but can’t come from the government. The audit reveals that Rainforest Alliance claimed it met its cost sharing obligations in the Guatemala program with cash it received from the government under a different deal for firefighting. “Including the firefighting funds as part of cost sharing has resulted in overstating the actual cost share amount by $26,708,” the audit says. “Lack of monitoring by the implementer and the mission can lead to reporting inaccurate information and prevent them from complying with the agreement.”
This is just a snippet of the pervasive fraud and corruption in the vast majority of the administration’s green initiatives. Besides failed domestic programs like the ones mentioned earlier, the U.S. has spent billions to fight global warming in poor countries, mainly through a program known as Global Climate Change Initiative. The cash keeps flowing into its coffers because the administration claims that climate change is one of the century’s greatest challenges that can compound pre-existing social stresses, including poverty, hunger, conflict, migration and the spread of disease. The U.S. also contributes to climate change causes via a multi-billion-dollar World Bank initiative to combat its effects in poor and African and Asian countries that stand to suffer most. The U.S. is the World Bank’s largest contributor so Americans are getting stuck with a huge chunk of that tab.
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HERE WE GO AGAIN….
https://www.clintonfoundation.org/main/news-and-media/press-releases-and-statements/president-clinton-frank-giustra-and-marco-a-slim-visit-projects-to-foster-growth-in-latin-america.html
One constant with govt, no matter what the problem, the solution is always more govt.
And when the first solution doesn’t work, the response is always, more govt.
When a government announces it is going to give away $$2.5 Billion( Obama ) you will get
a line up of rent seekers to build anything . ….for a while . They suck in other investors , pump the stock and then surprise surprise crash and burn . The biggest pigs paid themselves royally and tax payers
got ripped off by both the government and the rent seekers on corporate welfare . The failed ” renewable”
companies don’t even have the courtesy to wait till Obama is out of office . So little respect . But at least that is deserved .