Coming Down the Pipeline

Recent alternative fuel research may change power supplies

by Frances Richards and Richard Mandel

Ford's solar power installation in Bridgend, South Wales reduces operating costs and CO₂ emissions

Research into alternative energy sources is coming out of the lab and into practical applications that are already beginning to have an impact on the future of the world and its power sources. The outcome of these developments may require new thinking regarding design for power systems, and the products they power.

Fuel cells offer clean power generation, high efficiency

Both the deregulated utility environment (hampered in part by caution and by aging coal and nuclear facilities) and the sheer size of the growing energy needs into the first quarter of the next century are driving the development of fuel cell power generation. Fuel cells convert the chemical energy contained within hydrocarbon-bearing fuels to DC electricity. The generation process is quiet, with no combustion reactions or moving parts, and the efficiency remains constant, unaffected by load, versus conventional generation, in which efficiency increases proportionate to load. The two major benefits that result are clean power generation with zero pollutant emissions, and high efficiencies through better usage of fossil fuels. While the presently installed capacity for generation in the U.S. is 750 million kilowatts, Energy Research Corporation (ERC), Danbury, CT, reports a projected need for 363 million kilowatts of new capacity between now and 2020 (according to the U.S. Department of Energy's recent report "Energy Information Administration Energy Outlook 1999"). Filling this capacity with new power represents a $17 billion dollar per year opportunity for the next 21 years, in the U.S. alone.

In the latest development of fuel cell energy, a 250-kilowatt direct fuel cell power plant has completed its first quarter of operation at the ERC headquarters facility, using the energy throughout its headquarters and routing the clean excess power to the local utility grid. ABB Automation Inc., New Berlin, WI, supplied a sophisticated 300 kW power conditioning system to convert the DC current into useable AC.

While 200-250 kW fuel cell power plants are just beginning to be used in special commercial applications such as hospitals and industrial buildings, manufacturers of the plants (and suppliers to these OEMs) are building and testing units, and gathering data that prove the dependability of the technology. ABB, for example, has provided a 300 kW converter to MC-Power's 1995 demo project in Berea, CA, and a 2.6 MVA unit to ERC's 1.8 MW prototype demonstration in Santa Clara, CA, which ran for 4,000 hours.

"The piece of the cost equation related to operation and maintenance is still uncharted territory for the industry," says Anders G. Troedson, director of ABB's Power Electronics Division. ERC's Danbury installation will be very helpful on this question, and the technology and maintenance costs can be charted over time. "The per-kilowatt-hour cost of power remains the driving industry question, with fuel cell generation costs diminishing steadily," he adds.

For more information:

Circle 730. -ABB Automation Inc.

New class of hydride
compounds may provide
inexhaustible energy source

Recent research has led to the announcement of a new field of hydrogen chemistry, which may provide a fundamental new energy source. The process, derived theoretically and confirmed empirically by BlackLight Power Inc., Cranbury, NJ, is not nuclear -- neither fission nor fusion, nor is it chemical in the usual sense, in that there is no molecular alteration. The BlackLight process, developed by Dr. Randell Mills, BlackLight's president, is a catalytically induced transformation of hydrogen energy states to levels below the "ground state" (n=1), as defined by generally accepted atomic theory. Recent experimental data indicate energy releases beyond one thousand times the combustion energy of hydrogen. Since the combustion energy is the energy required to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, the hydrogen fuel can be produced from water using a fraction of a percent of the released energy. Thus the BlackLight process gives rise to a prospective inexhaustible, economical, environmentally friendly energy source.

TOP, the "Taxi 0 Pollution" with an air mono-fuel/compressed air engine

Reactions produced by the energy state transitions can produce enough heat to convert water to steam for driving turbines. Extraordinary compounds are also formed as by-product. An early application of these compounds would be vastly improved high voltage batteries with at least 10,000 times the power of conventional batteries, charged and recharged with low-cost electricity. A new class of hydrogen polymers generated using the BlackLight process has been shown to be conductive and ferromagnetic. Plastics capable of conducting electricity would have far reaching implications in electronic packaging and magnetic storage media. Compounds capable of having the flexibility, durability and lightweight properties of plastic with the strength and conductivity of metal would change how vehicles and aircraft are manufactured, producing lighter weight, more cost effective and more energy efficient modes of transportation.

For more information:

Circle 731. -Blacklight Power Inc.

 Solar energy and compressed air engines power up auto industry

The application of harnessing sunlight to produce electricity may be moving slowly, but it hasn't been left in research labs or in small-scale applications. The first large-scale solar power initiative for the auto industry is supplying Ford Motor Company's Bridgend Engine Plant in South Wales with enough electricity to light half of the 1.5 million square-foot facility. Funded jointly by Ford, the European Union and the UK's Department of Trade & Industry, the $2.2 million rooftop installation is one of the largest solar power projects deployed at a manufacturing site in Europe.

The project is expected to eliminate 4,000 tons of CO₂ in the next 30 years. Twenty-six solar units, containing 1,540 photovoltaic cells apiece, provide 110,000 kw hours annually. Each unit measures approximately 29 by 15 feet.

Speaking of the automobile industry, the French company CQFD Air Solution and its team of 20 engineers has been working for the past six years on the design of clean engines to help combat auto-induced city pollution. Using completely new principles of operation that retain the current infrastructure for engine manufacture and use, CQFD's products are based on the following concept: since combustion is the pollution-causing stage in an engine, the engineers isolated this cycle in a separate chamber to control it better, and completely or partially replaced conventional fuel with compressed air.

A mono-fuel compressed air engine has been developed for a wide range of urban vehicles, as well as trams, boats, industrial tractors and forklift trucks. Completely clean, the various engine cycles occur in three separate chambers * an intake/compression chamber, a chamber for the injection of additional compressed air/expansion, and an expansion/exhaust chamber. Able to be refilled with compressed air at service stations, this engine, in order to greatly increase its range, also can be fitted with a system for power regeneration when decelerating or braking, a system for recovery of ambient energy, and an electrically driven high power compressor.

Three types of urban vehicles fitted with this engine have been developed including a zero pollution pickup truck, a zero pollution van and a zero pollution taxi. The TOP (Taxi 0 Pollution), which will go to market some time next year, can carry five people, will run for 10 hours or 124 miles in an urban setting, and can be refilled with air at service stations in two to three minutes.

At CQFD, three other engines that work with separate chambers also are being worked on. The first is a highly efficient thermal mono-fuel engine with three separate chambers that runs for more than 120 miles at 56 mph on a gallon of fuel. A second bi-fuel internal combustion engine uses compressed air for urban vehicles and thermal power for long distance vehicles. The third is a bi-fuel external combustion engine that is based on the mono-fuel compressed air engine, with the air in the reservoir compressed at 200 bars. This version uses conventional fuel to heat the compressed air before it is injected into the expansion chamber, which greatly increases engine performance in terms of range and power.

For more information:

Circle 732. -CQFD Air Solution

Cold fusion
-- 10th anniversary update

by Dr. Thomas E. Kiovsky

It's been 10 years since Drs. Pons and Fleishmann set the scientific world on end with their claim to producing fusion at room temperature with a simple tabletop apparatus. Not only did their news send physicists scrambling for their labs to run their own experiments (frequently without reproduction of the purported results), but they also met instant criticism for first announcing their results to the media via a press conference, rather than publishing their findings in scientific journals so that the scientific community could have a chance to confirm or disprove the experiment.

The procedure that Pons and Fleischmann reported consisted of sending a current through platinum and palladium electrodes into an electrolyte of lithium compounds dissolved in heavy water -- water in which normal hydrogen is replaced with a heavier hydrogen isotope, deuterium. The chemists believed fusion occurred as the result of deuterium nuclei fusing to form helium or tritium with release of energy in the form of heat. Pons and Fleischmann determined that the excess heat had a higher energy than the electrical current imposed to operate the cell.

Initial acceptance of the possibility of cold fusion quickly changed to skepticism. Many scientists who failed to repeat the experiment complained that there was insufficient detail in the paper published after the first announcement. The paper did not present raw data, but only derived values calculated in an obscure way. However, other scientists have claimed confirming evidence and some enthusiasts continue to produce encouraging if inconclusive results. Cold fusion proponents insist that the problems of repeatability and other shortcomings are a natural consequence of dealing with a developing technology and that the critics will be silenced when commercial products appear.

There are still a number of researchers internationally pursuing cold fusion as a kind of grail, with no clear end in sight. And there are other experiments under development, such as the new tokomak lab at UCLA, which may hold the key to other sources of clean energy for the world.