Dr. Shin to Keynote Electric Aircraft Symposium

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, GFC, Sustainable Aviation 1 Comment

Dr. Jaiwon Shin, NASA Associate Administrator for Aeronautics, will close the Friday, April 25 session of the eighth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium with his keynote address, “The NASA Aeronautics Vision and Strategy – How It Relates to Electric Aircraft.”  As Associate Administrator, Dr. Shin “manages the agency’s aeronautics research portfolio and guides its strategic direction,” according to his official NASA biography.  He co-chairs the National Science & Technology Council’s Aeronautics Science & Technology Subcommittee, a group of federal departments and agencies that fund aeronautics-related research. Its first presidential policy for aeronautics research and development (R&D) was ratified by Executive Order 13419 in December 2006, and now guides such research until 2020.  Dr. Shin oversees and sets policies for an array of explorations into aerodynamics, propulsion, air traffic control – including NextGen, aviation safety, and the integration of such technologies into broader economic and strategic concerns at the national and international levels. With myriad Aeronautics Research Mission Directorates (ARMD) and at …

Three Candidates for the Coming “Magic Rush” of Batteries

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation 1 Comment

Robert Cringely, writing in EVWorld.com foresees a paradigm-shifting event that will happen sooner rather than later.  “A black swan is what we call an unexpected technical innovation that disrupts existing markets. Intrinsic to the whole black swan concept is that you can’t predict them: they come when they come.  Only today I think I’ll predict a black swan, thank you, and explain exactly how the automobile business is about to be disrupted. I think we’re about two years away from a total disruption of the automobile business by electric cars.” He quotes the respected auto journalist Robert Cumberford.  “’I see the acceptance of electric cars happening in a sudden rush. Maybe not this year, maybe not for a couple of years yet. But it will happen in a magic rush, just as the generalized adoption of computers happened in only a few years’”. Here, the blog looks at three potential “black swan” battery technologies.  Although the story of the black …

Reaching for the Sun

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SolarStratos, a two-seat, solar-powered airplane, is being readied for record flights in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland, just a 25-minute drive from the Solar Impulse hangars in Payerne. Its makers claim that it is the first commercial solar two-seater aircraft in history, and will be the first solar-powered airplane with a pilot to enter the stratosphere.  These heady claims are described on the project’s web site as a “crazy bet,” but it’s too early to make such judgments.  Calin Gologan of PC-Aero GmbH designed the base craft, an expansion of his earlier ultralight electric aircraft, Elektra Two.  The “Record” version of this craft, despite SolarStratos’ extended 20-meter (65 feet, 7 inch) wingspan, weighs a feathery 140 kilograms (308 pounds) empty, and only 350 kilograms (770 pounds) loaded,  including 80 kilograms (176 pounds) of batteries and 20 square meters (215.28 square feet) of thin-film solar cells set into the wing and horizontal tail surfaces. With a span loading of only 11.7 pounds per foot, …

Caging Hydrogen in Self-assembling Origami Structures

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Let’s say that you’re really good at folding pieces of paper into miniature birds such as cranes, or life-size elephants, something origami artist Sipho Mabona did recently, starting with a 50-foot by 50-foot piece of paper (he had help from up to 40 others).   The paper elephant, including a metal subframe to support it, weighs over 500 pounds. How about using origami to trap hydrogen in a novel approach to storing energy for fuel cells?  Only, instead of paper, you might use sheets of graphene cleverly folded into cages no more than a few nanometers across – the opposite of the elephant in the art gallery.  Researchers at the University of Maryland’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and Maryland NanoCenter, have done just that, but so far just as a simulation of the molecular dynamics involved.  They have demonstrated that such cages can be opened and closed “in response to an electrical charge using a technique they call hydrogenation-assisted graphene origami …

Solar Cells a Few Atoms Thick

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Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology have come up with a way to create one-atom thick, flexible, semi-transparent solar cells.  Instead of the graphene often touted as a means toward such an end, however, the scientists have turned to atom-thick layers of tungsten diselenide for their wonder material. Experiments show that ultrathin layers of tungsten and selenium may have properties that would make them applicable even to electric aircraft use – if they can capture a significant amount of energy – or at least as much as thin-film silicon cells can. Graphene has been a popular favorite since its Russian “discoverers” were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2010.  One of the strongest materials, graphene can manage stresses and strains better than most and has “great opto-electronic properties.”  Its atomic-scale thinness allows it to transform optical signals into electronic pulses extremely quickly. Despite these outstanding characteristics, “The electronic states are not very practical for creating photovoltaics,” according to …

Turning Over a New Leaf at JCAP

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The blog has covered Professor Daniel Nocera’s “artificial leaf,” a means by which a flat panel in water and exposed to sunlight would generate clean water and hydrogen.  But that promising development has been set aside by the startup company Catalytix that attempted commercial development of the leaf for now.  Instead, the company is now pursuing the design of a practical low-cost flow battery for grid storage. Researchers at Berkeley’s Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP), though, may have found a different approach to the artificial leaf that will overcome many shortcomings in its predecessors.  Gary Moore, a chemist and principal investigator with Berkeley Lab’s Physical Biosciences Division, found that in his artificial leaf, “nearly 90-percent of the electrons generated by a hybrid material designed to store solar energy in hydrogen are being stored in the target hydrogen molecules.” In fact, JCAP’s main concern is capturing sunlight and turning it to some form of fuel, exactly what a leaf does …

Flow Batteries at Stanford and in Lichtenstein

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Dr. Yi Cui is a Stanford University associate professor of materials science and engineering and a member of the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, a joint institute with SLAC, the National Acceleration Laboratory.  He has spoken at three Electric Aircraft Symposiums, and has worked for at least the last decade on various technologies and tactics to bring battery science to a high level. His latest effort involves “a low-cost, long-life battery that could enable solar and wind energy to become major suppliers to the electrical grid,” according to a press release from SLAC.  Dr. Cui says, “We believe our new battery may be the best yet designed to regulate the natural fluctuations of these alternative energies.” Of concern to drivers of electric vehicles and future pilots, the electrical grid may have trouble keeping up with recharging needs of large numbers of cars, buses and even Boeing SUGAR (Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research) Liners.  Wind and solar have the …

The Really Incredible H. U. L. C.

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One of the things that attracted your editor to the idea of electric flight was the introduction of powerful little permanent magnet motors in model airplanes.  With people like Jean-Luc Soullier and Brian Carpenter having used or exploring the use of model aircraft motors on their small, but people-carrying aircraft, we know that flight with these little marvels is possible. But nothing prepares one to take in the flight of an attractive (human) model carried aloft by two H. U. L. C. (Heavy Ultra Lift Crane) model helicopters. According to The Blaze, “’This is the first time in the world that a human person is being lifted by a remote-controlled aircraft,’ said Tobias Wagner, Heligraphix and H.U.L.C. pilot.” “The team used upgraded Gaui X7 ‘megatron’ helicopters outfitted with some seriously heavy-duty components, to give each of the two model helicopters 10 kW of constant power, Wagner said.” The team had performed an earlier, single helicopter lift with their eyes on …

Dr. Cui’s Pomegranate-inspired Battery Bears Fruit

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Dr. Yi Cui seems to get inspiration from food.  A few years ago, his research team came up with a “yolk-shell structure” that helped contain the high amount of lithium that silicon anodes were able to absorb.  That battery design promised much, and an embellishment of that design seems to hold even greater promise. His newest effort, working at Stanford University with the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, features an electrode “designed like a pomegranate – with silicon nanoparticles clustered like seed in a tough carbon rind.”  This approach, according to its inventors, overcomes several remaining obstacles to the use of silicon in a new generation of lithium-ion batteries. Yi said the battery’s efficiency and longevity are promising.   “Experiments showed our pomegranate-inspired anode operates at 97 percent capacity even after 1,000 cycles of charging and discharging, which puts it well within the desired range for commercial operation.” Cui’s team has been working on preventing anode breakup for the …

Solar Cells Collect More Light, Display Art

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Friend and frequent contributor Colin Rush sent this Economist item about Semprius, a concentrating solar cell maker about to go into production with their highly efficient technology. It’s big news that a production solar panel is able to convert 42.5 percent of sunlight falling on it into energy, when the world’s record for any solar cell was set last September by the German Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems with an experimental multi-junction solar cell that’s 44.7 percent efficient.  The 42.5 percent for Semprius cells drops to about 35 percent when they are surrounded by the normal mounting flanges and connecting lines – still well above most production panels. These may achieve 50 percent with suitable refinement. Using breakthroughs devised by John Rogers of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Semprius is able to mass produce these four cells stacked on top of one another and deploy them in the field. The Economist explains that, “Solar cells are made of semiconductors, …