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
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
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, …
Titan Aerospace and Its Low-Flying Satellites
Ken Rentmeester, a regular reader of the blog, shared a news item from the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Spectrum. Calling Titan Aerospace’s Solara unmanned aircraft “atmospheric satellites,” the article gives a brief history of solar-powered craft, including the Boucher brothers’ Sunrise I, the first solar-powered airplane in 1974, Paul MacCready Jr.’s first piloted solar-powered flight in 1980, and the current world’s endurance record for unmanned, solar-powered flight by the QinetiQ Zephry in 2010. That airplane follows the look of the Boucher’s early effort, and Titan’s examples look a great deal like scaled-up versions of FAI F5-type models which rely on electric self-launching, rapid climbs and extreme flight capabilities to win contests. Despite great successes such as Zephyr’s, there so far has been no commercial market for this type of aircraft. Titan hopes to overcome shortcomings that prevented broader acceptance for its predecessors. These included limited photovoltaic capabilities, poor battery endurance, and fragile airframes, which were simply scaled-up …
Taking That Fork in the Solar Road
Kyoung-Shin Choi, a chemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and postdoctoral researcher Tae Woo Kim combined forces to come up with a two-pronged approach for producing stored energy from mere sunlight. Many researchers take the familiar path of using expensive materials to extract the greatest percentage of energy from solar cells, but others use low-cost, less efficient organic materials spread across a greater area to get the same results. Choi and Kim, though, decided that selecting two different low-cost materials could give greater results – something a more single-path approach would miss. As their U of W report states, “Generating electricity is not the only way to turn sunlight into energy we can use on demand. The sun can also drive reactions to create chemical fuels, such as hydrogen, that can in turn power cars, trucks and trains.” The expensive semiconductors and catalysts normally used to transform sunlight to fuels are “far too expensive” to make competitive sun fuel possible, …
Making Algae More Productive
The Blog has looked at several algae-to-fuel manufacturers in its postings, and the U. S. Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado adds its name to that growing list, but not in the usual commercial way. NREL claims to have developed a “unique bioreactor,” otherwise known as their Simulated Algal Growth Environment (SAGE) reactor, which controls light and temperature to test different strains of algae and simulates various locations in the United States where particular spores would be most prolific. NREL’s hope is to use SAGE to “produce algae that could someday compete with renewable diesel, cellulosic ethanol, and other petroleum alternatives as transportation fuel.” “It does so by revealing the intricate biochemical rearrangements that algae undergo when grown in different locations in the United States. The bioreactor has also demonstrated that algae grown in ideal climates and given the optimal amount of nutrients can produce not just lipids, but proteins and carbohydrates that can be …
Flexibly Keeping Batteries from Blowing their Cool
Meltdown – not a term one wants to hear when confronting an obstinate boss or while levitating in his or her new Tom Swift Electric Octo-copter. But it is a real specter confronting electric vehicle users, and one amplified to positive levels of terror in flight. Two groups of researchers have come up with novel ways of quelling that terror and getting rid of the normally flammable electrolyte that helps make lithium battery fires truly memorable. If researchers at Chapel Hill and Washington State University are successful in their research, that acid electrolyte can be replaced with something safer and as a bonus in both cases, batteries using these new substances will perform better and longer. Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, led by chemist Joseph DeSimone, Chancellor’s Eminent Professor of Chemistry in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences and the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at N.C. State University and of …
EAS VIII – A Day and a Half You’ll Never Forget
Who would pass up a chance to stay at a nice resort, attend lectures that challenge and inspire, and meet at poolside with speakers who bring some of the sharpest minds in the world to bear on some of the biggest problems we all face? Let’s face it. Global warming probably won’t be going away anytime soon, and aviation seems destined to play a bigger part in polluting our otherwise near-perfect atmosphere. Unless…we learn how to make our favorite activity (in the top five for most of us, anyway), into a more responsible way to travel and recreate. Since solving the problems which go with that responsibility will involve the best in aerodynamics, power systems and new, efficient technology, the CAFE Foundation has invited experts in these fields with demonstrated successes in meeting such challenges. To be held April 25 and 26, 2014 at the Flamingo Resort in Santa Rosa, California, the event will host speakers on everything from practical, …
Open Source Biofuel at Embry-Riddle
Open source development is a paradigm shift in the way of doing business for many new enterprises, doing away with corporate security and patents to promote the free exchange of information and ideas. One of the latest efforts, for creating jet biofuel, has senior students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona inviting “the participation of students and academics from universities around the world,” according to Green Air Online. Companies who could benefit from products such as renewable jet fuel are also invited to join. Much of the work will be based on adding value to the biodiesel transesterification reactor invented by University of Connecticut professor Dr. Richard Parnas. His small, efficient, and inexpensive process converts waste vegetable oil (WVO) and other biomass, including hemp, into biodiesel or jet fuel. Transesterification, grossly oversimplified, involves exchanging parts of a chemical called an ester with parts of an alcohol. These exchanges can produce new materials such as polyesters and biofuels. Dr. Parnas …
Silent 2 Electro Certified in Germany
Luka Znidarsic shared this happy message this morning. “We are very proud to inform you, that the SILENT 2 Electro, equipped with our FES system, has been awarded Type Certification by the German Aero Club (DAeC). “This is the very first electric powered Ultralight sailplane certified, by DAeC. This represents a significant milestone in gliding history, which marks a new age of technology!” We hope this breakthrough in Germany encourages our own Federal Aviation Administration to review their schedule for electric aircraft certification. Such rule making would allow sales of existing electric motorgliders and light aircraft and encourage others to step up development of these alternatives to fuel-burning lightplanes. The Type Certificate gives some clear ideas of the technology incorporated in the very elegant little bird. The 13.2 meter-span airplane has a 22 kilowatt (peak power) motor and electronic speed controller of the Znardnic’s own design for instance. This motor can run at 20 kilowatts continually and swing a one-meter propeller at 4,500 …