Landing Zones for All Those eVTOLs (and eCSTOLs)

Dean Sigler Announcements, Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Siting  and Building Considerations at the 2019 SAS As we see an inrush of capital to finance new electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) machines and now electric Conventional Short Take Off and Landing (eCSTOL) machines, we are on the cusp of seeing newly envisioned landing zones for these machines.  With the departure of Uber from the aerial scene, we probably won’t see the grandiose platforms the firm promoted. Your editor poked fun at these visions in his talk at the 2019 Sustainable Aviation Symposium at UC Berkeley, doubting that urban centers would welcome hundreds of arrivals and departures overhead day and night. Luckily, presenters who had worked on real-world re-imaginings of Uber’s grander vision helped talk your editor down.  Byron Thurber, an ARUP architect, discussed “A Practical and Sustainable Transit Hub for Urban Air Mobility –the Uber Elevate Skyport.”  Following LEEDS, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design criteria, the sustainable building would retrofit an existing parking garage at …

Sustainable Skies in San Francisco – the Sequel

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Hybrid Aircraft, SAS, Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Getting personal once more, this entry highlights my adventures at the 2018 Sustainable Aviation Symposium as reported in the first person. The Sustainable Aviation Symposium for 2018 began its Saturday session with J. Philip Barnes, the Senior Technical Fellow at Pelican Aero Group, who expanded an idea he has been developing for several years – that of flying on energy generated and stored by a self-launching sailplane’s motion through the air.  With both a single-seat Coulomb Keeper and larger Faraday First model to analyze, Phil turns to seminal works by Glauert and MacCready to create a motor/generator coupled with a propulsion fan that doubles as a propeller and windmill.  Clever use of switching in the control circuitry should enable high-efficiency prolonged flight exceeding what would be possible with batteries alone.  Phil’s website is well worth checking out, providing historical and engineering insights at every opportunity. Boris Popov, founder of BRS (Ballistic Recovery Systems) has saved 380 lives (and counting) with …

Don’t Smoke ‘Em Even if You’ve Got ‘Em

Dean Sigler Biofuels, Diesel Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Biofuels would be wonderful if they didn’t starve people while feeding trucks, cars and airplanes.  Living with such a constraint, though, might prove to be productive, profitable, and environmentally sound. The Guardian describes efforts in America’s tobacco country to grow a crop that will be less destructive of human lungs and hearts if it is consumed in jet engines rather than in cigarettes. “’We’re experimenting with varieties that were discarded 50 years ago by traditional tobacco growers because the flavors were poor or the plants didn’t have enough nicotine,’ explains Tyton [BioEnergy Systems] co-founder Peter Majeranowski.” In a case that oddly enough is GMO free, “Researchers are pioneering selective breeding techniques and genetic engineering to increase tobacco’s sugar and seed oil content to create a promising source of renewable fuel. The low-nicotine varieties require little maintenance, are inexpensive to grow and thrive where other crops would fail.” Fuel tobacco is a higher-value crop than hay, for instance, and “looser” farming …

Dipping and Coating for Better Batteries

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation 1 Comment

Could dipping electrodes in a secret sauce improve supercapacitor and battery endurance and power?  Could coating cell internals be the flavor of the month?  These recipes for better batteries may improve things at a better than normal rate, if California researchers have anything to say about it. Working with his compatriot Dr. Jaephil Cho in South Korean, Dr. Cui of Stanford University has been a leader in developing improved battery technology, even developing a painted paper battery.  In an appearance at the 2009 Electric Aircraft Symposium, Cui explained a basic truth of battery development – that improvements generally created about eight percent greater power or endurance in cells every year, leading to a doubling of battery capabilities every seven and one-half years.  He aims to improve that rate of change in batteries and ultracapacitors. Although ultracapacitors are able to charge and discharge rapidly, they are only about one-tenth as energy dense as batteries of equivalent mass.  Cui and colleague Zhenan Bao …

Big Blue and Blue Sky Thinking

Dean Sigler Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Would a 500-mile electric vehicle battery interest you? IBM, not normally thought of as a purveyor of electric vehicles, is backing a large-scale push from their Almaden Laboratory in San Jose, California, using the lithium-air battery demonstrated by recent experiments at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and the Universities of Strathclyde and Newcastle as a basis for their research.  IBM is teaming with UC Berkeley and all five National Laboratories as part of Big Blue’s Big Green Innovations program. Initially launched as a means of reducing the 98 percent of carbon emissions from non-information technology related activities and the two percent from IT activities, the Big Green Initiative took a turn in the last several months toward the development of a 500-mile battery for electric vehicles. According to IBM, “The 500 mile battery program’s goal “is to catalyze long-term, concerted efforts to create rechargeable next-generation batteries with ten times higher energy density, compared to the best current Lithium-ion batteries.” “While scalable energy storage …