Calin Cologan and George Bye staged a joint press event on the Sunday evening before AirVenture started. Held in the Redbird Tent on Wittman Field, it drew hundreds who saw the Redbird flight simulators and a Diesel-powered Cessna, but were stopped short by the yellow and blue Sun Flyer, a single-seat proof-of-concept version of what will soon be a two-seat battery/solar training aircraft. Forming a new firm based on the strengths of PC-Aero in Germany, and Bye Aerospace and Redbird Flight Simulators in America, they promise an electric training aircraft for the near future. Unlike the tandem two-seaters PC-Aero is developing in Germany, American Electric Aircraft Corporation will produce a side-by-side craft, often preferred for communication between instructor and student. In this Da Vinci Institute presentation, George Bye discusses the keys to performance for his aircraft, which include clean aerodynamics, high efficiency, a light carbon structure, and solar energy. Nest will come a “big performance step – endurance” – and possible perpetual flight …
EAS VIII: Dr. Jaiwon Shin Brings NASA to CAFE
The CAFE Foundation was honored this year to have Dr. Jaiwon Shin, Associate Director for the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), speak at the eighth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium. His responsibilities at the agency, and his earnest regard for CAFE and its direction were evident during his talk. According to his NASA biography, “Dr. Jaiwon Shin… manages the agency’s aeronautics research portfolio and guides its strategic direction. This portfolio includes research in the fundamental aeronautics of flight, aviation safety and the nation’s airspace system.” Such tasks include overseeing the next generation (NextGen) air traffic control system, funding promising research projects, crafting policies that will assure ongoing progress in creating cleaner, safer flight vehicles, and coordinating such activities with congress and other government agencies. He pointed out that the first “A” in NASA stands for “Aeronautics,” the agency’s first major area of research and policy making. Dr. Shin noted that the Wrights brought us powered, controlled …
The Green Speed Cup – Fourth Edition
Robert Adam helps run the Green Speed Cup, a time, speed and economy run for aircraft in Germany. The rules for this year’s contest elucidate the intent and ambitions for the event: “The GREEN SPEED CUP is an aviation competition focusing on efficient flight. The emphasis lies on fast and energy saving transportation. The competition is meant to develop new methods to reduce energy consumption of motor driven aircraft using external energy sources like lateral winds and updrafts. In making the ability of certain aircraft and techniques transparent, the competition shall set new standards in general aviation.” The Cup provides a sounding board for discussion of energy efficient flight and the changing experience of flying while exploring new techniques and technologies. Hosted by STEMME Aviators e.V., the contest is open to “all aircraft capable of taking off under their own power,” with the following restrictions: In the Electric Class, airplanes may have one to four seats, weigh up to 2,700 …
June is a Happy Month for Electric Motorsports
With only half the month gone and the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb scheduled on its last week, June 2014 has seen records crumble at the Isle of Man TT and hybrid electrical technology dominate at the 80th running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The electric part of the classic road race on the tight little island between Britain and Northern Ireland saw new records for the 37 mile spin around the southern roadways – like the Le Man circuit, otherwise public roads usually dominated by farm vehicles and passenger cars. Ohio State University’s Buckeye Racing Team ran a modified Honda CBR1000RR frame with a motor by Roman Susnik, the Slovenian who also designed the motors used in the Pipistrel G2 self-launching motorglider. They ran a respectable third place, a great accomplishment for a college team up against the might of the winning Honda Mugen. John McGuinness rode that $4.3 million racer to set a lap record of …
EAS VIII: John Langford Shares a Wide Range of Skills
Dr. John S. Langford is the Chairman and CEO of Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation, which he founded in 1989. He has Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees from MIT in Aeronautics and other disciplines. While at MIT, he led a series of human-powered aircraft projects, culminating in the Daedalus Project, which in 1988 made a 72-mile flight between the Greek islands of Crete and Santorini. He was just named 2014 winner of the National Aeronautics Association’s Cliff Henderson Trophy, awarded for “…a living individual, group of individuals, or an organization whose vision, leadership or skill made a significant and lasting contribution to the promotion and advancement of aviation and aerospace in the United States.” He shares the honor with earlier winners including Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle, Senator Barry M. Goldwater, Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson, and Scott Crossfield, among others. He started his presentation, “The Manned Unmanned Aircraft: Where the UAV Revolution is Headed,” explaining that aviation growth …
Copper Catalyst Makes Room Temperature Ethanol
We’ve written a great deal about ways of making so-called “bio-fuels,” those ethanol, methanol and even diesel substitutes that avoid the high toxicity and environmental harm of fossil fuels. Often though, these substitutes require the diversion of foodstocks or the use of exotic catalysts and high energy inputs to trigger the appropriate mechanisms. Scientists as Stanford University may have found a way to use copper, though, to make ethanol without corn or other plants. They’ve “created a copper-based catalyst that produces large quantities of ethanol from carbon monoxide gas at room temperature.” Matthew W. Kanan, Assistant Professor at Stanford, has been working toward this kind of biofuel production for many years. His University profile contains the following: “The ability to convert H2O, CO2 and N2 into fuels using renewable energy inputs could in principle provide a viable alternative to the current dominance of fossil fuels. This prospect faces great technical challenges, the foremost of which is the lack of efficient …
Fuel from Seawater
The ancient mariner may have been surrounded by water unfit to drink, but the U. S. Navy sees its ships as surrounded by seawater that could be converted to fuel for its fleet or aircraft. This long-time ambition is possibly being fulfilled by researchers at the U. S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), Materials Science and Technology Division, who recently flew a radio-controlled model airplane on seawater-derived fuel. Dr. Heather Willauer, NRL research chemist, explains, “In close collaboration with the Office of Naval Research P38 Naval Reserve program, NRL has developed a game changing technology for extracting, simultaneously, CO2 and H2 from seawater. This is the first time technology of this nature has been demonstrated with the potential for transition, from the laboratory, to full-scale commercial implementation.” The process is able to convert the recovered gases to liquid hydrocarbon fuel. Dr. Willauer’s team recently flew a replica of a WWII P-51 Mustang in the red-tail colors of the Tuskeegee Airmen. The craft’s two-stroke …
Electric Tugs at Sea-Tac Lower Costs, Emissions
Green Air Online reports that Seattle-Tacoma Airport (Sea-Tac) has launched a “$31 million project to provide nearly 600 electric charging stations for ground support equipment (GSE) such as baggage tugs, bag ramps and pushback vehicles.” Besides saving “around $2.8 million in airline fuel costs,” the conversion will reduce greenhouse gas emissions around 10,000 tons per year. Alaska Airlines will swap 204 fossil-fuel burning GSEs to electric and its partner Horizon Airlines will trade in 58. More airlines are going to join the program later this year. Federal grants and funding from the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sweeten the transition for participants. “This project provides the infrastructure for airlines to convert their vehicles from diesel to electric in Sea-Tac’s effort to become the first major airport in the US to provide charging stations at all gates,” said Courtney Gregoire, Co-President of the Port of Seattle Commission. “As many as 650 vehicles could eventually …
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 …