Baja, California Norte, Mexico to British Columbia, Canada is 1,400 miles, a few days of hard driving in a good car, but one not attempted in a pure electric vehicle until this last June. Tony Williams, an unemployed airline pilot, lives in San Diego, California, and needed to attend a wedding in the northern BC. He could not afford air fare for himself and his young daughter, so he decided to drive his Nissan Leaf, testing the full length of the West Coast Electric Highway, just recently completed with charging stations every 50 miles or so along the I-5 highway that connects two countries and three states. His pre-departure checklist shows his pilot training and his knack for planning for the myriad difficulties that can confront an EV driver in strange places. Besides the necessary paperwork to cross borders and ward off suspicious traffic cops, Tony included 200 feet of extension cords, a “gazillion adaptors,” a 20-Amp breaker for different …
IBM’s 500 Mile Battery Progress
According to an article by Simon Fogg on the New Electronics UK web site, “In the early 1900s, electric vehicles were more common than their petrol powered counterparts – and so were steam powered versions, although these allegedly took 45minutes to start.” What we now think of as “alternative energy” vehicles were killed off when the self starter became a common feature on internal-combustion cars. The danger of breaking an arm while cranking the family automobile was gone, and women, who had been big proponents of the salon-like electrics of the day, turned to gasoline power to run errands. With two billion fossil fuel-powered cars pumping their exhausts into a beleaguered atmosphere, the question becomes not whether there will be enough gasoline in the future, but whether the future can survive a plentiful supply of such fuel. The CAFE Foundation’s April Electric Aircraft Symposium introduced IBM’s Battery 500 project, as directed by Dr. Winfried W. Wilcke, Manager of Nanoscale Science …
More Heat Than Light – But Energetic, Nevertheless
Mars Curiosity Rover is bigger than one would expect, over six feet tall and weighing 1,982 pounds. It travels up to 660 feet per day on its multiple wheels, looking for rocks to analyze with its ChemCam. Powered by the heat from its plutonium reactor, Curiosity will rove Mars for two years if all goes well. The heat is converted to electricity (which then drives the wheel motors on the rover) by a lead telluride thermoelectric material, a semiconductor which, capable as it is, has been eclipsed in efficiency by a new form of the material developed by Northwestern University researchers. Mercouri G. Kanatzidis, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, explains that his heat exchange material is twice as efficient as that used on Curiosity, a breakthrough with potential uses to boost car mileage, improve industrial processes, and maybe even make hybrid aircraft more efficient. Currently used materials have …
Three-Liter Airlines – Throwing Aviation for a Lupo
How do airliners stack up against cars for fuel economy? A German air carrier is trying to achieve efficiencies that will make their airplanes at least as economical per passenger mile as the best economy cars. Europeans have been pursuing an elusive goal for the last 15 years, the 3-liter car. That’s not 3 liters of engine displacement, but the use of only three liters of fuel for every 100 kilometers (62 miles) traveled – about 78 miles per U. S. gallon or 99 miles per imperial gallon. Several cars have done that and better, but sometimes at the cost of driver comfort. The Volkswagen Lupo turbo-diesel (1.2 liters displacement, 61 horsepower), for instance, came out in 1999, and was praised for its fuel economy, but not for its ride or cramped passenger compartment. As small as a Geo Metro, with aluminum hood and doors to save weight, the car did manage some record-breaking runs, including a three-car, around the …
Jonathan Trent and the Omega Project
Jonathan Trent, a NASA researcher, presented his OMEGA Project at the CAFE Foundation’s 2010 Electric Aircraft Symposium. It promised a simple and practical way to grow oil-rich algae using effluent from city waste, and processing it with sunlight and wave motion in a continuous process. Such a system would clean wastewater, reduce CO2, and provide non-food-stock-based biofuels for transportation. OMEGA, “Offshore Membrane Enclosure for Growing Algae”, is now a more complex system as Dr. Trent and at least three research teams develop the technology in the San Francisco Bay Area and at Santa Cruz on the nearby California coast. In this TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) lecture from 2011 Dr. Trent gives an update on the process and how it can be integrated with other energy technologies and even seafood cultivation enterprises to bring power and prosperity to our coastal regions. It is an engaging and thought-provoking 17 minutes, and addresses the issue of food vs. biofuels in a strong, but …
Joules in Her Crown
One of the favorite speakers at the Electric Aircraft Symposia sponsored by the CAFE Foundation, Eva Håkansson is more than just a great talker. She recently topped 216 miles per hour in KillaJoule, her streamlined electric sidecar motorcycle. She built 80 percent of the 250-horsepower vehicle herself over two and one-half years. An engineering graduate student at the University of Denver, Eva and her husband Bill Dube’ hold world records on and in their electric motorcycles. Eva managed to come within three mph of the world record internal-combustion powered for sidecars on the salt flat. She also managed a world record for the flying mile, going through the traps at 191.488 mph – the record awaiting American Motorcycle Association certification. Overall, KillaJoule is the world’s fourth fastest electric motorcycle, and Eva is headed back to Bonneville to attempt more records. The 250 HP battery-powered motorcycle had a measured top speed of 216.504 MPH and did set a new official world …
ElectraFlyer’s New ULS – A Different Kind of Boomer
Randall Fishman must have a wall of medals, trophies, and award plaques for his many breakthroughs in electric flying. He was the first to astound Oshkosh attendees with the flight of an electric airplane, his ElectraFlyer C with a brushed motor and controller configured by Fishman. He picked up not only prizes, but magazine and newspaper column inches and Internet hits. His developments since then have diverged onto two paths, a two-seater and a pair of ultralight motorgliders. Randall sold a kit last year for his ElectraFlyer X to Richard Steeves, a physician from Madison, Wisconsin (look for an upcoming entry). and has been providing technical and material support. The X should take to the skies soon. ElectraFlyer’s Ultralight development took two turns in the last seven months. At the Sebring, Florida Light Sport Aircraft Expo in January, your editor saw an adaptation of a single-seat motorglider, displaying a new motor of Fishman’s design housed in a scooped air intake. The …
Commercially Viable (and Nearly Buyable) Australian Algae-Based Biofuel
Both Aviation Week and Flight Global reported on Algaetec’s announcement at the ILA (Berlin Air Show) that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Lufthansa to provide algae-based jet fuel to the German carrier. Algae.Tec is an Australian maker of clear algae oil that pulls CO2 from industrial processes, combines it with sunlight, and produces large batches of odorless oil. The product achieves the “holy grail” of sustainability, according to Executive Chairman Roger Stroud, because it is made from non-food sources, unlike corn- or agave-based ethanol, for instance. It also uses CO2 that would otherwise be subject to expensive sequestration processes. The technology is proprietary and barely hinted at in the company’s videos, but is housed in 40-foot long shipping containers connected to solar arrays. CO2 and sunlight combine to produce a fuel stream in a compact production space. Aviation Week reports that, “The company’s process grows algae in a controlled environment in 40-ft shipping containers, feeding the algae …
Spinach, Photosynthesis, and Solar Energy
Spinach is the Rodney Dangerfield of the vegetable kingdom, and despite the best efforts of nutritionists, Popeye, and school lunch ladies to boost its respect levels, goes unwanted by many. But not by the team at Vanderbilt University who have combined it with silicon in a “biohybrid” solar cell. According to Vanderbilt’s David Cliffel, associate professor of chemistry, “This combination produces current levels almost 1,000 times higher than we were able to achieve by depositing the protein on various types of metals. It also produces a modest increase in voltage.” Cliffel collaborated on the project with Kane Jennings, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering. “If we can continue on our current trajectory of increasing voltage and current levels, we could reach the range of mature solar conversion technologies in three years.” Over 40 years ago, scientists found that Photosystem 1 (PS1), a protein involved in photosynthesis, continued to produce photosynthetic energy even after it was removed from its host plant. …
A Different Kind of Hybrid Aircraft
A father and son team have done amazing things with the Colomban MC-15 Cri-Cri: Hugues Duval, the son setting a world speed record at last year’s Paris Air Show, and Yves, the father, resurrecting a decade-old airshow act. At an airshow in Gergy-Pontoise, France this year, according to Anne Lavrand, head of Electravia and motor supplier to the little electric speedster, “Spectators were able to admire the return of the famous Shuttle Bretonne,” a Broussard liaison aircraft carrying the Cristalline Cri-Cri aloft. Anne Lavrand explains, “At the end of the 90s, Yves Duval, Hughes’ father, presented in airshows the “Breton Shuttle”: a Broussard with a small Cri-Cri on its top for the take-off, then… during flight, Cri-Cri takes off from the Broussard and flies by its side. At that time, both aircraft were sponsored by the company Brittany Ferries. The installation of Cri-Cri on the Broussard required some means of lifting:” “In 2000, the Cri-Cri was equipped with single-cylinder gasoline-fueled, two-stroke …