Embraer Electrifies Agricultural Aviation

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

Embraer, a Brazilian aircraft maker with ties to Boeing, has been tilling the clean aviation field for several years.  Their current agricultural craft, the EMB 203, has flown on ethanol for some years – a kind of farm-to-aircraft symbiotic relationship.  Going to the next step toward clean, green aviation, Embraer has since devised an electrical powertrain in cooperation with WEG Equipamentos Elétricos and EDP. Embraer is deeply involved in programs headed toward making the skies greener.  This includes everything from their aircraft designs to their “DIPAS PROGRAM – DIPAS (Integrated Development of an Environmentally Sustainable Product).”  This program considers “current and future environmental legislation,” alternative technologies and their life cycles.  The program works toward reducing fuel consumption, CO2 emissions, noise, and maintenance costs, while, “Increasing operational efficiency and comfort for the pilot and passengers.” Other operations to incorporate electrification of flight include Embraer X’s Eve, the company’s approach to urban aerial mobility, and other efforts to offset or mitigate harmful …

Nissan’s SOFC Vehicle – Just in Time for the Olympics

Dean Sigler Biofuels, Fuel Cells, Hydrogen Fuel, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Two major types of fuel cells vie for vehicle designers’ attention: PEM, or proton exchange membrane types, and solid oxide fuels cells (SOFCs). PEMs (also known as polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells) require an expensive catalyst such as platinum, and hydrogen as fuel. Hydrogen itself is costly to produce and runs up the operating cost for such a fuel cell. Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. timed things to coincide with the 2016 Olympics opening in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for the introduction of their solid oxide fuel cell vehicle, a van that runs on bio-ethanol electric power.  Nissan’s Carlos Ghosn claims this to be a first, with benefits for potential users. “The e-Bio Fuel-Cell offers eco-friendly transportation and creates opportunities for regional energy production…all the while supporting the existing infrastructure. In the future, the e-Bio Fuel-Cell will become even more user-friendly. Ethanol-blended water is easier and safer to handle than most other fuels. Without the need to create new infrastructure, it …

Beating Plants at Their Own Game

Dean Sigler Diesel Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Going to medical school to learn how to use bacteria to make gasoline may seem like a complicated process, but the developers of a new way of extracting biofuels from sunlight say it’s not.  You may remember Dr. Daniel Nocera’s efforts a few years ago to create a bionic leaf, a simple way to extract oxygen and hydrogen from water when the leaf in water was exposed to sunlight.  Several other such “water splitters” have achieved newsworthiness in the last few years, but each has the impediment of not delivering hydrogen in a readily useable way. Usually, any H2 produced has to be compressed, stored in hydrides, or encapsulated in some way to make it a viable fuel.  There is not a national infrastructure to allow hydrogen to be distributed as readily as gasoline or Diesel.  Researchers working with Dr. Nocera “at Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering …

Copper Catalyst Makes Room Temperature Ethanol

Dean Sigler Diesel Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

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 …

A broader Overview of Biofuels

Dean Sigler Diesel Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Are biofuels truly “green?” Gizmag this morning has an entry on Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, which has just released a report showing that biofuels may not always be as green as we would like to think. Further, they note that gasoline, including that coming from shale oil sands (as in Keystone XL pipeline oil) may be cleaner than certain crop-derived combustibles. The headlines may stoke controversy, so it’s worthwhile to examine the short-form charts and press release, and compare the impressions gained from a quick glance with those from reading the 113-page study itself. Empa’s press release headline and lead give the impression that things are grim in the green world. The headline “Most biofuels are not ‘green’” is followed by “First tops, then flops.  That is one way of summing up the history of biofuels so far.  A new study led by Empa gives an up-to-date picture of the ecobalance of various biofuels …

Give Up Smoking Today, Get Better Mileage

Dean Sigler Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Critics of biofuels often cite the contrary use of foodstocks for producing ethanol, for instance, as a process that will lead to food shortages, and consequently higher prices for fuel and food. One researcher and his graduate students are investigating a way to convert waste such as orange peels and old newspapers, and social and health irritants such as tobacco plants, and turn them into a cheap, clean fuel. Dr. Henry Daniell is head of the Biotechnology Graduate Program forthe Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida. His primary fields of research include developing low-cost methods of delivering pharmaceuticals to patients in need and even vaccines to combat terrorist bioweapons. Involvement with plant-based cures probably helped lead him to this discovery, which the college describes as a possible “breakthrough of a lifetime.” Daniell’s goal is to “relegate gasoline to a secondary fuel,” with a process that uses “plant-derived enzyme cocktails” to break down …