DOE Promotes Carbon Neutrality Aeronautically

Dean Sigler Announcements, Biofuels, Electric Powerplants, Hybrid Aircraft, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Both GreenCarCongress.com and CleanTechnica share information about the Department of Energy’s funding of 17 projects in two Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) categories.  Prepare for the inevitable rush of acronyms.  All the projects seem to be reserved for applications on single-aisle short- and intermediate-range airliners, with emphasis on economy of operation, carbon neutrality and lowest possible emissions. ASCEND Powertrain related, ASCEND (Aviation-class Synergistically Cooled Electric-motors with iNtegrated Drives) will fund nine projects with $14.5 in Phase 1 money.  Funds will help recipients, “Work to develop innovative, lightweight, and ultra-efficient all-electric powertrain with advanced thermal management systems that help enable efficient net-zero carbon emissions for single-aisle passenger commercial aircraft.” Raytheon Technologies Research Center has three projects in two ARPA-E categories, including their own Ultra-Light, inTegrated, Reliable, Aviation-class, Co-Optimized Motor & Power converter with Advanced Cooling Technology (ULTRA-COMPACT) for which they received $2,330,13.  Their system will incorporate advanced materials and techniques in permanent magnets, drive topology, thermal management, and composite gearboxes. Marquette …

Gamera: First Solar-Powered Helicopter

Dean Sigler Solar Power, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Solar Gamera, an extension of the human-powered helicopter that achieved the longest HPH duration flight in 2013, just made the first solar-powered helicopter flight.  In 2014, a group of undergraduate students at the University of Maryland turned Team Gamera into Solar Gamera, “to test the feasibility of applying solar power in achieving human helicopter flight.” Ph.D. student William Staruk, a member of the original HPH team, reflected, “Today you are seeing the first successful flights of the Gamera Solar-Powered Helicopter. You are seeing aviation history being made in the history of green aviation and rotary blade aviation.” Gamera’s lattice-work framework, 100-foot square with extremely large rotors at the ends of four beams, carried materials science major Michelle Mahon on two short flights.  The best effort lasted nine seconds and gained an altitude over a foot. Staruk explained, “It’s just a matter of drift before [Solar Gamera] gets longer flights.  It’s easier to trim than human-powered helicopter thanks to electronic controls.” Note …

Caging Hydrogen in Self-assembling Origami Structures

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Let’s say that you’re really good at folding pieces of paper into miniature birds such as cranes, or life-size elephants, something origami artist Sipho Mabona did recently, starting with a 50-foot by 50-foot piece of paper (he had help from up to 40 others).   The paper elephant, including a metal subframe to support it, weighs over 500 pounds. How about using origami to trap hydrogen in a novel approach to storing energy for fuel cells?  Only, instead of paper, you might use sheets of graphene cleverly folded into cages no more than a few nanometers across – the opposite of the elephant in the art gallery.  Researchers at the University of Maryland’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and Maryland NanoCenter, have done just that, but so far just as a simulation of the molecular dynamics involved.  They have demonstrated that such cages can be opened and closed “in response to an electrical charge using a technique they call hydrogenation-assisted graphene origami …

Nanopaper Solar Cells – Finest Wood Pulp in the World

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Nanopapers are, like the paper we use daily, made from wood pulp, but in this case reduced to nano-sized lengths and formed into “a network of nanofibrillated (tangled) cellulose (NFC).” This tangled network, a seemingly impenetrable mass, is surprisingly transparent, and the paper’s increased light scattering makes it 90 to 95-percent transparent (a counter-intuitive thought).  Earlier discoveries showed that coating the paper with carbon nanotubes “made the paper very strong and highly conductive, which could allow it to be used for printed electronics (such as circuit boards) and in products that require a lightweight construction.” Extracting NFC from ordinary paper fibers is a time and energy intensive process, so the next batch of  nanopaper won’t use these fibers, instead “detangling” or “unraveling” the cellulose through a process called tempo-oxidation to make “nanoribbons.” Nanopaper made from these ribbons is 91 percent transparent, has its surface oxidized to increase strength, and has a layer of silver nanowires for conductivity. A TEMPO (Tetramethylpiperidinyloxy) NaBr-NaClO oxidation …

Transformative EV Range Expansion?

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation 2 Comments

In what may be eventual good news for future electric aviators, the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) will award approximately $36 million to 22 projects to develop transformational electric vehicle (EV) energy storage systems using innovative chemistries, architectures and designs.  ARPA-E also uses the term, “revolutionary.” The series of awards is part of the RANGE program (Robust Affordable Next Generation Energy Storage Systems), intended “to enable a 3X increase in electric vehicle range (from ~80 to ~240 miles per charge) with a simultaneous price reduction of > 1/3 (to ~ $30,000). If successful, these vehicles will provide near cost and range parity to gasoline-powered ICE vehicles, ARPA-E said.” “Transformational” comes straight from the CAFE phrase book, a hoped-for direction that goes beyond evolution to revolution in what comes next.  A 3X battery at 1/3 the price would certainly be transformational, especially in aircraft use, making even ultralights plausible, and Light Sport Aircraft truly functional.  …

AeroVelo Captures Sikorsky Prize

Dean Sigler Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

This was not their first rodeo.  Core members of the AeroVelo human-powered helicopter team, “Have been working together since 2006 on the world record setting Snowbird Human-Powered Ornithopter as well as the series of high-speed streamlined bicycles. Over the course of the various projects we have built a wealth of experience in human performance, lightweight composite construction, and advanced aerodynamic design.” Their Snowbird maintained altitude for 19.3 seconds on only human power.  Even though towed into the air, it flew on its own after the pilot released the towrope.  The beauty of this flight is so compelling the footage has been used in Honda commercials. Their record attempt streamlined bicycles are part of a series that make attempts on the human-powered land speed record. According to AeroVelo, “In both 2010 and 2011 the team set the Collegiate human-powered land speed records.” Aerovelo’s Vortex streamlined bicycle, one of a series of high-speed human-powered racers This level of dedication and an obvious …

Gamera II Does 50 Seconds

Dean Sigler Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

The University of Maryland students established an unofficial world record for human-powered helicopter flight, hovering for 50 seconds and edging toward the $250,000 Sikorsky Prize offered by the American Helicopter Society.   The rules for winning are straightforward, but difficult to achieve. Build a helicopter powered only by human means Lift off and achieve a hover time of 60 seconds Achieve a height of 3 meters sometime during the 60 second flight Stay within a 10 square meter area during the 60 second flight As can be seen in last year’s record attempt, the altitude and area constraints are difficult, with little control over altitude other than adding power – already at a human maximum, and limited ability to stay within that imaginary box. According to the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering, “Gamera has a rotor at each of the four ends of its X-shaped frame, with the pilot’s module suspended at the middle. Each crossbar of …

Lifting Yourself by a Disappearing Thread

Dean Sigler Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

The University of Maryland announced the successful 11.4 second flight of an American human-powered helicopter with a female pilot – now the National record holder and successor to the first female flight on such a machine – 17 years ago. In 1994, your editor attended a human-powered aircraft symposium in Seattle at the Boeing Museum of Flight. Paul MacCready signed my copy of Gossamer Odyssey and I was official observer (for Chris Roper of the Royal Aeronautical Society) of the first female-powered helicopter flight.  Ward Griffiths, a svelte young thing from a local bike shop, cranked the very similar (to Gamera) thing into the air for 8.6 seconds – a first and a female record at that time.  A Japanese gentleman had done 15 seconds the day before and knocked the O. J. Simpson investigation off the front page of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.  Flights took place in the Boeing 777 preparation hangar, while the big jet spooled up and taxied around outside. …

A Pair of Viruses Good for Your Computer – and Maybe Your Electric Vehicle

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants Leave a Comment

To say that your battery is “smoking” would normally be the sign of a failed circuit, but researchers at the A. James Clark School of Engineering and College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Maryland may be putting a virus that’s bad even for tobacco to good use in creating a battery that may be up to 10 times more powerful than today’s best lithium cells.   Professor Reza Ghodssi, director of the Institute for Systems Research and Herbert Rabin Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Clark School,  is “harnessing and exploiting the ‘self-renewing’ and ‘self-assembling’ properties” of the  Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV), which in its unrestrained natural state destroys tobacco, tomatoes, peppers and other leafy green things.   The idea that battery creation is a self-directing event is belied by the University’s video. Scientists found, “They can modify the TMV rods to bind perpendicularly to the metallic surface of a battery electrode and arrange the rods in intricate and orderly …