What would you say about using “cooked” chicken feathers to store hydrogen very efficiently?  How about using chicken feathers as carbon fiber reinforcement in things like wind turbine blades?

The answer to both questions is — yes you can!

Science Friday: “Hydrogen Storage in Chicken Feathers?”

Researchers say they’ve come up with a new material for storing hydrogen fuel — carbonized chicken feathers. Speaking this week at at the 13th Annual Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference in College Park, MD, researchers said that carbonized chicken feathers could absorb as much or perhaps more hydrogen than other materials for hydrogen storage, including carbon nanotubes or metal hydrides, at a much lower cost.

Link to podcast

Here’s another source:  Happy News

While I’m on the subject of Science Friday, the second segment in today’s show was also very interesting; talking about the enormous potential for wind power to far exceed all our needs.

Science Friday: Wind Energy Potential

Link to podcast

Image source: Just chaos

Here’s a new one on me; the Riversimple open source hydrogen fuel cell car.

Not too many details are available yet: it has a 1kg tank of hydrogen and a whopping 6kW (8HP) fuel cell that give it a range of 240 miles, and a top speed of 50mph.  It weighs just 350kg (~771 pounds), owing mostly to the carbon fiber chassis.  They are looking to produce 10 next year, and ~50 the year after that, with leases available in 2012, for £200 ($315) per month, including the hydrogen fuel.  Key to their design is efficient regenerative braking (50% returned energy) using some ultracapacitors.

It looks like they are using hub motors in each wheel, and carbon fiber for the chassis.  It does not appear to be on their web page (yet), but they plan to release their plans so that anybody can build one.  I really like this idea of sharing the design information.  The aerodynamics seem to be worked out pretty well — the range of the car with just 1kg of hydrogen is proof of this!  The one (possible) snag is whether or not the side windows are operable — I guess toll roads can be handled with a wireless unit, though.  There is an intake grill, which may be used for ventilating the car.

I have my concerns with hydrogen — you can either get it from processing natural gas (which is obviously not very “green”) — or you need to use renewable energy (electricity from solar/wind/tidal/wave/biomass, etc.) to make the hydrogen.  There is no infrastructure for hydrogen, and this is a nontrivial hurdle.  But with this Riversimple car, they provide the hydrogen as part of the lease.  So this design concept works if you are located close to where they will have service.

Sources: ABG, Autoblitz, Riversimple

These days it’s not unusual to hear about high-mileage stunt driving or incredibly efficient vehicles, but it is still a fascinating thing to hear about a solar car that can actually go somewhere, much less around the world. That’s not to say that solar isn’t great technology, but it does take a lot of energy to propel a car and it just hasn’t been done, until now.

But that’s just what Louis Palmer did, in driving around the world in his electric car over the span of what must have been a grueling 17 months. In total, Louis traveled through 38 counties over 32,000 miles during these 17 months, and became the first person ever to drive around the world in a solar-powered car.

As you can imagine, the car is not directly powered by the sun. Meaning, it doesn’t shut off when a cloud passes over head. Rather, the solar panels on the car and in the trailer behind it are used to charge an array of batteries that push the car at speeds of up to 55 mph and over a total range of up to 185 miles. The car can charge while driving, but also while parked, rather than being plugged in like a normal electric vehicle.

Palmer called the car a Solar Taxi, as he offered tons of rides over the course of the trip in order to raise awareness of solar power as a viable transportation solution among both common people and political movers and shakers all around the world.

Though the car was incredibly expensive to build (Palmer isn’t saying how much exactly), he says that both the vehicle and the panels can be mass-produced for less than $19,000. This is certainly an impressive number, though I’m sure there is a lot to be desired in terms of safety features for the 3 wheeled vehicle. Likely, it would need to cost a bit more and be a bit heftier to get tip top crash test ratings, but this is a great demonstration of the future for solar cars.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92T-T8rc6ys

Source: Wired

The idea of an air-powered car may remind of you that Simpsons episode featuring Ed Begley, Jr. and his car, which is “powered by [his] own sense of self-satisfaction,” but it’s a real idea. Modern gasoline and diesel engines use the force of combustion to push the pistons downward and generate power. Similarly, air-powered engines feed bursts of highly compressed air into the engine to force the piston downward and create forward momentum.

It works, but is it practical?

Yes! Or, at least, possibly. As with many of these emerging technologies there are both upsides and downsides compared to existing petroleum based cars. Surely not an exhaustive list, but here are some of those issues.

Pro

• Air can be compressed using power from the grid, which has cleaner emissions than normal cars and can come from renewable energy sources.
• Air cars could be filled up at home or on the road. Unlike electric cars, air cars could fill up more quickly and therefore get the necessary range boosts for long trips.
• Air cars can be hybrids, just like gasoline vehicles, for range-extension.

Con

• There are still a lot of questions about the safety of carrying around large amounts of highly compressed air.
• Unlike electric cars, air cars still have a lot of moving parts that could fail.
• They are untested on the large scale

Coming in 2010: 106-mpg, $18,000 air car

That’s if you believe the claims of the inventors, MDI. MDI is a European company that has been working with the concept of air-powered vehicles since it was founded in 1991. Though they won’t be bringing the car Stateside themselves, they’re working with a NY-based company called Zero Pollution Motors to do so.

The first thing you’ll notice is the “106-mpg” figured. Since it doesn’t use gas, how can it have a “miles per gallon” figure tagged on with it? Well, as ZPM explains, that is really an mpg-equivalent figure used to compare the air car’s efficiency to gasoline-powered vehicles:

If you can, imagine a vehicle that runs on air, achieves over 100 gas-equivalent mpg and over 90 mph, has zero to low C02 emissions, seats six, has plenty of space for luggage, cuts no safety corners, and costs no more than an average economy to mid-size vehicle.

106 is definitely a high number, and as ZPM points out, is much higher than any car on the US market at the moment. I don’t know if I believe it, but I know that number is easily in reach for many electric cars, so I don’t see why it would be impossible in this case. Once the car hits the market, however, I’m sure will hear a lot more about the claimed efficiency ratings.

Similarly, you can check out the price tag here. ZPM states that using sales techniques like direct marketing, they can drive the starting-cost down to $17,800, which is a pretty good deal when you consider that it’s cheaper than any hybrid on the market.

The car will feature a 75hp engine, which allows it to reach speeds of 90 mph and have a range of up to 800 miles on any given “fill.” Though the car will be a bit more complex to operate than an EV, it will only need oil changes every 30k miles and can cost as little as $2 in electricity to fill up the air tank.

I’ll be excited to see how it does in the upcoming X-Prize competition. For now, you can find out more details at the ZPM site.

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Alas, the ebb and flow of change towards renewable and so-called “green” biofuels has taken black marks. Globally, foodstuff prices increased 37% last year (over the 14% increase in 2006). Food tensions, shortages and riots have taken their toll in Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt, Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Yemen and the list goes on… A stampede of cooking oil buyers, in China, left three people dead and thirty-one injured.

Enter palm oil… It takes 8 acres of soybeans to produce an equivalent amount of oil that palm oil trees can. It’s highly efficient – it’s only major competitor/rival for biofuel is sugar cane. The industry is exploding and supply can’t keep up. Add to that – it takes eight years for a palm oil tree to mature into an oil producing tree.

In recent years, the “zero trans fat” wave has hit America. And palm oil to the rescue. We, Earthacians, are straining the global food supply as we try to grow quickly. The United States has a long history of engineering itself out of disasters – but this time, it’s not just an engineering feet as there’s environmental consideration to consider.

It gets worse…

Last year, conversion of palm oil into fuel was a fast-growing source of demand, but in recent weeks, rising prices have thrown that business into turmoil.

Here on Malaysia’s eastern shore, a series of 45-foot-high green and gray storage tanks connect to a labyrinth of yellow and silver pipes. The gleaming new refinery has the capacity to turn 116,000 tons a year of palm oil into 110,000 tons of a fuel called biodiesel, as well as valuable byproducts like glycerin. Mission Biofuels, an Australian company, finished the refinery last month and is working on an even larger factory next door at the base of a jungle hillside.

But prices have spiked so much that the company cannot cover all its costs and has idled the finished refinery while looking for a new strategy, such as asking a biodiesel buyer to pay a price linked to palm oil costs, and someday switching from palm oil to jatropha, a roadside weed.

This, I fear, is the beginning of what’s to come. For me, it’s a personal choice to eat less meat, use less edible oil, drive economically, etc. But for some in other countries, it’s no longer a choice. Black markets for edible oil have already shown up and families are cutting back on weekly food consumption. Don’t get me wrong, change needs to happen. If we don’t regulate ourselves, mother nature is more than happy to do so for us (although, that is the more painful option).

This is not a case against alternative fuels – this is a clear example of the care and planning necessary for future fuels. A hint: ensure global infratructure can handle the demand of a hungry global economy.

Read more here.

Automobiles, Where To Now

by Jud Engels Jan. 20, 2008

This is the first in a series of chapters on the future of automobiles. As an introduction, this first article is setting the stage for the investigation of future options for the automobile. This is an interesting subject to many, of which there are many opinions.

Pressing problem: OIL I think that everyone will agree that we have to find a solution to fossil fuels. Without a doubt, oil will run out. Some think it will run out sooner than later. See peak oil here. Unless we want to go back to horses, we need to find a solution to replace oil.

Historical Perspective: This is not a new problem. If we think back prior to the 1800’s, the primary fuel was wood. There is a good article here about the historical deforestation of the world by humans. We (humans) were in the process of deforesting the world. In fact much of the eastern US was devoid of forests by the American Civil War. This picture, VA. I have been to this place, and it is now all grown back with trees, but at the time of the Civil War, most of the trees had been cut down. Wood was replaced in the industrial revolution by coal. This was good for the forests, but as everyone knows bad for air quality not to mention greenhouse gasses. Then there is the Whaling issue. As we all know, whales were hunted almost to extinction for there oil. In 1859 Edwin Drake drilled the first “oil well”, and started the whole oil industry. This essentially enabled automobiles to develop to where they are now.

In summation fossil fuels are but a stepping stone in the advancement of engineering and transportation. The question is what is the next step.

Review of Automotive Fuel:

Fossil fuels: Up to this point, most automobiles have used gasoline or diesel fuels. As we have seen, there is a finite supply of all types of fossil fuel. Additionally there is the environmental issue. Additional finds may be available, but the price is sure to go up. The good news, is that they are not going to run out immediately, but will last a while longer. A proven good provider for fuel for automobiles

Batteries: Some of the earliest automobiles were battery powered EV’s. This is a brief history of the electric car. Although some of the earliest cars were EV’s, they fell out of production around 1900. The major advantages are: very little pollution, no greenhouse gasses, and little mechanical maintenance.

Next Chapters:

Future Automotive Fuel Options:

• Internal Combustion Engine
• Gasoline:
• Natural Gas/Propane
• Hydrogen
• Diesel
• Bio fuels
• Electric
• Batteries
• Ultra Capacitors
• Fuel Cells
• Compressed air