Say Hallo to a Sexy Sports Car Powered by Water

Das Instant Auto: Say Hallo to a Sexy Sports Car Powered by Wate

Unlike traditional batteries, which use solid materials to store and release electricity, flow batteries use charged liquids kept in separate tanks. The charged liquids come into close proximity only during power generation, greatly reducing the possibility of fire. “The safety is much higher and the electrode materials degrade much less during service,” Soloveichik says. “You can re-use them many, many times.”

Soloveichik says flow batteries could hold “tens of kilowatt-hours and up” of energy, since it is the size of the tanks that determines how much power the batteries can store. Besides cars, flow batteries could be used as backup power for commercial and residential systems, store electricity from renewable sources of energy, and also support the power grid. “They can store energy from wind, for example, so power companies can use it when they need it,” Soloveichik says.

That could soon come handy. A year ago, California introduced the first energy storage mandate in the U.S., requiring utilities to buy 200 megawatt-hours of energy storage by 2014, and 1,325 megawatt-hours by 2020. The goals include improving grid reliability and capturing and storing more renewable energy.

Soloveichik recently published an article in the journal Nature on new flow battery research by a team from Harvard. He wrote that increasing the share of “intermittently available renewable energy sources” like wind and solar to more than 20 percent would require new “cheap and flexible storage systems.” Flow batteries could just do just the trick.

He said that presently, the options are either limited to very specific geographic locations (such as pumping water from a reservoir to an elevated level as a source of potential energy) or expensive solutions (for example, conventional batteries, flywheels and superconductive electromagnetic storage).

Over the last five years, GE researchers have been developing liquid fuels for flow batteries with energy density high enough to possibly power electric cars. The project is part of the DOE-funded Energy Frontier Research Center.

Soloveichik and his team are now working with the Department of Energy’s ARPA-e program to build a water-based battery that could power an electric vehicle for 240 miles.

He and his team have already shown that the ARAP-e target energy density and cost are within reach. They now have to get enough power from the battery chemistry. Says Soloveichik: “This is a game changing technology and we think we can exceed the goal.”

 

11 Technologies That Could Shape the Future

11 Technologies That Could Shape the Future By GE Research

When GE opened its first research center in 1900, it employed three people and fit inside a barn behind the chief engineer’s house in Schenectady, N.Y.It burned down a year later.The lab then relocated to “safer premises” and become a dynamo, powering GE’s innovation, gathering thousands of patents and even employing several Nobel laureates. Today, the upstate New York lab is part of a global GE research network of some 3,000 scientists stretching from New York to Brazil, China, Germany, India, and China. Take a look at some of their projects that could one day shape the world.

1.Wings Of Butterfly Inspiring to create Faster Thermal Sensors

Radislav Potyrailo, a principal scientist at GE Global Research, and his team are using the science of the very small, nanotechnology, and the science of light, photonics, to mimic the properties of the jagged, tree-like scales on the wings of butterflies from the Morpho genus (see top image). They want to use their findings to develop fast, ultra-sensitive thermal and chemical imaging sensors that could have applications in night vision goggles, super-sensitive surveillance cameras, and handheld and wearable medical diagnostic devices.

2.Water Will now Power Batteries the ultimate source of electricity

Potyrailo’s colleague Grigorii Soloveichik is working onelectric flow batteries that could hold tens of kilowatt-hours of power. Besides cars, flow batteries could be used as backup power for wind farms and other renewable sources of energy, power entire neighborhoods, and also support the grid. “They can store energy from wind, for example, so power companies can use it when they need it,” Soloveichik says.

3. The Direct write Allows you to write and Create Sensors

Engineer James Yang and his team are working on a technology called Direct Write, also known as 3D Inking. Big Data is the lifeblood of the Industrial Internet, and Direct Write allows machine designers to use special “inks” to print miniature data gathering sensors directly inside jet engines, gas turbines and other hot, harsh and hard to reach places. “We can use it to print sensors on 3D surfaces,” says Yang. “One day they could be anywhere.”

4.Fuel Cells Powered By Hydrogen and Oxygen To Form a Power House.

Not far from Schenectady, GE opened a new manufacturing and development facility exploring solid oxide fuel cell technology. Its fuel cells works like a battery, using a simple chemical reaction to unlock energy from hydrogen molecules abundant in natural gas and oxygen in ordinary air. The new system’s power generation efficiency can reach 65 percent, a holy grail of this technology. Its overall efficiency can grow even further: to 95 percent when the system is configured to capture waste heat produced by the process. “The cost challenges associated with the technology have stumped a lot of people for a long time,” says Johanna Wellington, advanced technology leader at GE Global Research and the head of GE’s fuel cell business. “But we made it work, and we made it work economically. It’s a game-changer.”

5.Sweat Based Health Detecting Device

Sweat carries a trove of valuable information about how our bodies are feeling. Scientists at several labs are now trying to decode it with nanotechnology and develop flexible, Band-Aid-like wireless sensors sensitive enough to detect a single drop of biomolecules found in sweat in 2.5 million gallons of water (that’s enough to fill 50,000 bathtubs). The Air Force is interested in using the sensors to monitor pilots, and understand and improve their performance. But the technology could have much broader civilian applications. “Physical and mental fatigue is a factor for air traffic controllers, fire fighters, heavy-equipment operators, and many other professions,” says Scott Miller, lab manager for nanostructures and surfaces at GE Global Research.

6. Calorie Box ,Just Pack your food in it and it will tell total calories.

Miller’s colleague Matt Webster is working on a universal calorie counter that could detect the amount of energy stored in any food. The GE team together with researchers at Baylor University’s Department Electrical and Computer Engineering is now testing the system on simple mixtures of oil, water and sugar. They have built a prototype, but the big prize is a push-button device that could be in every kitchen. One day the team could link the device with a smartphone app or a workout wristband.

7. GE Scientist still love Playing with Human Brain

GE is also working on machines that could study the brainin a greater detail. One group of researchers is looking at imaging the mobility of water molecules in the brain to better understand how the organ is wired, as well as the health and function of these connections, sort of a wiring diagram of the brain. In the future, medical scanners could be used to study diseases ranging from stroke to Alzheimer’s and clinical depression.

8. LED Based Indoor Farming ,It may help creating a Planet Where sun is not required

LED lights developed by engineers at GE Lighting could one day revolutionize agriculture and move farming indoors. One such farm is also working in Japan.

9. Smaller but Powerful Electric Switches .

Scientists working in GE labs have developed tiny electrical switches thinner than a human hair that can transmit kilowatts of power. They are called micro-electro-mechanical systems, or MEMS. MEMS could help reduce waste heat and power consumption in medical devices, aviation systems and other industrial products. But the researchers are also working on miniaturized applicationsfor smartphones and tablets using the next-generation LTE-Advanced, or “True 4G,” wireless standard. The new standard could allow users to receive data as fast as 3 gigabits per second, 10 times faster than existing 4G networks.

10. Create Drones For your Work with Help of GE

GE Ventures recently invested in Airware, a technology company developing a suite of hardware, software, and cloud services for commercial drone applications. Drones equipped with the technology already took part in an anti-poaching exercise in a northern white rhino wildlife preserve in Kenya. “We want to make it easy for customers to build drones for any commercial application and operate them in a safe and reliable manner,” says Jonathan Downey, founder and CEO of Airware. “This is something the industry as well as regulators have been asking for.”

11. Magnetic Refrigerator , Seems Like Magnetism Rules the Scientific world of particles.

GE researchers have used a special magnetic material to achieve temperatures cold enough to freeze water (and chill beer). The breakthrough system, which is projected to be 20 percent more efficient than current refrigeration technology, could be inside your fridge by the end of the decade.

The system is using a water-based fluid flowing through a series of magnets to transfer heat, rather than a chemical refrigerant and a compressor. This significantly lowers any harm to the environment and makes the recycling of old refrigerators simpler. “This is a big deal,” says Venkat Venkatakrishnan, a leader of the research team. “We are on the cusp of the next refrigeration revolution.”

refrigerators simpler. “This is a big deal,” says Venkat Venkatakrishnan, a leader of the research team. “We are on the cusp of the next refrigeration revolution.”

Get Your Own 3D printed Car Ready in 44 Hours

Your 3D-printed car will be ready to drive in 44 hours

You knew the printed car was going to happen, but as soon as this weekend? That’s when the first printed car arrives. It will be built up from carbon-reinforced plastics, then driven out of Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center and onto the streets of the Windy City. The vehicle will be printed over 44 hours. Technicians will add in the unprintable — electric motor, battery, wiring, window glass — and the car, called Strati, should be out the door Saturday.

Rather the print dozens of smaller sub-assemblies and screwing, gluing or bolting them together, the concept car has a main body structure built up as a single module using something called the BAAM Machine. BAAM stands for big area additive manufacturing, with a deposition rate of 40 pounds per hour.

Can your trade show do this?

All this happens at a trade show called IMTS, the International Manufacturing Technology Show. It’s being held this week in the Windy City, attracts 100,000 attendees, and is awash in acronyms. IMTS is run by AMT, the Association for Manufacturing Technology, which promotes US-based manufacturing technology. Many of the manufacturing technologies used to make Strati were pioneered at the DOE (Department of Energy) manufacturing demonstration facility at ORNL (Oak Ridge National Laboratory).The Strati components that aren’t printed in the trade show microfactory from carbon reinforced ABS plastic (see, another acronym; photo right) will be added to the car by a company called Local Motors. The company also creates specialty cars and motorcycles using more traditional construction techniques.

The built-up, 3D-printed body comprises everything that doesn’t move, doesn’t need to be clear, or doesn’t conduct electricity. Local Motor additions include the motor, battery, wiring, seats, windshield, suspension, wheels and tires, steering wheel, windows, and headlamps. AMT touts the American nature of the operation. France’s Renault supplies much of the EV running gear, though, sourced from the components that go into its Twizy electric cars.

Could this be the future of automaking?

Ford’s River Rouge complex in Dearborn, MI, has 16 million square feet of factory space and can build several hundred thousand vehicles a year. A microprinter doesn’t need much more than the footprint of the car to operate, about 100 square feet, and can build a car every two days, if Strati is typical. (It’s a two-seater, smaller than most cars.) And it would be easy to configure different cars. Want more back seat room because you carry four adults a lot? Want extra headroom for someone who’s six-foot-six? All that is theoretically possible.Right now, custom-ordering is frowned upon or impossible with cars shipped in from overseas, especially Asia. The same mindset continues even now that they have factories in the US. American automakers will build to order, but it can take a couple months, and a lot of incentives or rebates cover only the cars in dealer stock. German automakers do a brisk business in custom-order and European delivery and the majority of Minis are sold built-to-order. But those are the minority.

If a regional facility or even your dealership printed the car of your dreams this week, it might change the nature of the car business. We’d say it’s for the better. Someone working an assembly line might feel differently.

Free Piston Engine

Toyota develops high-efficiency ‘free piston’ no-crankshaft combustion engine… to power an EV

There is probably no better chronicler into the full depth of American ingenuity than YouTube. Here one finds not just computer models for all manner of esoteric combustion engine designs, but actual working prototypes of them, often built by individuals. Big companies can also innovate here sometimes. A new free piston engine linear generator (FPEG) from Toyota Central in Maine is a case in point.

The piston is called “free” because there is no crankshaft. On its power stroke, the piston dumps its kinetic energy into the fixed windings which surround it, generating a shot of three-phase AC electricity. It can be run sparkless through a diesel cycle or run on standard gasoline. What has folks excited is the claimed thermal efficiency for the device — at 42% it blows away the engines used in cars today. Toyota’s demo engine, just 8 inches around and 2 feet long, was able to generate 15 hp. A two-cylinder model would be self-balancing and have much reduced vibration.

Not surprisingly, the valves are electrically operated and can therefore be better used to fine-tune the power delivery through the full range of the stroke. Speaking of strokes, the video indicates a two-stroke design, which might present a few problems for a road-worthy design. For one thing, emissions would be suspect. Nonetheless Toyota imagines that a twin unit design pumping out 20 kW could power a light electric vehicle at a cruise speed of 120 kph (75 mph).

Linear generators and linear combustion engines are nothing new. Shake-to-charge “Faraday” flashlights, smartphones, and even energy-harvesting backpacks are all standard fare, while single-acting direct power pistons have also seen action in applications as intriguing as power-assist boots for the Russian military. The trick is to get the two working efficiently in unison and that is the beauty of what Toyota appears has done. Considering that the piston is decelerated and re-accelerated at each end of the stroke, any mismatch between combustive power input and electromagnetic power extraction needs to be absorbed somewhere. Mechanical or air springs can help although there is still likely to be some efficiency loss.At the risk of adding some confusion, the device is technically an alternator as it generates AC. As (most) electric cars use 3-phase AC induction or “AC-like” 3-phase brushless DC motors, they could potentially run directly from the output of this device, perhaps save for some intermediary voltage and current conditioning. However, like standard car alternators, there will likely be DC conversion to charge the battery pack — unless Toyota has also secretly perfected the AC battery. There is still plenty of room to innovate here. Linear alternators are similar in design to linear motors, but one does not simply reverse the cycle to swap one into the other — there are certain control functions that need to be imposed on how the coils are energized in a motor. However that does not mean a multipurpose linear electric power device could not be constructed.

While this concept would not immediately be in the same class as the 740-hp electric wheel hub motor designs, it could still have its niche. There is no reason the engine couldn’t be scaled up to a larger footprint and bolder performance.