Engineers Forum

Annoyingly tiny fridges may not be restricted to hotels or dorm rooms much longer. A new study proposes a way to construct the smallest refrigerator yet, based on just a few particles and capable of cooling to near absolute zero.

The study, which will appear in an upcoming issue of Physical Review Letters, pushes the limits of how small a cooling device can get and still remain functional.

“When thermodynamics was first invented, it was applied to big, steam engine sorts of things,” says physicist Tony Short of the University of Cambridge in England, who was not involved in the study. “The fact that you can bring the ideas all the way down to individual quantum systems of tiny dimensions and the same basic ideas still work is quite nice.”

Study coauthors Noah Linden, Sandu Popescu and Paul Skrzypczyk, all of the University of Bristol in England, propose a cooling scheme that relies on three linked qubits — particles that can exist in one of two states. Two of these qubits make up the refrigerator and would be held in two different heat baths: one very hot and one near room temperature. The third qubit is the object to be cooled. Because these qubits share a quantum connection, they can influence one another. So, as the hottest qubit absorbs energy from its toasty bath, it triggers the tepid qubit to siphon energy off the third qubit, cooling it. This extra energy dissipates off the second qubit in the same way the coil at the back of a refrigerator in the kitchen emits heat.

In their calculations, the physicists found that as the bath of the hottest qubit got hotter, the cooling ability of the fridge got better. And in principle, as long as the heat bath stays hot, the system can run forever. “Once you set it up, it just sits there, gently cooling away,” Linden says.

Other small systems have been created, but this is the first that doesn’t rely on external mechanisms, such as sophisticated lasers. “The whole guts of the fridge, it’s all accounted for and not hidden in some macroscopic object which is really doing the work,” Linden says.

Linden and his team also propose an even smaller system, in which a single particle with three distinct levels of quantum information, called a qutrit, acts as the refrigerator. “We believe this is the smallest possible thing you can call a fridge,” Linden says.

Physicist Nicolas Gisin of the University of Geneva says the new study is “extremely elegant. It opens a totally new avenue for interesting questions, combining thermodynamics and quantum information science in a very original way.”

The researchers plan to collaborate with other groups to settle on an exact blueprint for the minifridge and to build it. In the future, a tiny fridge might be used to slow or speed up reactions between proteins in cells by cooling precise parts, or to keep delicate components in quantum computers frigid.

A particularly fascinating question is whether such fridges might already exist in nature, Gisin says. For instance, a sun-drenched plant could have molecules with one end sitting directly in a natural thermal bath, allowing a tiny refrigerator to cool the other end.

Linden and his colleagues also find that idea exciting, but he’s careful to point out that so far, it’s just an idea. “We don’t want to claim that we know of a place where this happens,” he says. “But it would be great if someone came up with a molecule and said, ‘Look at this. Doesn’t it have the characteristics you need?’ We’d be really, really happy if that happened.”

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/62734/title/Very_tiny%2C_very_cool

Howard Chapman, editor, writes…
ISG is to help build a Victorian ‘energy house’ for Salford University, which is working with BRE to research how to improve terraced housing built in the UK during the pre-First World War housing boom. These homes account for 23 per cent of domestic carbon emissions in the UK. The replica house will be built inside a three-storey sealed testing unit. This will be used to examine the real impact on environmental performance of potential changes to the structure under various climactic conditions.

ISG believes the experiment could prove hugely influential for homeowners, landlords and maintenance and refurbishment companies. The university hopes to have the initial results announced at the UK’s first conference on ‘sustainability and retro-fitting’, which it is hosting in January. I would be interested in attending this to get some feedback for Buildingtalk readers.

Sustainability is also having an impact on building materials through the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), which encourages companies to measure the amount of CO2 produced per tonne of manufactured product. GRI seeks to make sustainability reporting by all organisations as routine as, and comparable to, financial reporting. Cemex UK, for example, announced last week that it has made a 10 per cent reduction in CO2 in 2009 based on this measure, which is quite an achievement

This week we feature a raft of heating, air-conditioning and ventilating products that boast sustainability gains. These include the Unico System Green Series air-handler unit, which saves more than 10 per cent of input energy; the Johnson and Starley whole house mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery; and the Ambiflo air source heat pump, which offers a solution for pre-heating mains cold water that can significantly reduce carbon emissions and running costs within commercial and industrial buildings. All these and more are summarised below. You can follow the links to read more or, where available, to download the relevant literature.

Finally, I have included a project story from Waterloo Air Products, which designs and manufactures a wide range of air-conditioning systems. It features its diffusers that have been installed inside the Hotel Verta, Europe’s first integrated hotel heliport solution. I pass this new building at Bridges Wharf in Battersea when I’m cycling along the river Thames in London. It is an impressive site. I mean the hotel heliport, not the ageing overweight editor cycling to work as part of his contribution to reducing CO2 emissions in the city.

Texas, United States Demand for wind energy is down. Valuations of wind farms are decreasing. And competition is getting more fierce. It’s a tough market out there – so what is a wind company to do? Innovate.
Innovation isn’t always the easiest thing to pursue in a bad economy. It can be next to impossible to bring new technologies to market when investors are skittish about financing even the most well-established ones. But many of the major wind players agree that now is the best time to focus on improving technologies and differentiating products.

The companies that choose to innovate will come out of the economic malaise in a strong position. Those that don’t will likely fall behind in the race to compete with fossil energies.

“We’ve been working on a lot of things. We’re taking a multi-pronged approach,” says Wally Lafferty, head of the Vestas Americas R&D program. “We’re expanding operations and hiring all kinds of people.”

Two years ago, Vestas opened an R&D facility in Houston, a city rich with aeronautical engineers. The facility is focused on aerodynamics, electro-magnetic machines, new blade designs and grid integration issues. Lafferty says that all the R&D efforts at Vestas revolve around one thing: Bankability.

“Ultimately, we need to drive down the cost of wind electricity so that it’s competitive,” he says.

Other companies like Siemens, GE and Statoil are undertaking similar internal pushes to expand R&D and push the limits of wind turbine size, location, weight and portability. This spring, Siemens released its new 3-MW direct-drive turbine. Vestas is also coming out with a new V112 3-MW machine and a 6-MW offshore machine. And the Norwegian oil and gas giant Statoil is continuing its $65 million program to develop a floating offshore unit for deep waters.

Developing new technologies in-house is one thing, but actually deploying them in the field is another. Some companies with new technologies ready for market are finding it difficult to move on projects.

“It doesn’t matter how good your innovation is, no one will put any money in a wind plant that uses new technology because of the perception that it increases financial risk,” says Fort Felker, director of the National Wind Technology Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Take American Superconductor (AMSC). The company has been working on high-temperature superconductors (HTS) — wires that can carry 150 times more electricity than copper — since the late 80′s. The superconductor power cables constructed with AMSC’s HTS wire can be deployed underground at roughly the same cost as conventional above-ground lines. The cables include distribution and transmission voltages and can be either AC and DC systems.

In the last 12 months, a couple of utilities in the U.S. pulled back on projects to develop cables with these wires.

“If it weren’t for the economic downturn, I’m pretty sure we would have had by now our first commercial contract for superconductor cables for urban applications here in the United States,” says Greg Yurek, Founder and CEO of AMSC.

AMSC recently signed a deal with LS Cable in Korea to deploy 30 miles of superconductors in the country. A number of Chinese companies have also expressed interest in the cables, says Yurek. But business in the U.S. has come to a halt.

AMSC continues to sell mechanical and electronic equipment for wind turbines, waiting for the U.S. market for superconductors to open back up. When it does, Yurek believes that his company will do a lot of business. AMSC was already picked by Tres Amigas LLC to provide $1 billion worth of the company’s DC voltage Superconductor Electricity Pipelines for a project that will unite America’s three power grids. (AMSC has a minority stake in the company). And when utilities start building out new transmission to accommodate wind farms, he says that business will increase further.

“We are confident that this will take off in the U.S.,” says Yurek. “It might happen in other countries first, but the U.S. will be an important market.”

AMSC is also working on a 10-MW direct-drive offshore wind turbine that features a generator with superconductor rotors, potentially making the machine lighter and more efficient. That turbine is still in the early R&D phase, however.

Despite the slowdown in business, AMSC — like most of the other leading wind companies — is trying to stay on top by thinking about innovation. It might be difficult to get projects in the ground today, but it will inevitably get easier as the economy improves. Companies must be prepared to deploy their technologies when the time is right.

For more on wind technology innovation from AMSC, NREL, Statoil and Vestas, listen to this week’s podcast linked above.

Source: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/podcast/2010/06/wind-r-d-why-its-more-important-than-ever
Written by Stephen Lacey, Podcast Producer
Published: 18 June 2010

California, United States — Carbon dioxide seems to be the evil nemesis in a world preoccupied with its contributions to climate change. The less CO2 you emit, it seems, the better citizen you are, and with good reason. But at algae-to-biofuel facilities across the nation, carbon dioxide is not only not the enemy, it’s an essential partner to helping achieve a low-carbon future.

CO2 — along with sunlight and water — is needed to grow algae, which can in turn produce oil, otherwise known as “oilgae” or “green crude.” While in its nascent stages, the “oilgae” industry is making strides toward commercial production, all while putting CO2 – designated a pollutant by the Environmental Protection Agency last year – to work as a needed, and yes, valuable, feedstock.

Using CO2 as a catalyst to grow algae is a more viable solution for what to do with the plentiful gas than, for example, sequestering and burying it underground, according to those in the industry. “Putting it underground will not create a market. Finding a way of turning [CO2] into something that can provide value will,” Tim Zenk, vice president of corporate affairs at Sapphire Energy, said.

“The potential is huge because at least in theory, it’s such a win-win. You’re using carbon that would otherwise be put into the atmosphere, and creating products,” Clint Wilder, senior editor with CleanEdge, said. CleanEdge recently issued a report highlighting as a “trend to watch” the role CO2 can play as a feedstock for various industries, including algal biofuels and cement production.

Green crude producer Sapphire, backed by Bill Gates’ Cascade Investment and Venrock, a venture capital firm of the Rockefeller family, successfully produced 91-octane gasoline from algae that fully conforms to ASTM certification standards in 2008, and last year participated in a test flight using algae-based jet fuel in a Boeing 737-800 twin-engine aircraft, according to its website. Sapphire’s algae production occurs in an open-pond system vs. a closed bioreactor. “We went with the open-pond approach because we didn’t see much advantage of closed, which can be very expensive. We needed to be competitive with fossil sources of oil … which is around $75-80 a barrel,” Zenk said.

After the algae is grown, the oil is extracted and refined in a typical refinery set-up. Even though burning the oilgae releases CO2 back into the atmosphere, “on a lifecycle basis, if CO2 is consumed during the algae process, our fuels are extremely low-carbon,” Zenk said. Compared to diesel, the amount of carbon is reduced by 68 percent over the lifecycle. He estimates that between 12 and 15 kilograms of CO2 are consumed per gallon of oil produced.

“A great rule of thumb is 1 kilogram of algae requires 2 kilograms of CO2,” Joanna Money, vice president of business development at Solix Biofuels, said. Solix has two facilities that produce algae, a research and development facility at Fort Collins, CO (which uses CO2 from nearby New Belgium Brewery), and a demonstration plant in southern Colorado. Solix’s closed bioreactor system provides five times the surface level exposure to sunlight compared with open-pond systems and seven times the biomass productivity, according to the company’s website.

Solix’s test environments currently yield peak rates in excess of 2,000 gallons per acre, per year, according to its website. In five years, “we will be working with partners to deploy commercial production modules to grow, harvest and extract algae,” Money said.

According to experts, microalgae can produce between 5,000 and 15,000 gallons of oil per acre per year. That hasn’t yet been done on a large scale. Sapphire recently received a $104-million grant from the Department of Energy to build a $135-million commercial demonstration facility in Columbus, NM. Construction on the Integrated Algal Bio-Refinery will begin this year. The 300-acre fully integrated cultivation-harvest-extraction facility will produce at least 1 million gallons per year of finished fuel when completed sometime in 2012, Zenk said. The company is committed to using anthropogenic sources of CO2.

“We need to take that technology to the next step after the commercial demonstration. If all goes well and the capital is available, we’re hoping to be in commercial production by 2018,” Zenk said. A commercial production facility would be able to produce between 5,000 and 10,000 barrels of finished fuel a day, he said. To put that in perspective, according to 2008 data from the Energy Information Administration, U.S. total crude oil production is 4,950,000 barrels per day, and U.S. petroleum consumption is 19,498,000 barrels per day.

Carbon Pricing Needed
While algal biofuels may not replace petroleum anytime soon, their production certainly represents a creative and viable solution for using up unwanted CO2, even to the point of creating a new commodity market for it. “The key is to actually have a price on CO2 emissions. Once carbon is actually priced, in terms of having to pay for emissions, you will see a market emerging,” Wilder said.

The Chicago Climate Exchange offers voluntary-but-binding contracts for trading carbon dioxide via a cap and trade system. CCX President Richard Sandor has publicly stated that carbon can become the largest commodity in the world.

But whether or not CO2 becomes a real commodity depends on legislation, Solix’s Money said. “Absent a price or market for carbon, or at least a carbon regime,” CO2 will not become a commodity, agreed Zenk. “There has to be a business out of the collection, distribution, and adding value to the carbon molecule.”

Algal biofuels isn’t the only industry finding ways to add value to the carbon molecule. Another industry with vast potential for using CO2 is cement production. One example is Los Gatos, CA-based Calera, backed by funding from Khosla Ventures. Calera’s Mineralization via Aqueous Precipitation process consumes CO2 from a nearby Dynegy-owned natural gas powerplant to produce calcium and magnesium carbonate and bicarbonate, the basic building blocks for cement. The process converts 1 ton of CO2 into 2 tons of building material. The result, according to Calera, is that it not only consumes CO2, but also avoids the release of carbon from traditional cement production.

The prospect of using CO2 to manufacture cement “is very exciting,” Wilder said. “It’s one of the most carbon-intensive products to make. The sheer volume of cement used around the world is mind-boggling.”

With carbon-capture industries like these gaining ground, it’s not hard to envision a future where CO2 is treated less as the enemy and more as an integral ingredient in the global economy. While a zero-carbon future is “hard to imagine,” Zenk said, “I think you’ll find [a] low-carbon [future.] We can win the war on climate if we think about it in those terms, at least in my lifetime.”

Janneke Pieters is a freelance writer on energy, electricity and other issues. She is the former associate editor of Electric Perspectives magazine, published by Edison Electric Institute.
Published: 22 June 2010
Source: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2010/06/using-carbon-to-fight-carbon?cmpid=WNL-Wednesday-June23-2010

A news has published on http://www.nce.co.uk which describes that ” 500,000 engineering and manufacturing workers will be needed in the coming eight years to satisfy demand in the transport, construction, aerospace and defence industries, according to EngineeringUK.”

If this is true and guessed right then engineers who are redundant or getting job seekers allowance should be happy that their tough time is going to end. The news in detail is as following:

“A new report highlights barriers to achieving the figure, which include an increasingly sparse pool of talent, a decline in engineering lecturers and fewer students studying for manufacturing and engineering degrees.
EngineeringUK predicts more than 350,000 skilled workers will be needed in the transport sector alone by 2017.
The construction industry will look to recruit almost 400,000, while 1,000 new apprentices and graduates will be required every year until 2025 to replace nuclear workers.
Chief executive of EngineeringUK, Paul Jackson, said: “We are calling for Government, business and education providers to work together to develop a clear road map for the UK engineering sector.
“Tax breaks and other regulatory incentives for small and medium-sized enterprises will play a significant part, but what really matters is a long-term strategy, detailing all major infrastructure projects for the foreseeable future and inspiring UK engineering with the confidence it needs to invest in new skills and technologies.
“Without the coherence and stability a clear roadmap will bring, the UK will not only miss out on the high-level manufacturing skills it needs to get the economy back on track but could also lose ground to other countries in many highly-competitive global markets.”