We are not helpless in the face of ever-increasing oil prices. Had we continued investing in alternative energy after the first oil shock faded (back in the 70’s—remember when?) we would not have the same problem we do today. But today, we have nanotechnology which offers real solutions.
Chapter 10 of my book,
The Nanotech Pioneers: Where are they taking us? is titled
Mega-Sized Projects that Could Use Tiny Technology: Three Somewhat Grandiose Projects. One of the three was energy independence. The following was adapted from that section:
The United States of America gets about half of its energy needs from overseas in the form of petroleum products. This has warped the nation’s foreign policy, seriously damaged its balance of payments, and arguably cost the lives of more than 2400American soldiers (and counting) and tens of thousands of of Iraqis. Other industrialized nations, though less warlike than the U.S., are more or less in the same boat. Japan, for instance, has almost no energy resources. Rapidly developing nations like India and China have aggravated the competition for energy. Even so, only a tiny proportion of the population of these two giants yet lives in a manner comparable to householders in Europe or the U.S. If economic growth continues in Asia the way that it has for another decade or more, it is scarcely possible to imagine where the energy will come from.
The over-reliance on carbon based fuels is apparently responsible for the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and oceans, which is in turn causing a green-house effect increase in temperature—global warming. The increase in Asian consumption has made the modest and probably unattainable goals of the Kyoto Treaty in cutting the use of carbon fuel sources in the West completely inadequate to the task of forestalling global warming. The U.S. Department of Energy has determined that approximately 80 percent of all human-caused carbon dioxide emissions currently come from fossil fuel combustion and that world carbon dioxide emissions are projected to rise from 6.1 billion metric tons carbon equivalent in 1999 to 9.9 billion metric tons in 2020. The growth of human population carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and global warming seem to be inextricably linked.
One way to cut this linkage is to reduce the usage of carbon-based fuels, or possibly, to create the carbon fuels that we do use directly from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
In the foreseeable future, nanotechnology is not likely to eliminate the use of petroleum based energy source, but it is possible that we can seriously reduce consumption, in part by increasing the energy efficiency of the products we use, and in part by increasing the use of solar-based (or possibly fusion based) energy. The goal of this energy challenge would be the reduction in the use of petroleum-based fuels by 50% by 2025.
Energy is supplied to the inhabitants of Planet Earth in at least four different forms:
1) Solar energy
2) Gravitational energy
3) Geothermal energy
4) The atomic energy within matter.
Petroleum can be thought of as stored solar energy; oil is the organic residue of ancient photosynthetic plants. Some natural gas deposits may have other origins as methane was part of the atmosphere of the prebiotic earth. Either way, these fuels are being used far more quickly than they can be replaced.
The world demand for carbon-based energy (oil, natural gas, coal, tar shale) is about 200 billion barrels oil equivalents. The demand is expected to rise to 300 billion barrels by 2100. Oil production will peak around 2020, and only by a heavy switch to coal can energy consumption be sustained through 2050. After that, every known source of carbon-based fuels will decline rapidly. In 2005, oil prices traded at times at their nominal all-time high (not-inflation adjusted) from $50 to $60 dollar per barrel (in recent weeks it has surpassed $70/barrel). In times past, the Saudi Arabians have increased production to keep oil prices at “reasonable” levels but it is doubtful that the kingdom has enough excess capacity to do so any more.
Wind energy and hydroelectric power are also ultimately brought about the power of the sun to warm the atmosphere, causing wind currents, and the transfer of water by evaporation and condensations.
The earth’s tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon. These have been used in a small way to generate energy through the use of turbines that run on tidal flows. Likewise, a small amount of energy has been captured from geothermal heat by injecting water into the earth and using the steam that comes out to power turbines.
Atomic energy comes in two forms: fission and fusion. Fission is the result of the destruction high atomic weight molecular elements, like plutonium, as exemplified by the atomic bomb. Atomic energy plants in use today run off the energy obtained by splitting the atom. At one time, it was assumed that atomic energy would be extraordinarily cheap. However, safety concerns and long term costs, like disposal and storage of radioactive waste have undermined these rosy assumptions.
Fusion of small atomic weight atoms can also result in the release of extraordinary amounts of energy. This is the basis of the hydrogen bomb. Fusion has yet to be controlled sufficiently well to allow a safe and efficient fusion reactor for creating electricity.
The world could consume a great deal less energy if we used the energy that we do need more efficiently. I was treated to an illustration of the problem once outside a hotel room in Las Vegas. The temperature inside my room was about 72 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature in the desert surrounding Las Vegas was about 96 degrees. But the temperature in the breezeway outside my motel room was easily 110. To make my motel room cool, it was necessary to pump the excess heat somewhere, which is to say, immediately outside the room. This build-up of heat in the breezeway had the effect of instantly increasing the heat gradient against which the air conditioner had to pump. The air conditioners for all of the motel rooms were mounted in the windows and were trying to pump heat into essentially the same space. Add to my motel the hundreds of others like it in Las Vegas and it is easy to see why the city of Las Vegas is almost always hotter than the desert that surrounds it. Not that anybody cares, because almost nobody hangs around outside. Las Vegas proves that humankind could adapt to orbiting space communities as long as we are generously supplied with booze, half-naked ladies and gambling opportunities.
Heat islands exist in all major cities, like New York or Tokyo. We are not just heating up the environment through the carbon dioxide-mediated greenhouse effect; we are doing so directly with the excess heat from air conditioning, manufacturing, and internal combustion machines, not to mention our hot, sulfurous bodies. In 2004, Tokyo, a city set on a windswept island at the edge of the North Pacific, set a record temperature of over 103 degrees Farenheit. For the most part, this was not global warming at work. It was Tokyo heating itself. If we could capture and use the energy of waste heat, or better yet, eliminate waste heat, we would be along way down the road to energy independence.
What can nanotech do? Perhaps many things. A workshop held in March of 2004 on the subject sponsored by the Nanoscale Science, Engineering and Technology Subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council came up with a total of nine basic ways that nanotechnology aid in either improving energy efficiency or providing power. They are listed in the table below.
ENERGY GRAND CHALLENGE RESEARCH TARGETSScalable methods to split water with sunlight for hydrogen production
Highly selective catalysts for clean and energy-efficient manufacturing
Harvesting of solar energy with 20 percent power efficiency and 100 times lower cost
Solid-state lighting at 50 percent of the present power consumption
Super-strong light-weight materials to improve efficiency of cars, airplanes, etc.;
Reversible hydrogen storage materials operating at ambient temperatures
Power transmission lines capable of 1 gigawatt transmission
Low-cost fuel cells, batteries, thermoelectrics, and ultra-capacitors built from nanostructured materials;
Materials synthesis and energy harvesting based on the efficient and selective mechanisms of biology
Source: Nanoscience Research for Energy Needs: Report of the Nanotechnology Initiative Grand Challenge Workshop, held March 16-18, 2004At present, one of the major uses, by dollar volume, of nanotechnology is employment of nanoscale catalysts in petroleum distillation. Materials that have little or no catalytic activity in bulk form can deliver exceptional catalytic behavior in nanoscale form. In part, this is due to surface effects.
In February of 2005, a transportation company called The Stagecoach Group announced that it would began using a nanoparticle-based catalyst in its 7000 vehicle fleet. Called Envirox, this cerium oxide containing nanoparticle is manufactured by Cerulean International, a subsidiary of Oxonica Ldt. It has been recognized for some time that cerium oxide could give a cleaner burning fuel, but until nanoparticles could be manufactured, the catalyst simply settled out to the bottom of the gas tank. Nanoparticles are small enough to stay in solution. The catalyst increases fuel efficiency by 5%, not an answer to the world’s energy problems by any means, but at least an incremental improvement. Not a great leap forward perhaps, but a technological advance that is ready for deployment.
The late Richard Smalley, co-discoverer of the buckyball, has proposed an elaborate system to solve the world energy crisis that would require something on the order of an Apollo project to put in place. Students need to be inspired to enter the sciences as they were after the launch of Sputnik was revealed. “Be a scientist,” said Smalley, “Save the world.” He has proposed a tax on gasoline of 5 cents per gallon to finance his program.
Smalley proposed the transfer of carbon based forms of energy—coal, oil and gas--around the globe be largely eliminated. Instead, energy could be produced locally and transmission of energy would be in form of electricity through large power grids. Of course, we already have power grids all over the world, with varying degrees of reliability. One of the problems with “wheeling” power from one region to another has always been the dissipation of energy through heat loss in the wires. A kilowatt of power bought in St. Louis is not really a kilowatt anymore by the time it arrives in New York City. Smalley’s solution is to rewire the electrical grids with cables made from carbon nanotubes. These, he points out, have far greater conductivity than copper with one-sixth the weight; they have thermal conductivity of diamond, and are theoretically the strongest fibers it is possible to make. “Quantum wire” made from carbon nanotubes, said Smalley, would have negligible “eddy current” loss and should allow a vast improvement in the efficiency of energy transmission.
Another aspect of Smalley’s energy revolution would be the development through nanotech of ways to generate and store energy locally. Deregulation of the energy markets in many parts of the U.S. already allows some consumers to generate electricity through wind power, biomass conversion, or cogeneration and sell it back to the grid. A sticking point is that there is currently no good way to store large volumes of energy. If there were, it would be possible to generate power during periods of low demand and sell it during periods of high demand, thus optimizing the system.
Electricity use accounts for about one-third of total energy consumption in the United States and presumably, in the rest of the industrialized world About 20% of all electricity consumed goes for lighting. However, today’s lighting is remarkably inefficient. Incandescent lights have a luminous efficiency of 15 lumens/watt and fluorescents a luminous efficiency of 80 lumens/watt. Only about 5% of electrical energy used in incandescent bulbs is converted into light. Florescent lights are better (if you can stand the flickering and the hum), but still have an efficiency of 25%. These are mature technologies that have been pushed about as far as they can go. It is anticipated that the use of LEDS for general lighting could increase overall efficiency by 50%.
Monochrome LEDs are achieving energy efficiencies as high as 50 percent in the red and on the order of 20-25 percent in the blue. LEDs are already 10 times more energy efficient than their incandescent counterparts. They have already replaced over one third of the traffic lights in the U.S., saving about $1000 per intersection per year in electricity. Achieving acceptable white light for general illumination requires an efficient blue LED, which doesn’t exist yet.
Thin-film polymer based LEDS are still too energy inefficient to be competitive with white light, but the technology is only a few years old, and it is expected that further refinements could push it past phosphorescent lights. As polymer LEDS come in colors, so three colors that add up to white light must be used. Quantum dots based LEDs are another possibility. Cree Research has produced a white light LED using nanocrystalline quantum dots as phosphors. Quantum dots are still very expensive to manufacture, however.
Nanotech would allow new ways of using the sunlight to generate power, including improved photovoltaics (solar panels). For instance, polymers in nanoscale thin layers can be used to generate electricity in response to light; the reverse action of the polymer LEDs invented by Cambridge Display Technologies.
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Photoelectric power can also used to liberate hydrogen from water; the hydrogen could then be used in fuel cells. Hydrogen, as a fuel, suffers from a couple of problems: 1) it is very explosive; and 2) it is the lightest element and exists as a gas at normal temperatures. In order to store it, it has traditionally been necessary to either cool it to extremely low temperatures or to force it a high pressure into reinforced containers. An alternative involves absorbing hydrogen onto nanoscale surfaces. Carbon nanotube have been proposed as “molecular sponges” to hold hydrogen under relatively low pressure to allow the manufacture of hydrogen-burning vehicles. Researchers from BASF have developed “nanocubes” which are crystalline structures with a very high surface area. These, they believe, could be used to store hydrogen for use in fuel cells used to power consumer devices, such as cell phones and laptop computers. The corners of nanocubes are composed of zinc linked by organic acid molecules into a kind of grid or lattice. Because the hydrogen is adsorbed to a surface, it actually occupies much less space than it would as a gas and requires less pressure to keep it contained.
Nanosys, a California-based nanotech firm, is also creating nanomaterial-based fuel cells in collaboration with Japanese consumer electronics company, Sharp Corporation. Nanosys has also received a $14 million contract from DARPA to create flexible, low cost solar cells.
A U.S. government program, “the Freedom Car” has been initiated to deliver a prototype hydrogen fuel cell powered car in five years. If an economical way can be found to deliver and store hydrogen, such a car is much to be desired as the combustion of hydrogen yields water, rather than hydrocarbons. There has been much speculation about a “hydrogen economy” that will supersede the carbon fuels era. But first, of course, a way has to be found to generate hydrogen without using carbon fuels as the ultimate energy source.
Altair Nanotechnologies and Hydrogen Solar are collaborating to make a photon-powered hydrogen generation system using nanomaterials. They are collaborating on a product called a Tandem Cell, that utilizes thin-film metal oxides. These thin film use the energy provided by ultraviolet and blue light to generate electron-hole pairs. Longer wave light passes into the second part of the device called a Graetzel cell, to create a voltage potential. The Graetzel cell employs a thin- film of titanium dioxide with a dye superimposed. Together, the twin cells create a kind of battery continuously recharged by solar energy. The current generated is used to electrolytically split water into hydrogen and oxygen The companies estimate that a garage roof could provide sufficient surface to create enough fuel to drive a car about 11,000 miles a year.
The 1st law of thermodynamics prevents you from obtaining more energy from hydrogen than you invest in order to obtain them, but if the energy source you invest comes from the sun, these are potentially very cheap sources of energy. Researches at Virginia Polytechnic and Virginia State universities are working at on a supramolecular complex that uses energy from light catalyze extraction of hydrogen from water
Penn State University researchers have used titanium nanotubes to collect ultraviolet light and use its energy to extract the hydrogen in water. The efficiency of UV energy capture was 97%, a very high number, but the efficiency of hydrogen extraction was only 6.8%. Plus the process wastes the 95% of sunlight that is not in the ultraviolet range.
Green energy
Back in the 1970s, a University of San Diego biology professor named Gordon Sato (whose efforts vastly improved the practice of mammalian cell culture) came up with an idea to solve what was then believed to be an urgent energy crisis—called by President Jimmy Carter “the moral equivalent of war.” Sato proposed that an unused portion of the California desert should be flooded to a depth of six inches or so and then seeded with photosynthetic algae that had the ability to synthesize hydrocarbons, using carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as a carbon source. The algae could simply be harvested, and the hydrocarbons extracted.
Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith and Craig Venter, who were largely responsible for directing the privately financed human genome project at Celera Genomics, have come up with a new twist on Sato’s idea. Smith is head of the Synthetic Biology Group at the J. Craig Venter Institute. They intend to co-opt a minimal genome from a type of mycoplasma, a small bacteria. The idea is to create a synthetic genome, which they will introduce into an artificial cell. The organism would only have only the genes required to maintain and reproduce itself. They will then adapt this microbe for other purposes. The Synthetic Biology Group is engineering new pathways that could lead to new methods of carbon sequestration; e.g. taking carbon dioxide out of the air. Their stated goal is to create a bio-derived alternative energy source. Cognizant of potential ecological damage, the team is developing only synthetic organisms that completely lack the ability to survive outside the lab
Solazyme, an entrepreneurial company backed by Harris & Harris, among others, is investigating ways of converting carbon dioxide into carbon fuel compounds through the use of photosynthetic organisms. So far, they have released few details about their research program.
Shuguang Zhang at MIT and his research collaborators have integrated a protein complex derived from spinach chloroplasts with organic semiconductors to make a solar cell that could be combined with solid state electronics.
Chloroplasts are the organelles in plants cells that are packed with chlorophyll—the molecule that makes plants green and allows them to photosynthesize. Zhang's team managed to artificially stabilize the protein complex at the heart of their system - comprised of 14 protein subunits and hundreds of chlorophyll molecules - using synthetic peptides to bind small amounts of water to it, within a sealed unit. Plants use photons, to excite coupled pairs of electrons within chlorophyll, causing an electron to transfer to a nearby receptor molecule. Energy thus extracted from the sun allows plants to convert carbon dioxide into sugar molecules. The device developed by Zhang uses the same process to feed electrons into organic semiconductors. Right now Zhang’s green solar cell is more of a research project than a practical device because of its limited stability and low efficiency.
Manhattan Project on Energy?
Massive, imaginative projects have the potential to inspire rapid advances in technology. Classic examples are the Manhattan project, which led to the atomic bomb, the Apollo project, which led to the first men on the moon, and more recently, the Human Genome Project, which led to the complete sequencing of the human genetic complement. Megaprojects like these focus finance, project management, and scientific talent toward the realization of specific goals. Can you imagine what we could do if even 1% of the real cost of oil was invested in finding long-term energy solutions? Powerful political and economic forces, however, protect the status quo. Expect more blathering about switchgrass and useless subsidies of ethanol. When all other options fail, poltiticans and nations will begin to act rationally.
