Green Building & Manufacturing Articles
BUILDING ELECTRIC CARS: A HOLISTIC APPROACH.
For the moment pure, battery electric vehicles, are the darlings of advanced vehicle developers. Though they have terrific shortcomings – range and high cost – both related to batteries, vehicle makers are flocking to battery electrics.
Why?
One of the reasons battery electrics may be so popular with automakers large and small is the combination of simplicity and zero emissions. Compared with conventional vehicles electrics have fewer parts. Fewer parts mean easy development. Fewer parts may mean lower cost in the future if manufacturers can get battery costs down. Zero emissions, of course, are just that, zero, no need to worry about current and future emissions regulations.
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Battery 500 Project Charged Up over All-Electric Cars
The project is progressing with its goal of boosting the range of rechargeable batteries for all-electric cars to 500 miles.
The Battery 500 Project recently held its kickoff meeting at IBM's Almaden Laboratory in San Jose, Calif., where leading scientists, engineers and other experts brainstormed about how to perfect the power source for all-electric automobiles. (See the video.)
As a part of IBM's 2-year-old Big Green Innovations program, the Battery 500 Project aims to boost the range of rechargeable batteries for all-electric cars from less than 100 miles today to as far as 500 miles. The consortium's efforts are being led by the Almaden Lab in collaboration with several U.S. universities and the Department of Energy's national labs.
Lithium-air batteries are unique in that instead of being a sealed system, they couple to atmospheric oxygen-essentially harnessing the oxygen in the air as the cathode of the battery. Since oxygen enters the battery on-demand, it offers an essentially unlimited amount of reactant, metered only by the surface area of its electrodes. IBM believes its nanoscale semiconductor fabrication techniques can increase the surface area of the lithium-air battery's electrodes by at least 100 times, enabling them to meet the goals of the project.
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Sinautec to Showcase America's First Zero-Carbon Mass Transit Vehicle
WASHINGTON, D.C. September 30, 2009 --/WORLD-WIRE/-- Sinautec Automobile Technologies, LLC and the American University (AU) will showcase America's first ultracapacitor electric vehicle during a press conference and demonstration on October 21, 2009 from 10 AM to 5PM on AU's campus in Washington, DC.
Sinautec will display and demonstrate an eleven-seat minibus, powered by state-of-the-art ultracapacitors, and charged by a 5,000 watt mobile solar unit. Ultracapacitor vehicles consume no fossil fuels, produce no tailpipe emissions, and are cost competitive compared to similar buses running on conventional fuels.
"With a combination of advanced solar and ultracapacitor technologies, Sinautec seeks to demonstrate the certainty of a zero-carbon future for the US public transportation sector," said Dan Ye, Sinautec's CEO. Unlike battery-powered vehicles, ultracapacitor vehicles can be charged within minutes, and have important applications in municipal and campus transportation, shuttle services, tourism and recreation, he added.
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N.C. smart grid pilot cuts usage 20%
A smart grid pilot project in Fayetteville, N.C., has resulted in an initial 20 percent decline in average electricity consumption, according Consert, a Raleigh, N.C. technology company.
Those numbers are based on the first month of the project, a joint effort between Consert and I.B.M. that installed energy management systems for 100 residential and business customers of the Fayetteville Public Works Commission, the local utility.
Consert attached controllers on hot water heaters, air conditioners and pool pumps and then let customers go online and set targets for their monthly electricity bill. Smart meters and a wireless communications system provide real-time electricity consumption data to allow the utility to cycle appliances on and off to achieve the savings and help it manage peak demand.
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History in The Making? The Race Is On: Philips Enters First Contestant for L Prize
The Department of Energy's Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize (L Prize) competition has received its first entrant: a product from Philips Electronics.
Philips has developed, manufactured and will bring to market an LED replacement for the common 60W incandescent light bulb. Philips developed this product in response to DOE's industry-wide challenge, and was today recognized by DOE as the first company to submit an entry.
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A Splash Of Graphene Improves Battery Materials
ScienceDaily (Sep. 24, 2009) - Researchers would like to develop lithium-ion batteries using titanium dioxide, an inexpensive material. But titanium dioxide on its own doesn't perform well enough to replace the expensive, rare-earth metals or fire-prone carbon-based materials used in today's lithium-ion batteries.
To test whether graphene, a good conductor on its own, can help, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Gary Yang and colleagues added graphene, sheets made up of single carbon atoms, to titanium dioxide.
When they compared how well the new combination of electrode materials charged and discharged electric current, the electrodes containing graphene outperformed the standard titanium dioxide by up to three times. Graphene also performed better as an additive than carbon nanotubes.
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New Findings Could Help Hybrid, Electric Cars Keep Their Cool
ScienceDaily (Sep. 23, 2009) - Understanding precisely how fluid boils in tiny "microchannels" has led to formulas and models that will help engineers design systems to cool high-power electronics in electric and hybrid cars, aircraft, computers and other devices.
Allowing a liquid to boil in cooling systems dramatically increases how much heat can be removed, compared to simply heating a liquid to below its boiling point, said Suresh Garimella, the R. Eugene and Susie E. Goodson Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University.
However, boiling occurs differently in tiny channels than it does in ordinary size tubing used in conventional cooling systems.
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Webcast examines BIM virtues, challenges
Building Information Modeling is all the rage these days. At least, that's one conclusion you could draw after more than one thousand people took part in Reed Construction Data's 'Lessons in BIM Adoption' webcast Sept. 23.
More than 250 questions were submitted during the course of the webcast from an audience that included architects, contractors, subcontractors, engineers, manufacturers and those in finance.
BIM uses three-dimensional, real-time, dynamic modeling software to share data for building design and construction.
The technology incorporates building geometry, spatial relationships, geographic information, and quantities and properties of building components.
BIM will "change processes, relationships, and responsibilities for everyone involved in design, construction, manufacturing, facilities management and operations," said Dennis Neeley, product director with Reed Construction Data, and one of the panelists on the webinar.
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