Judy's Homegrown Blog

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on January 17, 2012

It is not by accident that I started this website. All the pieces of my life came together to give me the impetus to get it started.

The article I wrote on fuel cells in 1997 was one piece of the puzzle. I was searching for cars that were non-polluting. ZEV’s, as they were called: Zero Emission Vehicles, were of great interest to me.

In 1997, Clinton had already given fuel cells his blessing. But he did not support the idea of challenging a polluting industry like petroleum in favor of a large-scale restructuring of the auto industry, which is the kind of leadership this country still sorely needs.

When Clinton was in office, Ballard Power in Canada was the premiere fuel cell company. Just before Bush got into office, I sold all the shares of Ballard Power I had because I knew he was an oil man and that stock would tank, which it did. Bush half-heartedly gave a nod to fuel cells, giving $1 billion toward their development, which is a lot like giving your college-age student about $200.00 toward his undergrad education. It’s just enough to buy a few books.

No president who is funded by special interests is ever going to stand up to the oil, gas, and auto industries and tell them they have to find another way. That’s exactly the kind of visionary power that is necessary to improve our economy and our ecology in one fell swoop. With a strong leader like that, all the capital of our TARP-bailed out hedge funders and bankers could finally realize a way to invest their money again, and these investments into a new automotive industry and new energy paradigms would be a win-win for both the investors and the Americans whom they would hire. That is, provided the investors cared about America and Americans, which remains to be seen.

I just wanted to prove to you that I was interested in this technology before it ever got squashed by the powers that be in the oil and automotive industry.

After Ballard Power’s stock tanked, they were desperate for cash. They ended up getting sold, piece by piece, to automobile companies. Did they flourish? Answer me this: have you ever heard of Ballard Power fuel cells being successfully used by such auto leaders as Daimler Chrysler or Honda? It’s not for lack of technology that these things aren’t promoted; it’s lack of will. The oil industry is too lucrative to allow a fuel cell renaissance.

When Kennedy backed the space program to get to the moon, his speech was impassioned and roused the entire country to do things “not because they are easy but because they are hard”. We need a president who can bring the country together again, and inspire people to reach beyond their grasp. As Walt Disney once said “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.”

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on January 16, 2012

This is the fourth and final part of a Fuel Cell article I wrote in 1997, reviewing alternative energy for automobiles.

The Best of All Technologies

What kind of car will be in your garage ten years from now? That’s a difficult question to answer at this stage. One thing is certain, however: there will be more choices than ever. Many experts believe that hybrids are the solution.

Hybrids are cars that use more than one technology. Right now, the types of hybrids auto manufacturers are dabbling in have both a gasoline engine and a battery-run engine. In the future, they may combine a chemical battery with a power flywheel to offer faster acceleration, better performance on hills, and longer range.

Furia sees a future with flywheel batteries which work in tandem with solar cells.

A fuel cell car wouldn’t work too well without a battery because fuel cells take a while to “warm up.” How about a fuel cell car with a battery and a flywheel? It’s a possibility, according to Eastwood at Trinity Flywheel.

In ten years, you’ll probably go to a car dealer and the first thing he’ll ask is: what kind of engine would you like? In twenty years, as mass production drives down the cost of these alternatives, perhaps the tuk-tuk drivers of Bangkok will be trading in their two-cylinder polluters for an electric cart. They might also be able to hang up their cotton face masks forever.

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on January 15, 2012

This is the third part of a Fuel Cell article I wrote in 1997, reviewing alternative energy for automobiles.

Fuel Cells and Hydrogen: The Clean, Green, Machine

One of the most green vehicles of the future may run on fuel cells. As Bob Sikorsky, Automotive Columnist with the NY Times Syndicate says, “The fuel cell . . . is going to be the widespread technology at some time.”

The beauty of fuel cells is that they produce electricity silently, without combustion. Fuel cells run off one of the cleanest fuel sources available: hydrogen. “When you [use] hydrogen your by-product is water and you can’t get any cleaner emission than that,” says Sikorsky.

Two companies that develop fuel cells have partnered with major auto manufacturers: Ballard Power Systems of Vancouver and Plug Power of Latham, NY. A plethora of other research and development companies are involved in fuel cells, more than can be addressed in this article.

Daimler-Benz and Ford now hold 20% and 15%, respectively of Ballard Power Systems Inc. In September, Daimler-Benz debuted the world’s first methanol-fueled fuel cell passenger car at the Frankfurt Auto Show.  Designed like the Mercedes-Benz A-Class subcompact, the car is called a NECAR III (New Electric Car 3).

Since fuel cells run on hydrogen, the methanol must first be converted to hydrogen. The NECAR III has an on-board methanol reformer which itself creates some emissions, though negligible compared with an ICE’s emissions. They expect a commercialized vehicle to be ready in the year 2004.

Arthur D. Little, a Boston based energy consulting firm, will work with Plug Power, Chrysler, and GM to develop gasoline-fueled cars which have on-board converters and run off of fuel cells. Their deadline is the year 2005, but they feel they have a distinct advantage using today’s infrastructure for petrol. When gasoline is burned “on-board” a vehicle to produce hydrogen, it gives off one tenth the emissions of an ICE, according to Jeff Bentley, VP of Technology at Arthur D. Little.

For auto manufacturers to make completely Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEV’s), they must stop converting petrol and natural gas products on-board and rather store the hydrogen in tanks. If fuel cells power the car of the future it follows that hydrogen is the fuel of the future. Today’s researchers have to deal with several problems before on-board hydrogen becomes a reality.

Because hydrogen is “bulky,” today’s hydrogen tanks are large to hold enough fuel for a reasonable range of 200 to 300 miles. To solve this problem, researchers must first find a way to contain the hydrogen in smaller tanks or the efficiency of the fuel cell must be increased. “I can see that there needs to be a breakthrough in hydrogen storage before it can be used on-board as a fuel,” states Bentley.

Second, a large-scale infrastructure must be built (or converted from existing petrol equipment) to assure production and dissemination of hydrogen. According to Bentley, with the technology we have today, gas stations could set up a small hydrogen-generation system right on their lot, bypassing the need for costly transportation and storage.

Even if hydrogen were made at large plants, its transportation is safer than transporting oil. “It is less expensive to move hydrogen across the continent as a compressed gas by pipeline than an equal amount of electrical energy. Liquid hydrogen is the safest and most economical choice for moving energy across oceans” states the American Hydrogen Association on its website. If hydrogen were the fuel of today, we would not be reading headlines about oil spills on the ocean. We could also lessen our dependence on oil sources from the Middle East.

Hydrogen can be produced from sunshine and water or such unlikely resources as sewage, landfill, garbage, and paper waste products. Hydrogen can also be extracted from gasoline, methanol, alcohol, or natural gas.

The President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technologies (PCAST) has recommended in early November 1997 that the U.S. Energy Department’s hydrogen program needs “better articulated near-, medium- and long-term goals.” Their report to Clinton asserts that hydrogen as an energy carrier in the 21st Century is “of importance comparable to electricity.”

Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on January 14, 2012

This is the second part of a Fuel Cell article I wrote in 1997, reviewing alternative energy for automobiles.

Flywheels Surge Ahead

Rather than waiting for the USABC (United States Advanced Battery Consortium) to improve battery technology over five years, research companies are exploring flywheel technology. Flywheels fit easily into a car, operate quietly and cleanly, and work well with chemical batteries.

Flywheels continue spinning even while the car stands still because they float on frictionless magnetic bearings in a vacuum container. Unlike most batteries, flywheels may be quickly recharged and can quickly discharge thereby providing a surge of energy for acceleration while lessening the drain on a conventional battery. Flywheels easily capture the power produced by deceleration in the regenerative braking design.

One great benefit of the flywheel is that they “may extend the life of a battery significantly,” says J. Ray Smith, researcher at LLNL.

Lawrence Livermore National Labs and Trinity Flywheel Power of San Francisco are developing flywheels for use in stationary power applications. These same flywheels could be modified to fit in vehicles.

“There are two types of flywheels currently under development,” states Ed Furia, Chairman and CEO of American Flywheel Systems (AFS), “power flywheels and flywheel batteries.” The type of flywheels LLNL and Trinity are working on are power flywheels, whereas flywheel batteries actually create and store energy once they are set in motion via an outside power source, such as an electrical outlet or solar power.

AFS holds the first patent on the flywheel battery, an electro-mechanical battery that doesn’t require chemicals to store energy. Their goal is to design a ten-flywheel car that accelerates from 0 to 60 in 7 seconds and has a range of 300 miles, but doesn’t carry heavy chemical batteries at all. It should recharge fully in 25 minutes.

Furia says that their flywheel batteries shouldn’t have to be replaced, ever. Their only problem is, they don’t know if they will be able to maintain the charge in the flywheel battery for more than two days if left unplugged and undriven in a garage.

Other flywheel developers include Satcon Technology Corporation and U.S. Flywheel.

Since flywheels spin so rapidly, their rotors must be made out of material that won’t break apart and bust out of its container. According to Smith, “lightweight containment” is the biggest technological obstacle flywheel companies need to overcome. But Ed Furia, Chairman of AFS disagrees, saying, “all rotation machinery must be operated within a safe range. Many kind of high speed rotating machinery are operated without safety containment by keeping the device within its safe operating range, such as outboard motors on boats or jet engines.”

Flywheels must be rigorously tested in many “worse case scenarios” by varying spinning speed, destroying the chamber, causing rotor failure, or firing projectiles at the rotor, each done in hundreds of trials. This costs money. John Eastwood of Trinity Flywheel believes it would cost at least ten million dollars to do what is necessary before flywheels would be ready for mass production in automobiles, after having spent about as much already in research.

Ed Furia agrees, saying that getting the price of flywheels down by using economies of scale is the only solution to the cost of development.

Flywheels are at least three to five years away from being viable components in cars, even in the best of financial situations.

Batteries and flywheels in combination or flywheel batteries alone may be enough to solve most of our transportation needs. However, the electricity to recharge the batteries can be made either cleanly using wind, hydroelectric, natural gas, tides, water temperature variations, or solar sources; or it can be made with “dirty” power sources like nuclear or coal. In the near future, with the deregulation of utilities, each consumer will have a choice which sources meet with his/her philosophies or goals. For a list of green energy providers, call the California Energy Commission at 800-555-7794. They have information for consumers regarding credits you can get for buying green energy.