Archive for July 2010

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Titania–concrete combination in roadways reduces NOx levels 25-45%

Credit: TD/e

Credit: TU/e

Earlier this month, Jos Brouwers, a professor of building materials at Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands), reported that tests on a new stretch of roadway in the municipality of Hengelo indicate that concrete coated with titanium dioxide can significantly cut residual NOx automobile emissions, a major source acid rain and smog.

In a lecture at the school, Brouwers said that as part of a road resurfacing project, around 1,000 square meters of the road’s surface were covered with special concrete paving stones containing the titania. For comparison purposes, another area of 1.000 square meters was surfaced with normal concrete pavers.

Researchers took measurements at heights of between a half and one-and-a-half meters. The results were significant:

“Over the area paved with air-purifying concrete the NOx content was found to 25 to 45 per cent lower than that over the area paved with normal concrete. ‘The air-purifying properties of the new paving stones had already been shown in the laboratory, but these results now show that they also work outdoors,’ said professor Brouwers. Further measurements are planned later this year.”

The titania in the pavers photocatalytically converts removes the nitrogen oxides from the air and converts it into nitrate. The idea of using titania technology on concrete for roads and construction aren’t particularly new, but this is the first time I have seen measurements taken from an actual roadway.

The concrete stones were made by paving stone manufacturer Struyk Verwo Infra. Although they are available for sale, they cost about 50% more than their non-treated counterparts. However, Brouwers argues that these materials are only a relatively small part of the cost of road construction and that the use of these pavers effectively adds only 10% to the cost of a project. Thus, they may be cost-effective response in regions where maximum NOx emissions are being exceeded.

Brouwers also says the concrete can be combined with asphalt when an asphalt surface is preferred.

 

Materials stories that didn’t make the cut this week

At the end of each week, I end up with a list of a bunch of stories I started to write about, or started to investigate or didn’t even get that far even though the topic looked intriguing, but, I had a meeting to go to . . .

Anyway, it’s Friday, and rather than have these stories evaporate into the ether, I’ve decided to close out each week by providing some raw links to some of these orphan tales. Check ‘em out:

 

CO2 utilization gets another boost from DOE worth $106M

Late yesterday, the DOE announced that it is investing another $106 million in six projects to demonstrate the feasibility of employing CO2 in a useful, productive way. This announcement comes on the heels of a somewhat similar announcement of CO2 utilization funding made July 7.

There are two major differences, however, between these announcements. The first announcement amounted to only about $4.4 million in DOE money and the recipients are directly or indirectly based in academia. This newer announce supplies about 25 times more DOE money and is targeted at private sector projects. The DOE says its $106 million will leverage another $156 million in private cost-sharing.

The context of this is that most of the CO2 discussions have focused on sequestration and storage. Unfortunately, there are significant risks involved in most of the sequestration proposals. The obvious alternative route is to determine if there are cost-effective and less energy-intensive ways to use CO2 as a raw material for useful products and purposes. Here’s what the DOE says in its release:

“Converting captured CO2 into products such as chemicals, carbonates, plastics, fuels, building materials and other commodities is an important aspect of carbon capture and storage technology. Converting CO2 into other useful forms can help reduce carbon emissions in areas where long-term storage of CO2 is not practical. It is anticipated that large volumes of CO2 will be available as fossil fuel-based power plants and other CO2-emitting industries are equipped with CO2 emissions control technologies to comply with regulatory requirements.”

So, here are the six winning demonstration projects:

Company DOE Share
(millions)		 Project Description
Alcoa Inc. $12.0 To demonstrate the high efficiency conversion of flue gas CO2 into soluble bicarbonate and carbonate using an in-duct scrubber system featuring an enzyme catalyst. The product can be sequestered as solid mineral carbonates after reacting with alkaline clay, a by-product of aluminum refining, and used as construction fill material, soil amendments and green fertilizer.
Novomer Inc. $18.4 To demonstrate a process for CO2 into polycarbonate products (plastics) for use in the packaging industry. Novomer’s novel catalyst technology enables CO2 to react with petrochemical epoxides to create a family of thermoplastic polymers that are up to 50 percent by weight CO2. The product can be used in the manufacture of bottles, films, laminates, coatings on food and beverage cans, and in other wood and metal surface applications.
Touchstone Research Lab
 $6.2 To demonstrate an open-pond algae production technology that can capture at least 60 percent of flue gas CO2 from an industrial coal-fired source to produce biofuel and other high value co-products. A novel phase-change material will cover the algae pond surface to regulate daily temperature, reduce evaporation and control the infiltration of invasive species. Lipids extracted from harvested algae will be converted to a bio-fuel, and an anaerobic digestion process will be developed and tested for converting residual biomass into methane.
Phycal LLC $24.2 To demonstrate the production of liquid biocrude fuel from microalgae cultivated with captured CO2. The algal biocrude can be blended with other fuels for power generation or processed into a variety of renewable drop-in replacement fuels such as jet fuel and biodiesel.
Skyonic Corp. $25.0 To demonstrate a mineralization technology scrubber process  that transforms CO2 into solid carbonate and/or bicarbonate materials while also removing sulfur oxides, nitrogen dioxide, mercury and other heavy metals from flue gas streams of industrial processes.
Calera Corp. $19.9 To demonstrate a process that directly mineralizes CO2 in flue gas to carbonates that can be converted into useful construction materials, such as carbonate-containing aggregates suitable as construction fill or partial feedstock for use at cement production facilities.

It should be noted that this is actually a second round of funding for these companies. These six projects were among 12 projects selected for phase-one funding in October 2009.

 

50 R&D 100 Awards given to national labs

Ultrasensitive Nanomechanical Transducers Based on Nonlinear Resonance, one of ORNL’s 2010 R&D 100 award winners. (Credit: ORNL.)


R&D Magazine awarded DOE and other federal labs with 50 of its R&D 100 Awards. The awards, sometimes referred to as the “Academy Awards of Science,” are presented to those labs and companies that have been a major contributor to the development of “one of the 100 most technologically significant new products of 2010.”

“The large number of winners from the Department of Energy’s national labs every year is a clear sign that our labs are doing some of the most innovative research in the world. This work benefits us all by enhancing America’s competitiveness, ensuring our security, providing new energy solutions, and expanding the frontiers of our knowledge. Our national labs are truly national treasures, and it is wonderful to see their work recognized once again,” says Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

U.S. federal labs have a history of being highly recognized for technological developments and materials innovation through these awards. Here are the labs that are winners this year:

  • Ames National Lab
  • Argonne National Lab
  • Idaho National Lab
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
  • Lawrence Livermore National Lab
  • Los Alamos National Lab
  • NASA Glenn Research Center
  • National Energy Technology Lab
  • National Renewable Energy Lab
  • Oak Ridge National Lab
  • Pacific Northwest National Lab
  • Sandia National Lab
  • Army Engineer R&D Center

The biggest winner is the Lawrence Livermore National Lab which is recognized with 10 awards.

ACerS Corporate Member Toyota Central R&D Labs was also recognized by R&D Magazine for their Permanently Engaged Gear Starting Mechanism for Stop and Start System (Mechanical Devices).

All of the award winners can be seen here.

 

Cal Tech, LBNL, Stanford and UC Berkeley, San Diego and Santa Barbara get $122M for artificial photosynthesis

With today’s announcement that it will be using $122 million to launch a new energy hub on artificial photosynthesis, the DOE is making a sizable commitment to both renewable energy research and tackling greenhouse gases.

The new funding is to support a five-year multidisciplinary effort aimed, according to a DOE release, “to develop an integrated solar energy-to-chemical fuel conversion system and move this system from the bench-top discovery phase to a scale where it can be commercialized.

The hub, dubbed the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, will be overseen by DOE’s Office of Science and jointly led by Call Tech and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. In particular, JCAP will be lead by Nathan S. Lewis, Cal Tech (director); Bruce Brunschwig, Cal Tech; Peidong Yang, LBNL and UC Berkeley; and Harry Atwater, Cal Tech. Stanford University’s SLAC National Accelerator Lab and the University of California’s institutions at Berkeley, San Diego and Santa Barbara are also participating.

The DOE says JCAP will focus on developing light absorbing systems and materials, catalysts, molecular linkers and separation membranes. They expect that the end result will be a scalable direct solar fuels production system.

This is the second energy hub to be funded this year. The first hub is focusing on nuclear energy modeling and simulation. An announcement regarding funding for a third hub related to developing innovative energy-efficient building technologies, designs and systems is expected later this year.

 

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