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 June 2014

 

Greetings!    

 

While IRI has standard advocacy webpages in various places on the Internet (e.g., http://www.americanantigravity.com/link/integrity-research-institute or http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Integrity_Research_Institute), we have been surprised to find a carbon copy of the IRI website in Hong Kong at the "Institute of Energy" giving the public the impression that IOE is researching the same. I guess imitation is the best form of flattery that is apparently true for the Institute of Energy (IOE)  http://ioe.hk/ which we have never heard of until now. It looks like our books and products are represented fairly well and IRI is negotiating with the IOE for more candor, honesty, and acknowledgement.  

 

In the season of blockbusters, what better story for the FE eNews than a Star Trek style spaceship in a movie created with help from NASA? Our Story #1 has a hidden silver lining in that it also unveils the 100-year starship project as a joint agency endeavor along with a great explanation of faster-than-light travel. Engage warp engines!

 

Our Story #2 reveals the Navy has secretly been converting seawater into fuel since their jet fuel is so expensive anyways. However, a lot of seawater and an expensive catalyst is needed to make the hydrocarbon fuel but it is still cost-effective, especially where island seawater is abundant.

 

We like Story #3 a lot because there often is a raging controversy concerning nuclear power plants in this country and elsewhere, mainly because of the nuclear waste. What if a reactor could safely burn its own nuclear waste? The Transatomic Power company has been doing just that since 2011 with a molten salt reactor and help from ORNL, Westinghouse and Idaho National Lab. Watch the YouTube video from a recent TED conference and be amazed https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AAFWeIp8JT0

 

IRI often cites Germany as a leader in renewable energy. Now the latest achievement with Story #4 is the 24 GW of energy produced from solar power on June 6, 2014, and the total of 1.26 TWh of electricity from solar power, both of which broke a record. 

 

Continuing the solar power theme, Story #5 reveals a breakthrough in solar cell design that now approaches 60% efficiencies. The secret exotic physics is to trap the high energy electrons released from an initial sunlight bombardment. Sharp Electronics are responsible for the breakthrough which relies on nanometer-thick layers of semiconducting materials.

 

Lastly, our new EM Pulser is selling so well, we have to keep reordering new batches from our custom manufacturer. We have improved the device again and this time it has two Lithium-Ion batteries to last three times as long. For a limited time, the price will be kept at $295 but is scheduled to go up to $325 in about a month. Seeing websites like http://www.electromeds.com/empulse/ which reports the unavailability of the original EM Pulse, it is gratifying to know that IRI has succeeded in improving every aspect of Dr. Glen Gordon's invention for the public's benefit. Try one out today for  first response First Aid and get a FREE Glen Gordon lecture DVD with a 60-page User Manual with ALL of his published papers.

 

Sincerely,

 

Thomas Valone, PhD, PE.

Editor

 

IN THIS ISSUE
1) WARP DRIVE BY NASA MAKING INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL A REALITY
2) NAVY CONVERTING SEAWATER AS FUEL
3) MOLTEN SALT REACTOR EATS NUCLEAR WASTE
4) GERMANY SETS RECORD ON USE OF SOLAR ENERGY
5) EXOTIC PHYSICS USED IN NEW ULTRA EFFICIENT SOLAR CELL

 

 

 

 

 EM Pulser 

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QUICK LINKS






1) Warp Drive By NASA Making Interstellar Travel a Reality

Mark Rademaker  MailOnline. June 2014

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2655105/Engage-warp-drive-Nasa-reveals-latest-designs-

 

Engage warp drive! NASA reveals latest designs for a Star Trek-style spacecraft that could make interstellar travel a reality
  • A Nasa scientist in Houston worked with an artist to create the concept
  • The interstellar spacecraft builds on previous designs that thoeretically allow distant travel by bending space-time
  • Called IXS Enterprise, it is similar to the Star Trek ship of the same name
  • Dr White said the spacecraft could reach Alpha Centauri in two weeks
  • Warp travel is the focus of Christopher Nolan's 2014 movie Interstellar
  

Last month, Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan unveiled his next science-fiction blockbuster.  

Called Interstellar, it envisages a future where travel to other stars is not only a possibility but a necessity, and tasks actor Matthew McConaughey with leading the main mission.  

 

But a Nasa scientist claims such a mission isn't necessarily just something reserved for science fiction - and has revealed a Star Trek-style ship that could make interstellar travel a reality.

 

Dr Harold White is famous for suggesting that faster than light (FTL) travel is possible.  

 

THE 100-YEAR STARSHIP PROJECT  

The 100-year Starship Project is a joint endeavour run by Darpa, Nasa, Icarus Interstellar and the Foundation for Enterprise Development.

Announced in January 2012, the project has an overall goal of achieving manned interstellar travel by 2112.  

To do so it is evaluating a number of different techonolgies, including 'warping' space time to travel great distances in short time frames at faster-than-light speeds.  

The project is also considering building 'generation ships' that move slowly but have a self-sustainable long-term population.

To date Nasa has contributed $100,000 (�60,000) to the project and Darpa $1 million (�600,000).

Using something known as an Alcubierre drive, named after a Mexican theoretical physicist of the same name, Dr White said it is possible to 'bend' space-time, and cover large distances almost instantly.  

 

This, in essence, would allow a spaceship to travel almost anywhere in a tiny fraction of the time it would take a conventional spacecraft.

 

The ship in Nolan's Interstellar movie, as well as those in Star Trek, employ a warp engine.  

 

And, in a series of new renders, Dr White reveals how a real spacecraft dubbed the IXS Enterprise could do the same thing.  

 

The images are based on the artist who created the original look for the famous USS Enterprise ship from Star Trek - Matthew Jeffries.  

 

To make the latest renders Dr White employed the help of artist Mark Rademaker and graphic designer Mike Okuda.

  

Although the speed of light is seen as an absolute, Dr White was inspired by Miguel Alcubierre, who postulated a theory that allowed for faster than light travel but without contradicting Einstein.
 

 

Alcubierre's theory was published in 1994 and involved enormous amounts of energy being used to expand and contract space itself - thereby generating a 'warp bubble' in which a spacecraft would travel.  

 

Allowing space and time to act as the propellant by pulling the craft through the bubble would be like stepping on an escalator.

 

Despite Dr Alcubierre stating his theory was simply conjecture, Dr White thinks he and his team are edging towards making the realm of warp speed attainable.


According to Gizmodo, their engine could get to Alpha

Centauri in two weeks as measured by clocks on Earth.

The process of going to warp is also one that is smooth, rather than using a massive amount of acceleration in a short amount of time.  

 

'When you turn the field on, everybody doesn't go slamming against the bulkhead, which would be a very short and sad trip,' Dr White said.  

 

However, Dr White admits his research is still small-scale and is light years away from any type of engine that could be constructed into a spaceship like the USS Enterprise.

 

To make the dream a reality Dr White has laid out a road map with important milestones that will need to be met along the way to achieving true interstellar travel.  

 

This begins with tests on Earth to prove the technology is possible.  

 

These initial experiments are very crude and very basic - but, if proved, there is, in theory, no limit to how it can be applied.  

 

The next step will be to use the warp technology on a spacecraft and complete a short trip to the moon, followed by a trip to Mars.  

 

This would ultimately test the technologies that would be necessary to complete 'jumps' beyond the solar system and reach destinations in a matter of months, weeks or even days.

 

 

The main limitation is energy - previously it was thought mass equivalent to a planet would be necessary to provide the energy required for a warp jump.  

 

But revised suggestions suggest mass similar in size to a car might be more realistic.  

 

The research has done enough to pique the interest of Nasa and other agencies.  

 

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), for instance, is currently carrying out the 100-year-starship project with a view to sending humans outside the solar system at the turn of the next century.

 

  

 

 

2) Navy Converting Seawater As Fuel

The Wild File Nick Davidson, June 2014

http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/the-current/wild-file/Is-Seawater-the-Next-Big-Fuel-Source.html

 

  

 April, the Navy announced a breakthrough in transforming seawater, the earth's most abundant natural resource, to fuel. Researchers used it to fly a model jet powered with an internal combustion engine like its full-sized counterparts. What are the implications of such a technology in a world scrambling for clean, efficient energy?

 

According to U.S. Navy research chemist Dr. Heather Wilhauer, the new process takes roughly 23,000 gallons of seawater to produce one gallon of liquid hydrocarbon fuel. You might suspect that solves two problems at once: dependence on fossil fuels and rising sea levels. The trouble with the latter is that the excess water simply goes right back into the ocean. The first question is more complicated.

 

To create the fuel, Wilhauer's team extracted carbon dioxide and hydrogen bound in the water and recombined those gases in a catalyst reactor to produce the liquid fuel. The process can be applied to different metals to engender methanol, liquid natural gas, gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel. "Because it's a synthetic process, you can tailor it to whatever fuel you need," Wilhauer notes.

 

If that sounds like the jackpot, it could be-in a perfect world. Like water that's pumped uphill using electricity and later released to generate electricity, the CO2 and hydrogen extracted from the sea end up back in the water where they started. "You have to put more energy in to get the fuel than you get out of the fuel when you use it," says Brentan Alexander, founder of the Stanford Energy Club and Senior Mechanical Engineer at Wrightspeed. "So it's still net-energy negative. When you start applying that towards generating fuel on a larger scale in the United States, you're going to run into a really hard wall to make that cost-effective, because natural gas is cheap."

 

But for the Navy, which moves 1.2 billion gallons of fuel annually, it makes perfect sense. "Our aircraft carriers are nuclear powered, but we still have to get fuel out to there to fly the airplanes," says Rear Admiral Kevin Slates, who works on the Navy's environmental and energy programs. Barges must frequently haul resupply fuel across oceans to aircraft carriers, and other ships protect those barges, all of which require their own fuel. "This would allow us to produce fuel at the point of consumption and basically untether that ship," says Rear Admiral Slates. It also eliminates risk of potential fuel spills during transport. "The delivered cost of fuel to our fleet at sea is obviously more expensive than what we're paying at a pump. Then [seawater fuel] becomes cost-competitive much quicker than for, say, commercial automobiles."

 

The same may be true for powering remote islands like Hawaii, which have unlimited access to seawater and whose fuels also need to be hauled in from afar. If seawater processing plants existed on Hawaii shores, it, too, could be untethered. The fuel could even power cars in this scenario if the price is right. And because no chemicals are added in the conversion process, there's effectively no waste, only water released back into the ocean at its initial pH. But this, too, is likely a far-away reality.

"It all hinges on whether it can scale up to produce the quantities that we need," says Rear Admiral Slates, which could take ten to 15 years. "It's clearly a game-changing, innovative technology that we're really interested in."

  

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3) Molten Salt Reactor Eats Nuclear Waste

Jun 21, 2014 by Nancy Owano Phys.org

http://phys.org/news/2014-06-molten-salt-reactor-concept-transatomic.html#jCp

 

Transatomic Power has been in the news this month in its ambition to build a better reactor. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Transatomic Power has proposed a safer reactor that "eats nuclear waste," as Bloomberg.com put it. The company sees potential in an innovative nuclear reactor that can turn nuclear waste into a safe, clean, and scalable source of electricity. A detailed report on their company goals in IEEE Spectrum described how cofounders Leslie Dewan, now Chief Science Officer, and Mark Massie, Chief Technology Officer, thought of the idea in 2010, while working on their PhDs in nuclear engineering at MIT; namely, they were thinking of a better reactor addressing the nuclear industry's big headaches, waste and safety.

 

 

 

Dewan and Massie met Russ Wilcox, now CEO, and the company Transatomic Power became a reality in 2011.Transatomic Power has focused on an innovative molten salt reactor, which, they said, can safely burn nuclear waste to deliver affordable clean energy. Molten salt reactors are not a new discovery. They were originally developed and tested at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. In a white paper prepared in March this year, the team discussed the story of molten salt reactors, also noting that advocates of thorium and increasing demand for small modular reactors drove renewed examination of molten salt in the 1990s. In 2002, the Generation IV International Forum (GIF) reviewed about100 of the latest reactor concepts and chose molten salt reactors as one of the six advanced reactor types most likely to shape the future of nuclear energy, "due to advances in sustainability, economics, safety, reliability and proliferation-resistance."

 

What's new here? They said Transatomic Power improved the molten salt concept, while retaining its safety benefits.

 

"The main technical change we make is to change the moderator and fuel salt used in previous molten salt reactors to a zirconium hydride moderator, with a LiF-based fuel salt. During operation the fuel in the salt is primarily uranium. Together, these components generate a neutron spectrum that allows the reactor to run using fresh uranium fuel with enrichment levels as low as 1.8% U-235, or using the entire actinide component of spent nuclear fuel (SNF). Previous molten salt reactors such as the ORNL Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) relied on high-enriched uranium, with 33% U-235. Enrichments that high would raise proliferation concerns if used in commercial nuclear power plants."

 

Dewan said their reactor would be "walk-away safe," according to IEEE Spectrum. "If you don't have electric power, or if you don't have any operators on site, the reactor will just coast to a stop, and the salt will freeze solid in the course of a few hours," she said. Eric Roston, sustainability editor for Bloomberg.com, discussed more advantages. "Molten salt reactors can tap more energy in fuel and use it for decades, compared with four or five years in reactors today. That means they need less enriched uranium, reducing the risk of fuel being stolen to make bombs. Transatomic's reactor would cost half as much per gigawatt of electricity as conventional reactors, Dewan says."

 

Overall, according to the company, "Transatomic Power's advanced molten salt reactor ... solves four of the most pressing problems facing the nuclear industry: ecological stewardship, public safety, non-proliferation, and cost-efficiency."

  

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4) Solar Use Record Set by Germany 

Jun 20, 2014 by Bob Yirka, Phys.org, Read more at: 

http://phys.org/news/2014-06-germany-day-energy-percent-solar.html#jCp

 

 

 

 

Despite not having a generally sunny climate, Germany has been pushing solar energy-but not from the huge solar farms seen in other countries. In Germany, the focus has been on rooftop solar collectors mounted on homes, businesses and buildings of any other kind. Currently, over 90 percent of mounted solar panels in the country are on rooftops. The country broke two other records around the same time, producing 24.24 GW of solar generated power between 1 and 2pm on June 6, and over that entire week, the country produced 1.26 TWh of electricity from solar power. In stark contrast, recent reports indicate that solar powermakes up just 0.2 percent of total energy production in the U.S.

 

The popularity of solar panels on rooftops has been bolstered by generous solar subsidies from the government along with a successful ad campaign. The movement is part of a plan by the German government to reduce greenhouse emissions due to electricity being produced in coal fired power plants and a simultaneous phasing out of nuclear power plants (all such plants are scheduled for closure by 2022). That leaves solar, wind and biomass-the country has been eagerly pursuing all of them, though clearly solar has become the national leader.

 

The move to solar has not been without its problems, of course. The government plans to lower or remove subsidies as soon as possible and the demand for batteries to store all that home-grown electricity is outstripping demand, causing a rise in prices. Also, it's not clear what sort of role utilities will play going forward-currently, many homeowners are reporting surplus energy production on sunny days which they sell to electric companies, which now find themselves having to store it for use during cloudy stretches.

 

There's another problem too, though it's not as obvious-the German government noted recently that almost seven million households in the country are living in energy poverty-defined as having to spend more than 10 percent of income on energy bills. The national energy program, Energiewende, has resulted in some transfer of wealth, economists note-even with subsidies, it's generally the wealthy (and sometimes the middleclass) who can afford to put solar panels on top of their house-the poor continue to live off the grid and pay taxes that provide the funds for the subsidies. There's also some evidence that the country's energy program is pushing energy costs higher overall, resulting in more electricity being produced by cheaper fossil fuels.

 

 

http://cdn.phys.org/tmpl/v4/img/1x1.gifExplore further:Solar energy prospects are bright for Scotland, experts say

 

 
  
5) Exotic Physics in New Ultra Efficient Solar Cells

MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW  KEVIN BULLIS.  JULY 2014

 

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/528391/sharp-demonstrates-ultra-efficient-solar-cells/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-weekly-energy&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20140623 

 

New technology could be twice as efficient at converting sunlight to electricity.

 

The best solar cells convert less than one-third of the energy in sunlight into electricity, although for decades researchers have calculated that exotic physics could allow them to convert far more. Now researchers at Sharp have built a prototype that demonstrates one of these ideas. If it can be commercialized, it would double the amount of power a solar cell can generate, offering a way to make solar power far more economical.

 

The researchers figured out a way around a bothersome phenomenon: when sunlight strikes a solar cell, it produces some very high-energy electrons, but within a few trillionths of a second, those electrons shed most of their energy as waste heat.

 

The Sharp team found a way to extract these electrons before they give up that energy, thereby increasing the voltage output of their prototype solar cell. It's far from a practical device-it's too thin to absorb much sunlight, and for now it works only with a single wavelength of light-but it's the first time that anyone has been able to generate electrical current using these high-energy electrons. In theory, solar cells that exploit this technique could reach efficiencies over 60 percent.

 

The approach is one of several that could someday break open the solar industry and make fossil fuels expensive in comparison. High-efficiency solar cells would lower the cost of installation, which today is often more expensive than the cells themselves.

 

Exploiting exotic physics requires both understanding the behavior of certain materials and figuring out how to make them with high precision (see "Capturing More Light with a Single Solar Cell" and "Nanocharging Solar"). The Sharp device relies on the ability to make high-quality, nanometers-thick layers of semiconducting materials (such as gallium arsenide), which create a shortcut for high-energy electrons to move out of the solar cell.

 

Another way to achieve ultra-high efficiencies now is by stacking up different kinds of solar cells (see "Exotic, Highly Efficient Solar Cells May Soon Get Cheaper"), but doing so is very expensive. Meanwhile, MIT researchers are studying the transient behavior of electrons in organic materials to find inexpensive ways to make ultra-efficient solar cells.

 

Each of the alternative approaches is at an early stage. James Dimmock, the senior researchers who developed the new device at Sharp, says he expects that his technique will initially be used to help boost the efficiency of conventional devices, not to create new ones.

  

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