Category Archives: Fuel Cells

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Dec. 23, 2004 — Nanomaterial and biotech companies usually make for unlikely bedfellows. But on Tuesday, a manufacturer of carbon nanotubes and a startup that uses a relative of nanotubes for drug applications announced that they had merged.

The merger will give carbon nanotube manufacturer Carbon Nanotechnologies Inc. (CNI) an avenue for developing drugs or other medical products. C Sixty Inc., which will become a wholly owned subsidiary of CNI, will get financial security as well as business support.

Ray McLaughlin, CNI’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, said the merger dovetails with CNI’s long-term goal of using nanotubes in medical applications. CNI already works with customers to incorporate single-wall carbon nanotubes in energy devices, conductive polymers and lightweight materials. Nanotubes are tubular cousins of buckyballs, the carbon molecules that are at the heart of C Sixty’s drugs.

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“One of the applications we always held in our back pocket was medical applications,” McLaughlin said. “It’s always been part of our long-range business plan. C Sixty is playing in that market today.”

C Sixty was founded in 1999 in Canada under the leadership of oncologist Uri Sagman. In its early days, the company focused on developing buckyballs as delivery mechanisms for AIDS and cancer drugs. Scientists use the term C-60 for buckyballs, referring to their structure of 60 carbon atoms linked together. The molecules’ formal name is buckminsterfullerene, named for geodesic dome inventor Buckminster Fuller.

In 2003, C Sixty moved to Houston, the birthplace of buckyballs. That same year it partnered with the pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. to develop drugs for degenerative diseases. Buckyballs work as antioxidants, mopping up cell-damaging free radicals that are believed to cause Alzheimer’s and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

The support of CNI will allow the smaller C Sixty to concentrate on the challenges of developing nano-based drugs rather than devote time to fund raising, said C Sixty President Russ Lebovitz. With Merck, C Sixty was able to complete a round of safety and efficacy trials. At the same time, it has been tackling some basic questions such as the relationship between buckyballs’ structure and function.

“I need a year or two to move things forward,” Lebovitz said. “I have to keep the science going forward. … This provides a framework for stability.”

Lebovitz and McLaughlin said the merger will allow the companies to look for opportunities to use their complementary intellectual property portfolios. CNI was co-founded in 2000 by Richard Smalley, who co-discovered buckyballs in the 1980s as a chemist at Rice University in Houston.

CNI also will explore ways to combine the spherical and tubular forms of carbon to improve or make new products, McLaughlin said. “There’s the unknown potential of bringing those two technologies together,” he said.

In addition, CNI will help C Sixty pursue federal funding opportunities, according to McLaughlin. CNI and its partners received a $3.6 million Advanced Technology Program award through the National Institute of Standards and Technology in October to develop fuel cells.

“We’re hoping to create a mechanism (allowing C Sixty) to be self-funded,” McLaughlin said. “We’ve already started the process.”

C Sixty will retain its offices near Houston’s medical hub and not move to CNI’s headquarters in South Houston. Bob Gower, the president, CEO and a co-founder of CNI, will serve as chairman of the board at C Sixty. Smalley is a scientific adviser for both companies.

By David Forman

Dec. 17, 2004 – Experts may continue debating whether a hydrogen-powered energy infrastructure is practical, affordable or safe. But Jim Balcom is not waiting for their answer. Instead, the CEO of PolyFuel Inc. is pushing forward with what he calls a breakthrough fuel cell membrane technology — one the company claims offers dramatically superior performance and much lower cost, two critical needs of the automotive industry.

In October, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company announced a new hydrocarbon-based polymer membrane that it says operates in low humidity and high heat and produces 10 to 15 percent more power than the perfluorinated membranes currently in use.

The membrane uses a lattice of nano-structured hydrocarbons to support a grid of conductive blocks through which protons flow as the cell generates electricity.

“Each of the markets has very different requirements at the system level,” Balcom said. “Those cascade down to different requirements at the membrane level.”

By custom-designing a membrane for a specific purpose, he said, designers can avoid adding complicated and expensive systems to compensate for the buildup of heat or humidity and to avoid other environmental problems.

The company is pursuing a leadership position in the engineering of such membranes, a component Balcom compares to the microprocessor inside a computer. Just as performance improvements and technology innovations in the microprocessor market drove the computer industry forward, Balcom predicts membrane innovation will drive performance in the fuel cell market.

Atakan Ozbek, principal analyst at market research firm ABI Research, agrees. “The MEA (membrane electrode assembly) development is in the center of it all,” he said. But, he cautioned, PolyFuel will square off against competitors with deep pockets and long histories of innovation themselves.

DuPont, W.L. Gore, 3M. These are all 800-pound gorillas,” he said. “PolyFuel is a small startup.” But more than the competition, Ozbek says PolyFuel must show that its technology scales into pilot manufacturing. “They achieved these results at the lab level,” he said. “I don’t want to decrease the importance of this announcement, but the important thing is they need to achieve these results in the field.”

Design of the automotive fuel cell began 14 months ago. Balcom said customers had validated the design, though he declined to name them. This is the second fuel cell membrane PolyFuel has announced that is custom-tailored toward a specific vertical market. Previously, the company rolled out a membrane for use in direct methanol fuel cells, a likely candidate to power next-generation portable electronics.

The company is also in talks with companies active in other fuel cell markets, such as stationary electricity generation and backup power. Balcom said he believes the portable power market will mature much earlier than fuel cells.

The company plans to generate revenues in earlier-maturing markets to underwrite expansion as it gears up to supply bigger, later-maturing markets like automotive. Nevertheless, he said, “We approach this market (automotive) with a healthy degree of skepticism. Fuel cells have been five years away for the past 15 years.”

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Oct. 4, 2004 – Companies developing micro and nanotechnology-related products will receive more than $20 million from the federally funded Advanced Technology Program, beginning this month. Another $5 million may lead to tools used in the small tech industry.

The funding, which was again contested in Congress this year, makes it easier for companies to take on otherwise fiscally risky projects ranging from portable fuel cells to pollution controls to cancer therapies, according to the recipients.

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“Fuel cells are an intriguing, high-value opportunity, but it is not today’s business,” said Ray McLaughlin, chief financial officer of Carbon Nanotechnologies Inc. in Houston.

CNI is one of six micro and nanotech companies to receive awards, which totaled 32 this year. CNI, which specializes in single-wall carbon nanotubes, has identified the energy industry as a key market through applications such as nanotube electrodes in fuel cells. But successful integration of nanoscale components into next-generation power sources would take time, labor and money that wouldn’t be available until the 4-year-old company had built up income from other business strategies.

“There is a lot of expensive work that would have to be done,” McLaughlin said. The $3.6 million that ATP allocated to the fuel cell initiative offsets some costs. “Without this, we wouldn’t be able to dedicate our resources to it.”

The program allows small companies such as CNI or Glennan Microsystems Inc. in Cleveland to partner with other small companies and corporations to design, test and ultimately commercialize new technologies. Managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the program targets technologies that could give the nation a competitive edge.

CNI, for instance, will work with Motorola Inc. to develop micro fuel cells for portable devices. NEC, Hitachi and several other Japanese companies also are attempting to get a foothold in that market.

The project, which includes Johnson Matthey Fuel Cells Inc., combines CNI’s expertise in nanotubes with Motorola’s work in small proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells. Motorola wants to sell micro fuel cells as a compact, lightweight power source for its mobile phones and other consumer electronics.

ATP also reduces barriers that prevent a consortium of companies from working together on complex projects, said Rick Earles, deputy director of Glennan Microsystems. Glennan Microsystems won a $3.1-million award to develop combustion control systems to reduce nitrogen oxides in gas turbine engines. The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to begin enforcing tougher standards for the pollutant in 2010.

“We can either collaborate and pull together disparate technologies to provide the single solution, or a single company has to do it,” Earles said. But few if any solo businesses could justify the cost of orchestrating a multi-tiered process that would require sensors, electronics, packaging, software and integration into numerous types of engines.

 “None of us could have done it ourselves,” Earles said. “Now we’ve got the essence of a supply chain.”

Glennan Microsystems, founded in 1998 as public-private partnership to commercialize microsystems that work in harsh environments, will coordinate efforts from groups as varied as Case Western Reserve University to Goodrich Corp. They propose developing and demonstrating a system that combines MEMS sensors, software, electronics and packaging that can be used in engines to control combustion.

The sensor system will reduce byproducts that cause pollution by maximizing the combustion process. They expect to integrate the system into water- and aircraft engines and electric power generators. The technology then may be adapted for cars, trucks and other vehicles, they said. ATP has weathered a series of political challenges.

For years, the Bush administration and some Republicans have opposed the program, calling it corporate welfare. This year, the administration and the U.S. House of Representatives recommended that the program be terminated in fiscal year 2005.

The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee reinstated the funding and added another $24 million in mid-September, for a total of $203 million for 2005. NIST announced its latest round of ATP awards at the end of September, saying it would provide $80.1 million in awards with industry matches equaling $56.9 million.

Other small tech companies receiving awards include: 

  • Cree Inc. of Durham, N.C. About $3.4 million to demonstrate light-emitting diode lamp packages. Nanocrystal Lighting Corp. of Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., will participate in the project.
  • Dow Chemical Co. of Midland, Mich. $6.5 million to develop an atomic force microscope platform for nanomechanical measurements. Veeco Instruments Inc. of Woodbury, N.Y., is a partner.
  • Nanospectra Biosciences of Houston. $2 million to develop an integrated approach for detecting and destroying cancer cells using gold nanoshells. Several Texas universities will assist in the project.
  • Quantum Dot Corp. of Hayward, Calif. $2 million to develop quantum dots without the use of the heavy metal cadmium for imaging in medical diagnostics and treatment.

In addition, three other award winners plan to devise fabrication techniques, instruments and software for the semiconductor industry that could benefit small tech manufacturers.


John Goodwin
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CHASKA, Minn.—John Goodman, president of Entegris' (www.entegris.com) fuel cell market segment, has been elected to a one-year term as the U.S. Fuel Cell Council (USFCC) policy committee chair. Goodman, who has helped develop the organization's strategic framework and planning, is also recipient of the 2004 Executive Director Award for advancing the goals of the council.

Entegris, which develops products to protect and transport critical materials, is also a major provider of advanced fuel cell materials, components, subassemblies and services designed to provide developers with tools to control contamination and lower costs. For example, the company's compression-molded bipolar and monopolar plates are used in portable, stationary and transportation fuel cell stacks to increase stack reliability and decrease development costs.

Particles


October 1, 2004

Compiled by Steve Smith

Fume-fighting fuel cells

VANCOUVER, B.C.—Ballard Power Systems (www.ballard.com) is providing three heavy-duty fuel cell engines to Daimler Chrysler to help combat air pollution from Mercedes-Benz Citaro buses used in Beijing, China. The two-year demonstration program seeks to support further development of fuel cell technology and to demonstrate the viability of fuel cell power for buses in heavily congested areas. Fuel cells and hydrogen are seen as critical to achieving a sustainable transportation strategy in China where increased demand for automobiles has had a significant impact on urban air quality.

Thirty-three other buses in 11 cities worldwide are already running on 205-kW fuel cell engines. Ballard says it also has had successful demonstrations of fuel cell-powered buses in Chicago, Palm Springs, Calif., and Vancouver.

Single-source safety solutions

MURRAY HILL, N.J.—Combining anti-microbial technologies and consulting services under one hat, Intervent—the food safety technology and consulting arm of the BOC Group (www.boc.com)—is providing food and beverage manufacturers with a single source for addressing food safety issues. Intervent offers ozone and ultraviolet light technologies targeted for use in food and beverage plants, and also provides HACCP and food science consulting services. The combination, says BOC business manager Mark DiMaggio, “provides a powerful weapon for food processors to meet HACCP performance thresholds and federal directives for Listeria and E. coli.”

FDA finds firms' flaws

ROCKVILLE, Md.—The Food and Drug Administration (FDA; www.fda.gov), citing contamination control violations following inspections, recently seized suspicious food products at a Tennessee food processor and sought an injunction against a Utah medical device manufacturer to cease production and distribution of its devices. In mid-August, U.S. Marshals seized various articles of foods at Hung Hua Trading Inc. in Mount Juliet, Tenn., after the FDA said it found evidence of rodent infestation throughout the processor's warehouse and cold storage facilities. Hung Hua Trading stores and distributes institutional-sized packages of foods and ingredients typically used in preparation of restaurant foods.

Also in August, the FDA filed a complaint against Utah Medical (Midvale, Utah) to halt manufacturing and distribution of its medical devices until the firm had demonstrated that it has corrected deviations from current Good Manufacturing Practice as set forth in the Quality System regulation. The deviations were discovered during FDA inspections over the past three years. A firm's failure to comply with the regulation decreases the level of assurance that its products are safe and effective. During its most recent inspection, the FDA says it found, among other things, “failure to establish that manufacturing processes were adequately controlled.”

Purification products partnership

EAST HILLS, N.Y.—Pall Corp. (www.pall.com) and Matheson Tri-Gas Inc. (Parsippany, N.J.; www.mathesontrigas.com) will jointly produce and sell gas purifiers to the semiconductor industry. Both companies will have access to the other's purification media as they cooperate to eliminate particulate and molecular contaminants, including oxygen, moisture and hydrocarbons from process gases used in semi manufacturing. The companies will team to develop new technologies to meet increasingly stringent contamination control needs in the industry.

Sept. 24, 2004 – Rice University researchers have found a way to lower the toxicity levels of fullerenes, a technique that could reduce health or environmental risks that nanomaterials might cause in consumer products and industrial processes.

The team from Rice’s Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology performed what they called the first study of toxic effects on individual human cells exposed to buckyballs, soccer ball-shaped molecules containing 60 carbon atoms eyed for use in fuel cells, coatings and drugs. By attaching other molecules to the surface of buckyballs, they able to significantly lower the toxicity level when exposed to liver and skin cells in a Petri dish.

Kevin Ausman, the center’s executive director, said the simple chemical modification could lower potential exposure risks during disposal of a product like a fuel cell or within a manufacturing plant. Removing attached molecules and enhancing toxicity could also be useful in chemotherapy treatments, for instance.

“We’re already talking to companies that are looking at fullerenes for bulk manufacturing and making sure they’re aware of these things,” he said. “It’s the kind of thing that industry, because basically they want to reduce their own risk, is very interested in adopting in their own practices.”

The research will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Nano Letters, published by the American Chemical Society. It also was published online by the journal Sept. 11.

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Aug. 18, 2004 – It may sound like weird science, but small tech power is being pursued in some unusual places, including your liquor cabinet and toilet. What’s more, if you thought cold fusion was so 80s, it — and a new variant called sonofusion — has bubbled back into the news.

A shot of Stoli for my cell phone

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A small St. Louis startup, Akermin Inc., is developing a micro fuel cell that could run on vodka or any other ethanol-based fluid. The alcohol fuel reacts with enzymes rather than catalytic metals to produce electrons.

Such biofuel cells have been investigated for decades, but the problem has been in creating a stable environment for enzymes that are extremely sensitive to temperature and pH conditions.

Researchers at St. Louis University coated the fuel cell’s electrodes with a polymer that forms tiny micelles, or pores within which the enzymes can live for weeks, rather than days. The enzymes turn anything alcoholic (beer works, though not as well as the harder stuff) into useful juice.

The developers are focusing on working on prototypes that are about the size of a postage stamp. Chemistry professor and company co-founder Shelley Minteer reported that the fuel cells have successfully run on vodka, gin, white wine and flat beer.

“The fuel cell didn’t like the carbonation,” Minteer said.

In April, BioGenerator, a new seed-capital company, invested $400,000 in the project. In addition, St. Louis University has given Akermin founders Minteer and grad student Nick Akers $250,000 in grants and licensing waivers.

Love that dirty water

One day, simply flushing the toilet could run the lights in your vanity mirror. Penn State  scientists are using bacteria to turn sewage into electricity. A soda can-size device called a microbial fuel cell harvests electrons that bacteria produce while digesting waste.

At first, the prototype in environmental engineer Bruce Logan’s laboratory barely produced enough juice to light a single bulb, but in June his team announced they had made the device cheaper and efficient enough to power a fan.

The bacteria attach themselves to the fuel cell’s positively charged electrode, or anode, made of carbon paper. As the bacteria metabolize the organic material in wastewater, they release positively charged hydrogen ions into the water and negatively charged electrons to the anode.

Bubbling back again

After decades of derision, the concept of cold fusion is getting a, well, lukewarm reception in some circles. The Department of Energy agreed to review some work suggesting that there may be something actually going on in the process first described by scientists at University of Utah in 1989, but discredited when results couldn’t be reliably reproduced.

Under the right conditions, further experiments have produced more heat than standard theory predicts.

On a related front, Impulse Devices of Grass Valley, Calif., is working on a technology called sonofusion that gives tantalizing hints that fusion power might be possible without extremely high temperatures and magnetic fields.

The company is making reactors that allow scientists to create a burst of ultrasound that causes bubbles in hydrogen-rich liquid to expand and then collapse into a bright flash of light, a phenomenon known as sonoluminescence.

Some scientists theorize that the gases in the collapsing bubbles are compressing enough to trigger nuclear fusion. Fusion, the process at work within stars, creates energy when hydrogen atoms slam together and fuse into helium atoms, releasing heat and light.

In 2002, scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee first reported that they could make hydrogen nuclei fuse by forcing tiny bubbles in acetone to implode when bombarded with sound waves. Impulse Devices believes it can build a commercial fusion generator in about 10 years.

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Aug. 13, 2004 – Since humans started to use fossil fuel, we’ve treated it the way hunter-gatherers treated wild game: Hunt it down and consume it as you find it. When you run out of game here, move on to a new area.

Human history began when people settled down to farm, and invented writing, money, and civilization. Let’s create our future by learning from those early farmers and seeding our own energy supply where we need it.

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We have an energy problem. We’re using it faster than we’re finding it, and a lot of the oil we buy comes from unfriendly regimes.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) members Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Kuwait, Qatar, Libya, Indonesia, United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Nigeria, and associate Gabon are no friends of liberal democracy.

Cartel pricing strategy is to maximize long-term profits, but control prices as necessary to eliminate threatening competitors.

Now think about China’s 1.3 billion people getting an urge to drive, or even to plug in a refrigerator. Where’s their energy going to come from? If there is more demand than supply, prices will rise. It could get ugly if rising prices don’t spark more supply. We have not found a major new oil field in decades.

Some people look to government to solve this developing crisis, but the politics of energy seem to be “do more of what we did before, only get a better result this time.”

I took an interest in energy policy after reading that estimated in the late ’90s we were spending $30 billion to $60 billion per year defending Mideast oil fields, but only importing $10 billion of oil a year from them. We’re spending a lot more these days, but still don’t have a sustainable energy policy.

Energy is really an economic problem, not a political problem. Government’s role should be to fund some of the basic research, get the market incentives right, unleash competition, and stay the course against OPEC’s reaction.

Government can seed the market by buying new energy-efficient products that have long-term paybacks.

Many of us see nanotechnology helping to solve our global energy problem. Energy efficiency, solar-to-electric conversion, designed catalysts for oil refining, and storage devices such as fuel cells or batteries are all improved by nanotech.

How can we structure an R&D program to quickly deliver good, affordable solutions? Rick Smalley says we should invest in science education and research, and the breakthroughs will come.

I’m an entrepreneur who studies economics, and think we’ve also got to come up with a market-based business approach to assure any such research is applied and commercialized.

How can we do this without creating a university welfare system, a corporate welfare system, a government bureaucracy, or all three?

Private sector funding is more efficient than government funding, but the private sector won’t fund this alone. Our private sector has a short payback horizon across the spectrum, from angels to venture capitalists to corporate R&D to public stock markets.

The high cost of infrastructure investments, long time to payback, and heavy geopolitics make energy an unattractive area for serious investors. We’re seeing a few investments into energy, but the problem is massive, and current funding tiny.

Would you invest your personal money into a risky long-term science project of which someone else is likely to capture the benefits? I wouldn’t.

The keys to an effective energy program are competition, measurement, and determination. Cooperation has a role, too; it takes visionary leadership to break out of today’s academic, government, and industry silos and work together to solve this problem. We should demand such vision and teamwork from those who want to lead this effort.

Market competition solves problems better, faster, and cheaper than regulation or big government programs.

Ingenuity is limitless, and the chance to get rich or famous is a powerful motivator. Let’s unleash our entrepreneurial spirit on this problem. We can seed hundreds of new businesses that will pay taxes and create high-value jobs. Competitive government funding for tech transfer, from research to production, is one way to launch this program.

Measurement is vital when allocating funding. Markets measure against expectations constantly, and are quick and often brutal in their assessments. Companies measure themselves against their own benchmarks and their competitors.

Well-run companies invest more in their winners, and cut off their losers as quickly as they can identify them. Universities and government agencies measure their inputs (staff, budgets), but lack market feedback to measure outputs. Good investors evaluate the effectiveness of their money by measuring outputs.

Determination is the final piece. If we change direction with the political winds, or cave in to a predatory oil price drop and give up this program, our economic competitors are likely to come sweep up the pieces, finish the job we started, and sell us our own technology.

Why don’t we stop tweaking old approaches, and define a bold new clean and green energy program, based on science and economics? Tell your elected officials you’re looking for a real energy policy. Let’s focus our nanotech R&D on creating new energy prosperity.

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Aug. 12, 2004 – Amory Lovins has been described as iconoclastic, idealistic and influential. But not ignored.

The author, consultant, physicist and chief executive of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a Colorado-based nonprofit research center, has advised numerous business, government and academic leaders over three decades on energy and other issues.

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Small Times’ Jeff Karoub spoke by phone with Lovins about developing hydrogen and other alternatives to oil, the role of nanotechnology in those efforts, and the emerging field’s risks and rewards. Lovins also reveals the missing link between carbon nanotubes and hummingbird spit.

Q: Tell me about your report, “Winning the Oil Endgame.” What is the main message to your audience?

“Winning the Oil Endgame” will describe how to get the United States off oil completely and profitably — even for oil companies. It suggests doing this (through) very efficient use of oil; substituting safe natural gas in applications where they’re changeable, like furnaces and boilers, biofuels and waste-derived fuels and optionally hydrogen.

Together these seem to be enough to provide all the services officially projected to be derived from oil in 2025, cheaper than buying the oil and without counting any avoided external costs of buying and using the oil.

Q: Will the report talk about a movement like this serving as a stabilizing geopolitical force?

Yes, or at least removing some of the major sources of instability and conflict in the world. Although we do argue that while oil is cheap, dependence on it is not, and especially if you count hidden costs it’s not at all cheap.

The basic case is a business more than a policy case. That is, we’re suggesting that the substitutes for oil are cheaper than the oil in private internal costs. Therefore, they’re profitable to adopt; therefore, the transition will be led by business.

Although we’ll suggest some innovative policy approaches to help that happen, it is primarily a business case. Certainly the daily headlines give us reason to think this is a very timely reminder that the oil problem is one we don’t need to have and it’s cheaper not to.

Q: A former ChevronTexaco executive told Small Times two years ago that the company is going to be a hydrogen energy company, whether pumping hydrogen into a car or selling the hydrogen fuel cell or batteries. Other hydrogen advocates believe it should create a new, decentralized form of energy generation and use. Do you recommend such a “top-down flow of energy” in a hydrogen-based economy?

We work with a lot of the oil majors — I have for 30-odd years. And I think they will be very important players in the hydrogen economy. But that doesn’t mean they or anyone else will make hydrogen in central plants and pipeline it all over.

The logical way to deliver hydrogen to vehicles is to make it from natural gas, typically, at the filling station. That appears to use less capital and probably less natural gas than business as usual would use.

That said, there are some central production opportunities that probably do make sense in particular situations.

The most obvious is that refineries, which now make about 7 megatons a year of hydrogen in the U.S., may turn into merchant hydrogen plants as they find there’s less need for that hydrogen to make high-octane gasoline and desulfurized diesel fuel because those have been displaced by efficient use and indeed by biofuels and hydrogen.

Q: Nanotechnology, specifically nanoscale materials and structures, is seen as playing a central role in storing hydrogen as well as catalysts to convert hydrogen to electricity. The oil industry already uses nanoscale technologies to refine petrochemicals. What role, if any, do you see this emerging field playing in a hydrogen economy?

Well, first I think I need to clarify what you mean by nano-based approaches. As far as I know all of the examples you gave are of materials crafted at molecular scale or in nanosize particles.

I prefer to use the term nanotechnology in Eric Drexler’s original sense of molecular assemblers, rather than applying it as a blanket term to everything of nanoscale, whether it’s anything to do with assemblers or not. Which sense do you mean it in?

Q: Hewlett-Packard nano researcher Stan Williams has separated the field’s applications into two categories: passive — nanocomposites and structures — and active — the so-called nanobots and their self-replicating kin.

It’s a useful distinction. I think it’s probably clearer between nanotechnology in the Drexlerian sense, and if you’re just talking about nanoscale materials, then just use that term.

Q: Would you then separate your concerns or issues related to nanotechnology versus nanoscale materials?

They both have important issues that need to be examined much more carefully than they have. But they’re different issues. The assembler-related, or as you would say, active technology issues have to do with malicious use.

I’m not quite so concerned about the gray-goo problem, but there is certainly a shadow side to the assembler technology and Eric, of course, has been concerned about that from the beginning.

In that sense, Drexlerian nanotechnology is yet another of several technologies we have, like nuclear fission and transgenics that someone said are suited for “wise, far-seeing and incorruptible people.”

The nanoscale materials, what you’re calling the passive uses, have a different set of issues, namely where do they go and what are their health and environmental effects? Because they can be absorbed or metabolized in very different ways than the materials of which we have evolutionary experience.

I have an unpleasant feeling that although these materials have some wonderful applications, they may also turn out to have medical or ecological side effects, which we never heard of.

So we really need to temper our technical enthusiasm, which I share with a lot of precaution in figuring out the biological implications before we use these materials widely.

Q: Understanding the distinction as you see it, what about the nanomaterials and structures playing a role in refining petrochemicals and in catalysts to convert hydrogen to electricity?

Subject to the caution I just gave, I think there are some technically very important applications in the areas you’ve mentioned and in others, including structural materials. Nanoscale materials have many and generally favorable implications for cost and efficiency throughout the hydrogen value chain.

But I have not assumed any of them in analyzing hydrogen systems. To the extent that these nanoscale materials innovations succeed technically and turn out to be safe to use, they will simply make hydrogen economics and practicality greater than my analysis suggests.

Q: You’ve talked before about approaches you prefer that don’t have the environmental risks often associated with nano-based approaches. I assume you put biomimicry in that category.

It’s not free of those issues of its own, but I think they’re a lot less scary, because by definition they use techniques that life has evolved and become comfortable with, rather than things of which we have no evolutionary experience.

Q: You’ve included examples in your “Twenty Hydrogen Myths” paper where the U.S. government seems to be moving forward with hydrogen initiatives, but some critics don’t believe it’s a genuine effort to move beyond oil.

Hydrogen seems closer or further away, depending on current fashion. At the moment, a number of, I think, rather poor reports are being published saying it’s very far away.

They reached that conclusion by assuming inefficient cars and disintegrated implementation. The market is not constrained by that perception, fortunately. The people who are developing the technologies are continuing to do so with very good results.

I think the current crop of pessimists will be surprised. On the other hand, if you go back a few years, there were a bunch of folks ready to charge into the market with technologies that weren’t ready yet.

Putting out unreliable fuel cells would have been a disaster, so I’m glad we didn’t do that.

By David Forman

Aug. 10, 2004 — A classic rule of design — be it automotive, industrial or interior — states that the fewer the components in a system, the more elegant it is. The basic sticks and connectors of Tinkertoys? Pretty elegant. But the all-purpose Lego brick — that’s the epitome.

Judging by that standard, hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles, the new generation of vehicles with two motors instead of just one, look like a clumsy, clunky compromise.

Except for another classic design rule: When things aren’t working, break the rules. And with a fleet of gas guzzling SUVs on the road, high gas prices and unpredictable geopolitics weighing heavily on future supplies, it’s fair to say plenty of things aren’t working.

The result is a rapidly growing market for hybrids that combine gasoline and electric motors. Honda Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. already have hybrids on the road, and Ford Motor Co. and other brands will soon follow.

Meanwhile, research in the areas of automotive fuel cells and other alternative fuels is increasing.

Experts say nanotechnology research and development will be key in helping these alternative power technologies overcome the market hurdles ahead.

A few cases in point: Last year, a major Japanese auto manufacturer partnered with materials developer Ener1 Inc. to use its nanoscale electrodes in the batteries of hybrid gasoline-electric cars.

Honda has leased its FCX fuel cell vehicle, powered by fuel cells that use nano-perforated membranes, to the city of San Francisco, among other customers, and has put more than a dozen of the cars on the road.

And one of the biggest nano-related financing rounds of last year was the $32 million funding of Catalytic Solutions Inc., a company using nanostructures to make catalytic coatings.

But such nanoscale developments come with correspondingly macroscale technical challenges, says battery and energy cell specialist Subhash Narang. He is director of product development at SRI International, a Menlo Park, Calif.-nonprofit technology research institute.

For example, he says, long life and high power are difficult to combine in a single battery. What’s more, as batteries become more powerful, they are often less safe. And despite the benefits of hydrogen-powered PEM fuel cells, Narang and other experts say building a hydrogen distribution infrastructure may be prohibitively expensive.

To understand the longevity-power conundrum, consider runners. Marathoners aren’t usually very good at the 100-meter dash. And good sprinters don’t win marathons.

In the case of batteries, says Narang, the kind that store lots of energy aren’t usually good at supplying it in the powerful bursts required to accelerate a car. And the high power batteries don’t store energy for very long.

By definition, says Narang, the smaller electrolyte particles that allow energy to move faster do not store as much energy as larger particles.

But Narang and other researchers have found ways to combine high energy density with high power using nanotechnology.

In SRI’s case, the approach involves using high aspect ratio nanomaterials, or nanofibers. The nanofibers are minutely small in one dimension (about 20 nanometers) so energy flows rapidly across them. But because they are, relatively speaking, long in the other dimension (50 to 200 nanometers) they can store much more energy than nanoparticles with small dimensions all around.

The result, Narang maintains, is a battery that can deliver about eight times the power of a traditional battery while providing comparable energy. Plus, there’s a bonus: The nanoscale dimensions that let energy move rapidly also allow the battery to recharge faster when the energy flow is reversed, a feature that’s important for hybrid cars designed to harvest energy from braking and use it to recharge the batteries.

Other organizations are working on the same problem. Ener1, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., is researching enhancements for electrolytes and cathodes, using nano-structured powders for electrolytes and nano-structured, iron-disulfide for cathodes.

The company says that by combining its nano-structured, iron-disulfide cathode with its polymer electrolyte it can provide high energy and a long cycle life.

The ordinarily inverse relationship between energy and longevity is hardly the only problem plaguing the development of hybrid car batteries. According to Narang, there is a similarly inverse relationship between how much energy a battery can store and its inherent safety.

“The trend in the industry is to pack more and more energy into a smaller volume,” he said. As a result, today “we’re making batteries that have more energy than TNT.”

Safety concerns have compelled automakers to rely on less volatile but poorer performing materials for their hybrids. Honda and Toyota currently use nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries in hybrids, despite the fact that lithium-ion (Li-ion) is generally regarded as a better technology.

“Lithium-ion is dangerous in big form factors,” said Alexei Andreev, a solid-state physicist at Draper Fisher Jurvetson. He negotiated the company’s investment in Solicore Inc., a Florida startup that makes a solid-state electrolyte for batteries.

Lithium-ion is fine in cell phones and laptops, he says, but in the size required for a car, the electrolyte becomes flammable. Automotive use makes it doubly dangerous because a battery crushed in an accident can short circuit.

SRI researchers have been working on a solution using fire retardant materials to overcome the technology’s shortcomings. “When the battery starts heating up,” Narang said, “components become fire extinguishers.”

As of yet, however, neither the high-power/long-life solutions nor the safety technology has made it into a production car.

SRI’s nanofiber electrolyte first will be targeted toward other markets with similar demands, such as contractor-grade cordless power tools. And the fire-retardant materials face an uphill public relations battle: If manufacturers adopt the technology, they’ll have to acknowledge Li-ion’s inherent flammability problems, something Narang says they may not want to do.

Batteries, however, are not the only nano-enhanced technology poised to augment alternative energy efforts. Academic and corporate researchers also are inventing ways to complement diesel engines and build new types of fuel cells.

California-based Proton Power proposes using solid acid fuel cells to supplement diesel engines inside long-haul trucks. Currently, truckers idle their engines when resting to power heating, air conditioning and other amenities.

Proton Power would provide a supplemental fuel cell that truckers could use when not driving.

Calum Chisolm, Proton Power’s president and co-founder, says his company’s technology could offer a safer, more efficient alternative.

“The thinner the electrolyte layer,” Chisolm said, “the more power.” Currently funded by friends and family, the California Institute of Technology spinout is looking at longer-term financing opportunities and broad markets.

SRI is working on a form of solid oxide fuel cell that would use military-grade diesel fuel. The design takes advantage of nanostructures for catalysts and uses 200-nanometer powders for a thin electrolyte, upping the power in the same manner as Chisolm’s solid acid cell.

That suggests that one day the roads may hold not only hybrid gasoline-electric cars, but also of hybrid diesels, and, over the long term, a variety of automotive fuel cell technologies. Talk about breaking the rules.