From UNSW via Newzlab: “Picosecond Lasers and Avalanche Reactions Generate 1 Billion Times Fusion Reactions”

From University of New South Wales

via

February 24, 2020

HB-11 Energy has published its progress towards generating commercial nuclear fusion using a dual laser method.

the University of New South Wales reports that HB11 Energy has been granted patents for its laser-driven technique for creating fusion energy.

They would use a largely empty metal sphere, where a modestly sized HB11 fuel pellet is held in the center, with apertures on different sides for the two lasers. One laser establishes the magnetic containment field for the plasma and the second laser triggers the ‘avalanche’ fusion chain reaction.

The alpha particles generated by the reaction would create an electrical flow that can be channeled almost directly into an existing power grid with no need for a heat exchanger or steam turbine generator.

Nextbigfuture covered the HB11 Energy work in 2017.

HB11 Energy will use the reaction between hydrogen H and the boron isotope 11 (HB11) as uncompressed solid-state fuel within an extremely high trapping magnetic field. Both of these conditions have been demonstrated by experiments and following predictions from computations.

• a 1 kilojoule laser boosts a magnetic field to 4500-10000 tesla for over one nanosecond. About 100 times stronger than powerful superconducting magnets
• a second laser causes a nuclear fusion chain reaction
• lab experiments have been performed which indicate fusion yields increase by a billion times.
• energy production with a proposed system would be four times cheaper than coal

The ultra-powerful picosecond CPA laser pulses have just reached the necessary condition for producing a turning point to generate electricity from nuclear fusion reactions.

Ablation compression of spherical HB11 fusion usually arrives at five orders of magnitudes lower energy gains than the DT reaction. However, applying the computations of plane wave ignition with picoseconds laser pulses on solid density fusion fuel, the resulting need of an energy flux E* of 400 million joules per square centimeter for DT was nearly the same as for HB11. This was a surprising gain increase for HB11 by five orders of magnitudes though only binary nuclear reactions as in the case of DT were used for comparison. The reaction producing three 4 He (alpha particles) resulted in an avalanche reaction and using elastic plasma collisions for the exceptionally preferred energy range around 600 keV resulting in a further increase of the energy gains by four orders of magnitudes. These are all together one billion times higher reaction gains than the classical HB11 fusion as measured.

The very first measured HB11 reaction with picosecond CPA laser pulse irradiation resulted in a thousand reactions. Irradiating a laser pulse together with a second one for producing an intense particle beam resulted in more than one million reactions and experiments with a single laser beam of entirely few dozens of ps arrived at billion reactions which agreed with the calculated just mentioned gain increases. In all experiments, the temperature could be estimated below values of 100 eV, or at least many orders of magnitudes lower than of the thermal equilibrium pressures above 100 Million.

Using the knowledge of numerously elaborated and experimentally confirmed cases of interaction of CPA laser pulses in the sub-picosecond range and powers above petawatt, the ignition of fusion of hydrogen with the boron isotope 11 (HB11 fusion) is of high energy gain. Experiments indicated energies above one trillion joules per cubic centimeter for non-thermal pressures. This is the basis for the design of an environmentally clean, safe, low-cost and abundant generator of electricity. The equation of motion for the ignition is dominated by the non-thermal term of the nonlinear force fNL for avoiding the thermal pressures that are in the range above temperatures of 100 million °C.

High Energy Density Physics – Pressure of picosecond CPA laser pulses substitute ultrahigh thermal
pressures to ignite fusion.

Nuclear reactions produce ten million times more energy than the chemical reactions e.g. from burning carbon, but the equilibrium thermal pressures for chemical reactions need temperatures of hundred °C while nuclear burns need many dozens of million °C. This is on the level for ITER or at NIF with using nanosecond laser pulses. In contrast, non-thermal pressures can be higher by lasers using nonlinear forces of picoseconds or shorter duration as computer results of 1978 had demonstrated by non-thermal plasma-block acceleration. This is in full agreement with the ultrahigh acceleration measured by Sauerbrey since 1996 thanks to his use of ultra-extreme powers of picosecond CPA-laser pulses. Even the very inefficient classical fusion of hydrogen with the 11B can be used for the non-thermal reaction with sufficiently modest heating in a reactor for generation electricity.

Background

Nature Communications– Fusion reactions initiated by laser-accelerated particle beams in a laser-produced plasma (2013)

Lasers and Particle Beams – Fusion energy using avalanche increased boron reactions for block-ignition by ultrahigh power picosecond laser pulses (2015)

Journal of Fusion Energy – Kilotesla Magnetic Assisted Fast Laser Ignited Boron-11 Hydrogen Fusion with Nonlinear Force Driven Ultrahigh Accelerated Plasma Blocks (2014)

Lasers and Particle Beams – Road map to clean energy using laser beam ignition of boron-hydrogen fusion (2017)

SOURCES: HB11 Energy, University of New South Wales, Nature Communications, High Energy Density Physics, Heinrich Hora, Lasers and Particle Beams, Journal of Fusion Energy
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture

See the full article here.

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Welcome to UNSW Australia (The University of New South Wales), one of Australia’s leading research and teaching universities. At UNSW, we take pride in the broad range and high quality of our teaching programs. Our teaching gains strength and currency from our research activities, strong industry links and our international nature; UNSW has a strong regional and global engagement.

In developing new ideas and promoting lasting knowledge we are creating an academic environment where outstanding students and scholars from around the world can be inspired to excel in their programs of study and research. Partnerships with both local and global communities allow UNSW to share knowledge, debate and research outcomes. UNSW’s public events include concert performances, open days and public forums on issues such as the environment, healthcare and global politics. We encourage you to explore the UNSW website so you can find out more about what we do.

From University of New South Wales: “Pioneering technology promises unlimited, clean and safe energy”

From University of New South Wales

21 Feb 2020
Yolande Hutchinson
UNSW Sydney External Relations
0420 845 023
y.hutchinson@unsw.edu.au

Dr Warren McKenzie
HB11 Energy
0400 059 509

Professor Heinrich Hora
UNSW Physics
0414 471 424

A UNSW spin-out company has secured patents for its ground-breaking approach to energy generation.

HB11 Energy, has been granted patents for its laser-driven technique for creating fusion energy. Picture: Shutterstock

UNSW Sydney spin-out company, HB11 Energy, has been granted patents for its laser-driven technique for creating fusion energy. Unlike earlier methods, the technique is completely safe as it does not rely on radioactive fuel and leaves no toxic radioactive waste.

HB11 Energy secured its intellectual property rights in Japan last week, following recent grants in China and the USA.

Conceived by UNSW Emeritus Professor of theoretical physics Heinrich Hora, HB11 Energy’s concept differs radically from other experimental fusion projects.

“After investigating a laser-boron fusion approach for over four decades at UNSW, I am thrilled that this pioneering approach has now received patents in three countries,” Professor Hora said.

“These granted patents represent the eve of HB11 Energy’s seed-stage fundraising campaign that will establish Australia’s first commercial fusion company, and the world’s only approach focused on the safe hydrogen – boron reaction using lasers.”

The preferred fusion approach employed by most fusion groups is to heat Deuterium-Tritium fuel well beyond the temperature of the sun (or almost 15 million degrees Celsius). Rather than heating the fuel, HB11’s hydrogen-boron fusion is achieved using two powerful lasers whose pulses apply precise non-linear forces to compress the nuclei together.

“Tritium is very rare, expensive, radioactive and difficult to store. Fusion reactions employing Deuterium-Tritium also shed harmful neutrons and create radioactive waste which needs to be disposed of safely. I have long favored the combination of cheap and abundant hydrogen H and boron B-11. The fusion of these elements does not primarily produce neutrons and is the ideal fuel combination,” Professor Hora said.

Most other sources of power production, such as coal, gas and nuclear, rely on heating liquids like water to drive turbines. In contrast, the energy generated by hydrogen-boron fusion converts directly into electricity allowing for much smaller and simpler generators.

The two-laser approach needed for HB11 Energy’s hydrogen-boron fusion only became possible recently thanks to advances in laser technology that won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Schematic of a hydrogen-boron fusion reactor.

Hora’s reactor design is deceptively simple: a largely empty metal sphere, where a modestly sized HB11 fuel pellet is held in the center, with apertures on different sides for the two lasers. One laser establishes the magnetic containment field for the plasma and the second laser triggers the ‘avalanche’ fusion chain reaction.

The alpha particles generated by the reaction would create an electrical flow that can be channeled almost directly into an existing power grid with no need for a heat exchanger or steam turbine generator.

“The clean and absolutely safe reactor can be placed within densely populated areas, with no possibility of a catastrophic meltdown such as that which has been seen with nuclear fission reactors,” Professor Hora added.

With experiments and simulations measuring a laser-initiated chain reaction creating one billion-fold higher reaction rates than predicted (under thermal equilibrium conditions), HB11 Energy stands a high chance of reaching the goal of ‘net-energy gain’ well ahead of other groups.

“HB11 Energy’s approach could be the only way to achieve very low carbon emissions by 2050. As we aren’t trying to heat fuels to impossibly high temperatures, we are sidestepping all of the scientific challenges that have held fusion energy back for more than half a century,” Dr Warren McKenzie, Managing Director of HB11 Energy, said.

“This means our development roadmap will be much faster and cheaper than any other fusion approach,” Dr McKenzie added.

See the full article here .

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Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

Welcome to UNSW Australia (The University of New South Wales), one of Australia’s leading research and teaching universities. At UNSW, we take pride in the broad range and high quality of our teaching programs. Our teaching gains strength and currency from our research activities, strong industry links and our international nature; UNSW has a strong regional and global engagement.

In developing new ideas and promoting lasting knowledge we are creating an academic environment where outstanding students and scholars from around the world can be inspired to excel in their programs of study and research. Partnerships with both local and global communities allow UNSW to share knowledge, debate and research outcomes. UNSW’s public events include concert performances, open days and public forums on issues such as the environment, healthcare and global politics. We encourage you to explore the UNSW website so you can find out more about what we do.

From UMass Amherst via COSMOS Magazine: “Generating electricity ‘out of thin air'”

From UMass Amherst

via

COSMOS Magazine

18 February 2020
Nick Carne

Researchers unveil a new device powered by a microbe.

Graphic image of a thin film of protein nanowires generating electricity from atmospheric humidity. UMass Amherst/Yao and Lovley labs.

Scientists in the US have developed a device they say uses a natural protein to create electricity from moisture in the air.

Writing in the journal Nature, electrical engineer Jun Yao and microbiologist Derek Lovley, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, introduce the Air-gen (or air-powered generator), which Lovley describes as “the most amazing and exciting application of protein nanowires yet”.

Air-Gen has electrically conductive protein nanowires produced by the microbe Geobacter, which Lovley discovered in the Potomac River three decades ago and has been working with ever since, in particular investigating its potential for “green electronics”.

The Air-gen connects electrodes to the protein nanowires in such a way that electrical current is generated from the water vapour naturally present in the atmosphere.

It requires only a thin film of protein nanowires less than 10 microns thick. The bottom of the film rests on an electrode, while a smaller electrode that covers only part of the nanowire film sits on top.

The film adsorbs water vapour from the atmosphere. A combination of the electrical conductivity and surface chemistry of the protein nanowires, coupled with the fine pores between the nanowires within the film, establishes the conditions that generate an electrical current between the two electrodes.

Developed in Yao’s lab, Air-gen is low-cost, non-polluting and renewable, and needs neither sun nor wind, the researchers say. It can work indoors, or in extremely low humidity of the desert.

The current generation can power only small electronics, but they hope to bring it to commercial scale soon. Beyond that is the idea a small Air-gen “patch” that can power electronic wearables such as health and fitness monitors and smart watches. And then, maybe, there are mobile phones.

“The ultimate goal is to make large-scale systems,” says Yao. “For example, the technology might be incorporated into wall paint that could help power your home. Or, we may develop stand-alone air-powered generators that supply electricity off the grid.”

Lovley also is working to improve the practical biological capabilities of Geobacter. His lab recently developed a new microbial strain to more rapidly and inexpensively mass produce protein nanowires.

“We turned E. coli into a protein nanowire factory,” he says. “With this new scalable process, protein nanowire supply will no longer be a bottleneck to developing these applications.”

The Royal Institution of Australia has an education resource based on this article.
You can access it here.

See the full article here .

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John Schaefer

For new music by living composers

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Home

For great Jazz

88.3FM http://wbgo.org/

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Please visit The Jazz Loft Project based on the work of Sam Stephenson
Please visit The Jazz Loft Radio project from New York Public Radio

UMass Amherst, the Commonwealth’s flagship campus, is a nationally ranked public research university offering a full range of undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees.

As the flagship campus of America’s education state, the University of Massachusetts Amherst is the leader of the public higher education system of the Commonwealth, making a profound, transformative impact to the common good. Founded in 1863, we are the largest public research university in New England, distinguished by the excellence and breadth of our academic, research and community outreach programs. We rank 29th among the nation’s top public universities, moving up 11 spots in the past two years in the U.S. News & World Report’s annual college guide.

From University of Washington: “UW researchers win combined $5.9M from Department of Energy to advance solar technologies”

From University of Washington

January 24, 2020

Electrical & computer engineering professor Brian B. Johnson will develop power electronics to integrate solar with grid; BlueDot Photonics will develop new solar manufacturing technology

University of Washington (UW) clean energy researchers won a combined $5.9 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for two projects that will make solar-generated electricity more affordable. The DOE’s Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) made a total of 75 awards in late 2019 in a $128 million effort to lower solar electricity costs, boost U.S. manufacturing, reduce administrative red tape, and make solar energy and the grid more resistant to cyberattacks.

Power electronics to integrate solar with the grid

Brian B. Johnson, Washington Research Foundation (WRF) Innovation Assistant Professor of Clean Energy and Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE), leads a team receiving $4.9 million over the next three years to develop new control strategies to integrate solar photovoltaic systems and energy storage systems into the power grid. The proposed controllers will ensure grid stability at any level of renewable energy utilization. The team includes ECE professors Daniel Kirschen and Baosen Zhang, and partners at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Minnesota, Enphase Energy, and the Electric Power Research Institute. The team will contribute an additional $2.1 million in cost share, bringing the project total to $7 million. This work will enable grid operators to add increasing amounts of solar power onto the grid in a cost-effective, secure, resilient, and reliable manner.

Johnson has led another DO­E-backed project since 2018, collaborating with Kirschen, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the University of Colorado to halve the cost of inverters for solar systems — devices that convert solar-generated dc power into ac power that is usable by the power grid.

Manufacturing next-generation solar panels

UW spinoff BlueDot Photonics is a clean technology startup building next-generation solar panels and other photonic devices. The company was co-founded by UW CoMotion Commercialization Fellow Daniel Kroupa, named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30: Energy” list in 2019, UW alum and WRF Postdoctoral Fellow Matthew Crane (Ph.D. chemical engineering ’17), UW alum Jared Silvia (B.S. chemistry & biochemistry ’05), and UW chemistry professor Daniel Gamelin. BlueDot’s DOE-backed team will receive $1 million over the next 18 months to develop vapor deposition hardware for thin-film perovskite solar cells. Project partners include UW associate professor of materials science & engineering and mechanical engineering J. Devin MacKenzie and researchers at NREL.

BlueDot’s unique vapor deposition technology is a fast and cost-effective technique in which powder is turned directly to vapor to be evenly coated onto a surface — in this case, perovskites onto the base of a solar cell. Perovskites are an emerging class of materials that can be inexpensively made from common elements and engineered to have high-performing photovoltaic properties. BlueDot will be working at the Washington Clean Energy Testbeds, where MacKenzie is technical director.

BlueDot is one of seven companies backed by the DOE SETO for innovations in manufacturing. The awardees are expected to develop robust hardware prototypes that will attract follow-on private investment. BlueDot will contribute an additional $300,000 in cost share, for a project total of $1.3 million.

One of BlueDot Photonics’ coupon-sized solar module prototypes, fabricated at the Washington Clean Energy Testbeds.

See the full article here .

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Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The University of Washington is one of the world’s preeminent public universities. Our impact on individuals, on our region, and on the world is profound — whether we are launching young people into a boundless future or confronting the grand challenges of our time through undaunted research and scholarship. Ranked number 10 in the world in Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings and educating more than 54,000 students annually, our students and faculty work together to turn ideas into impact and in the process transform lives and our world. For more about our impact on the world, every day.
So what defines us —the students, faculty and community members at the University of Washington? Above all, it’s our belief in possibility and our unshakable optimism. It’s a connection to others, both near and far. It’s a hunger that pushes us to tackle challenges and pursue progress. It’s the conviction that together we can create a world of good. Join us on the journey.

From Ohio State University: “Chemistry finding could make solar energy more efficient”

From Ohio State University

Jan 20, 2020
Laura Arenschield
Ohio State News
arenschield.2@osu.edu
614-292-9475

Researchers have found a way to harness the entire spectrum of sunlight.

Researchers have shown, for the first time, that it is possible to collect energy from the entire visible spectrum of sunlight and transform it, quickly and efficiently, into hydrogen for fuel. Photo by David Monje on Unsplash

Scientists for the first time have developed a single molecule that can absorb sunlight efficiently and also act as a catalyst to transform solar energy into hydrogen, a clean alternative to fuel for things like gas-powered vehicles.

This new molecule collects energy from the entire visible spectrum, and can harness more than 50% more solar energy than current solar cells can. The finding could help humans transition away from fossil fuels and toward energy sources that do not contribute to climate change.

The researchers outlined their findings in a study published today in Nature Chemistry. The research team was led by Claudia Turro, a chemistry professor and director of The Ohio State University Center for Chemical and Biophysical Dynamics.

“The whole idea is that we can use photons from the sun and transform it into hydrogen. To put it simply, we are saving the energy from sunlight and storing it into chemical bonds so it can be used at a later time,” Turro said.

Photons are elemental particles of sunlight that contain energy.

The researchers showed, for the first time, that it is possible to collect energy from the entire visible spectrum of sunlight — including low-energy infrared, a part of the solar spectrum that previously had been difficult to collect — and transform it, quickly and efficiently, into hydrogen. Hydrogen is a clean fuel, meaning it doesn’t produce carbon or carbon dioxide as a byproduct of its use.

“What makes it work is that the system is able to put the molecule into an excited state, where it absorbs the photon and is able to store two electrons to make hydrogen,” Turro said. “This storing of two electrons in a single molecule derived from two photons, and using them together to make hydrogen, is unprecedented.”

Turning energy from the sun into, say, fuel for a car, first requires a mechanism to collect the energy. That energy then has to be converted into a fuel. The conversion requires something called a catalyst — a thing that speeds up a chemical reaction, allowing the conversion from solar energy to usable energy like hydrogen.

Most previous attempts to collect solar energy and turn it into hydrogen have focused on the higher-energy wavelengths of sunlight — think ultraviolet rays, for example.

Previous attempts also have relied on catalysts that are built from two or more molecules, which exchange electrons — energy — as they make fuel from solar power. But energy is lost in the exchange, making those multi-molecule systems less efficient.

The few attempts that relied on a single-molecule catalyst were also inefficient, Turro said, in part because they did not collect energy from the full visible spectrum of sunlight, and in part because the catalysts themselves degraded quickly.

Turro’s research team figured out how to make a catalyst out of just one molecule — a form of the element rhodium — which means less energy is lost, she said. And they figured out how to collect energy from infrared to ultraviolent — the entire visible spectrum. The system this research team designed is nearly 25 times more efficient with low-energy near-infrared light than previous single-molecule systems operative with ultraviolet photons, according to the study.

In the study, the researchers used LEDs to shine light onto acid solutions containing the active molecule. When they did, they found that hydrogen was produced.

“I think the reason it works is because the molecule is difficult to oxidize,” she said. “And we have to have renewable energy. Just imagine if we could use sunlight for our energy instead of coal or gas or oil, what we could do to address climate change.”

Before the research team’s finding can be put into real-world applications, Turro said, there is still much work to be done. Rhodium is a rare metal and producing catalysts from rhodium is expensive. The team is working on improving this molecule to produce hydrogen over a longer period of time and is working on building the catalyst out of less expensive materials.

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

See the full article here .

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Stem Education Coalition

The Ohio State University (OSU, commonly referred to as Ohio State) is a public research university in Columbus, Ohio. Founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and the ninth university in Ohio with the Morrill Act of 1862,[4] the university was originally known as the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College. The college originally focused on various agricultural and mechanical disciplines but it developed into a comprehensive university under the direction of then-Governor (later, U.S. President) Rutherford B. Hayes, and in 1878 the Ohio General Assembly passed a law changing the name to “The Ohio State University”.[5] The main campus in Columbus, Ohio, has since grown into the third-largest university campus in the United States.[6] The university also operates regional campuses in Lima, Mansfield, Marion, Newark, and Wooster.

The university has an extensive student life program, with over 1,000 student organizations; intercollegiate, club and recreational sports programs; student media organizations and publications, fraternities and sororities; and three student governments. Ohio State athletic teams compete in Division I of the NCAA and are known as the Ohio State Buckeyes. As of the 2016 Summer Olympics, athletes from Ohio State have won 104 Olympic medals (46 gold, 35 silver, and 23 bronze). The university is a member of the Big Ten Conference for the majority of sports.

From Brookhaven National Lab and Cornell University: “Transformative ‘Green’ Accelerator Achieves World’s First 8-pass Full Energy Recovery”

Cornell University

From Brookhaven National Lab

January 21, 2020
Karen McNulty Walsh,
kmcnulty@bnl.gov
(631) 344-8350

Peter Genzer
genzer@bnl.gov
(631) 344-3174

Successful demonstration paves the way for unprecedented applications in science, industry, and medicine.

Georg Hoffstaetter (left) and Dejan Trbojevic at the CBETA facility at Cornell University.

Scientists from Cornell University and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) have successfully demonstrated the world’s first capture and reuse of energy in a multi-turn particle accelerator, where electrons are accelerated and decelerated in multiple stages and transported at different energies through a single beamline. This advance paves the way for ultra-bright particle accelerators that use far less energy than today’s machines.

Applications include medical isotope production, cancer therapy, x-ray sources, and industrial applications such as micro-chip production, as well as more energy-efficient machines for basic research in physics, materials science, and many other fields. One example: Scientists may use such energy-recovery accelerator technology to efficiently generate electrons for “cooling” ions at the Electron-Ion Collider, a planned groundbreaking nuclear physics research facility that will be located at Brookhaven Lab.

The Cornell-BNL ERL Test Accelerator, or CBETA, located at Cornell, is an Energy Recovery Linear accelerator (ERL) that uses two transformational “green” technologies: Instead of dumping the energy of previously accelerated particles, it recovers and reuses that energy to accelerate the next batch of particles. And the beamline that steers the particles through the accelerator is made of permanent magnets, which require no electricity to operate. These are expected to become the most energy-efficient technologies for high-performance accelerators of the future.

Schematic of the Cornell-BNL ERL Test Accelerator. Superconducting radiofrequency (SRF) cavities accelerate electrons to high energy in stages, sending them around the racetrack-shaped accelerator after each acceleration stage. Each curved arc is made of a series of fixed field, alternating gradient (FFA) permanent magnets that can carry beams at multiple energies simultaneously. After four passes through the accelerating infrastructure and FFA arcs, the electrons then decelerate in stages, returning their energy to the SRF cavities so it can be used to accelerate electrons again.

“Reusing a particle beam’s energy in this new kind of accelerator makes brighter beams available, which would have required too much energy until now,” said Georg Hoffstaetter, physics professor and principle investigator for Cornell. In addition to the above-mentioned applications, Hoffstaetter points out that “such innovative technology and these brighter beams will likely lead to additional uses yet to be imagined.”

CBETA’s construction was funded by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and used components that were developed with funds from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and industrial partners. The CBETA team achieved the key milestone of full energy recovery and reacceleration of particles in the early hours of December 24, 2019, on schedule. Since then, the team has continued to enhance CBETA’s performance.

Alicia Barton, President and CEO, NYSERDA, said, “NYSERDA is extremely proud to support this groundbreaking project and we look forward to seeing how it advances our ability to address the most pressing scientific and societal challenges of our time. New York’s support for technologies that deliver economy-wide benefits is unwavering under Governor Cuomo’s leadership and we congratulate our partners on this tremendous milestone.”

Energy-recovery design basics

The CBETA machine includes the world’s first eight-pass superconducting Energy-Recovery Linear accelerator, in which a beam is accelerated by passing four times through a Superconducting Radio Frequency (SRF) cavity to reach its highest energy.

Energy-efficient accelerator was 50 years in the making

By making another four passes through the same cavity, but this time decelerating, the beam’s energy is captured and made available for new particles to be accelerated. This ERL concept was first proposed in 1965 by Maury Tigner, professor emeritus at Cornell University, but it took decades of work at Cornell and elsewhere to develop the necessary technology.

After each pass through the acceleration apparatus, the particles have a different energy and traverse their own “lane” through a special chain of magnets, referred to as Fixed-Field-Alternating Linear Gradient (FFA-LG) beamline, which loops the particles back to the SRF cavities. The permanent magnets that make up this beamline were designed, developed, and precisely shaped at Brookhaven to allow all beams to traverse the same magnet structure, even though they have four different energies. This design reduces the need for multiple accelerator rings to accommodate beams at different energies and eliminates the need for electricity to power the magnets, further reducing cost and improving overall efficiency.

Dejan Trbojevic, senior physicist and principal investigator for Brookhaven’s participation in the project, first described the idea of accelerating beams at multiple energies in a single beamline made of fixed-field alternating-gradient magnets at a muon collider workshop in 1999. Meanwhile, Cornell was developing components for a superconducting ERL.

“With CBETA, the idea was to show that Brookhaven’s single-beamline return loop would work with Cornell’s ERL technology for the acceleration of electrons, particles with many more potential applications than their heavier muon cousins,” Trbojevic said.

In late December, with Cornell physicist Adam Bartnik as the lead operator, CBETA did just that. Starting with an electron beam at the energy of six million electron volts (MeV), the accelerator components brought the particles to 42, 78, 114, and 150 MeV in four passes through the ERL. After deceleration during four additional passes through the SRF cavities, the particles reached their original 6 MeV energy—at exactly the same position as the starting beam. This showed that full electron energy recovery had been achieved, and that the SRF cavities were energized to accelerate the next batch of particles.

This accomplishment makes CBETA the first multi-turn ERL to recover the energy of accelerated particle beams in SRF accelerating structures, and the first accelerator to use a single beamline with fixed magnetic fields to transport seven different accelerating and decelerating energy beams.

“We couldn’t have achieved these results without many contributions throughout the design, construction, and commissioning phases by scientists, engineers, and technical staff at both Brookhaven and Cornell, along with input from many industrial partners and renowned accelerator experts,” said Brookhaven Lab engineer Rob Michnoff, director of the CBETA project.

See the full article here .

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Stem Education Coalition

Once called “the first American university” by educational historian Frederick Rudolph, Cornell University represents a distinctive mix of eminent scholarship and democratic ideals. Adding practical subjects to the classics and admitting qualified students regardless of nationality, race, social circumstance, gender, or religion was quite a departure when Cornell was founded in 1865.

Today’s Cornell reflects this heritage of egalitarian excellence. It is home to the nation’s first colleges devoted to hotel administration, industrial and labor relations, and veterinary medicine. Both a private university and the land-grant institution of New York State, Cornell University is the most educationally diverse member of the Ivy League.

On the Ithaca campus alone nearly 20,000 students representing every state and 120 countries choose from among 4,000 courses in 11 undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools. Many undergraduates participate in a wide range of interdisciplinary programs, play meaningful roles in original research, and study in Cornell programs in Washington, New York City, and the world over.

Brookhaven campus

BNL Center for Functional Nanomaterials

BNL NSLS-II

BNL NSLS II

BNL RHIC Campus

BNL/RHIC Star Detector

BNL RHIC PHENIX Detector

One of ten national laboratories overseen and primarily funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Brookhaven National Laboratory conducts research in the physical, biomedical, and environmental sciences, as well as in energy technologies and national security. Brookhaven Lab also builds and operates major scientific facilities available to university, industry and government researchers. The Laboratory’s almost 3,000 scientists, engineers, and support staff are joined each year by more than 5,000 visiting researchers from around the world. Brookhaven is operated and managed for DOE’s Office of Science by Brookhaven Science Associates, a limited-liability company founded by Stony Brook University, the largest academic user of Laboratory facilities, and Battelle, a nonprofit, applied science and technology organization.

From Eos: “Integrating Input to Forge Ahead in Geothermal Research”

From AGU

From Eos

1.3.20
Robert Rozansky
Alexis McKittrick

A road map for a major geothermal energy development initiative determines proposed priorities and goals by integrating input from stakeholders, data, and technological assessments.

The road map for one U.S. geothermal energy initiative provides a methodology for integrating stakeholder input and priorities with information from research and technical sources to provide a set of common research priorities. Credit: iStock.com/DrAfter123

Scientific communities often struggle to find consensus on how to achieve the next big leap in technology, methods, or understanding in their fields. Geothermal energy development is no exception. Here we describe a methodological approach to combining qualitative input from the geothermal research community with technical information and data. The result of this approach is a road map to overcoming barriers facing this important field of research.

Geothermal energy accounts for merely 0.4% of U.S. electricity production today, but the country has vast, untapped geothermal energy resources—if only we can access them. The U.S. Geological Survey has found that unconventional geothermal sources could produce as much as 500 gigawatts of electricity—roughly half of U.S. electric power generating capacity. These sources have sufficient heat but insufficient fluid permeability to enable extraction of this heat [U.S. Geological Survey, 2008]. One approach to tapping these resources is to construct enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), in which techniques such as fluid injection are used to increase the permeability of the subsurface to make a reservoir suitable for heat exchange and extraction (Figure 1).

Fig. 1. A geothermal power plant produces electricity from water that has been injected (blue pipe at center) into a subsurface reservoir, heated, and then pumped back to the surface (red pipes). Enhanced geothermal systems use techniques such as fluid injection to enhance the permeability of underground reservoirs that might otherwise not be accessible for geothermal heat extraction. Credit: U.S. Department of Energy.

The United States and other countries have conducted experimental EGS projects since the 1970s. However, engineering a successful heat exchange reservoir in the high temperatures and pressures characteristic of EGS sites remains a significant technical challenge, one that must be overcome to enable commercial viability [Ziagos et al., 2013].

Because of the great potential of this technology, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is driving an ambitious initiative called the Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE) to accelerate research and development in EGS. The FORGE initiative will provide $140 million in funding over the next 5 years (subject to congressional appropriation) for cutting-edge research, drilling, and technology testing at a field laboratory and experimental EGS site in Milford, Utah, operated by the University of Utah [U.S. Department of Energy, 2018].

Assessing Challenges of Enhanced Geothermal Systems

DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO) asked the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI) to develop a methodology for collecting input from the EGS community to produce a FORGE road map with strategic guidance for the managers and operators of the site. STPI is a federally funded research and development center established by Congress and operated by the nonprofit Institute for Defense Analyses, which provides analyses of scientific issues important to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and to other federal agencies.

EGS faces numerous technical challenges. These include developing drilling equipment that can withstand the heat, pressure, and geology of the EGS environment; improving the ability to isolate specific targets in the subsurface for stimulation (called zonal isolation); and learning to better mitigate the risk of induced seismicity during operations. The EGS community has a variety of ideas for how FORGE can address these challenges and for the balance needed between conducting research that is novel, though potentially risky, and efforts that will maintain a functioning site for continued use.

The time frame for FORGE is also relatively short, about 5 years, especially given the substantial effort required simply to drill and establish an EGS reservoir. In light of this, STPI designed and conducted a process to capture the community’s ideas for how FORGE can advance EGS, process this information methodically and impartially, and distill it into a document that is reflective of the community’s input and useful for planning research at FORGE.

STPI’s process was designed specifically for the FORGE road map, but the general approach described here, or specific elements of it, could prove valuable for other efforts seeking to leverage collective community feedback to move a research field forward. Using this approach, a community struggling to make progress can prioritize research and technology needs without focusing on the individual approaches of different researchers or organizations.

A Road Map for Geothermal Research

The FORGE road map, published in February 2019, is intended to offer input from the EGS research community to help the managers of FORGE craft funding opportunities, operate the site in Utah, and work toward achieving DOE’s mission for FORGE: a set of rigorous and reproducible EGS technical solutions and a pathway to successful commercial EGS development.

The document outlines discrete research activities—and highlights the most critical of these activities—that the EGS research community proposed for FORGE to address technical challenges. The road map also categorizes all research activities into three overarching areas of focus: stimulation planning and design, fracture control, and reservoir management.

Engaging the Community

In developing the road map, STPI, in coordination with DOE, first determined categories of information that could serve as building blocks for the road map. They did this by analyzing U.S. and foreign EGS road maps and vision studies from the past 2 decades. These categories included the major technical challenges facing EGS, such as developing optimal subsurface fracture networks, and the specific areas of research that could be investigated at FORGE to address those challenges, such as testing different zonal isolation methods.

Higher-level questions included determining how progress or success could be recognized in these research areas and what accomplishments could serve as milestones for the FORGE project. Examples of potential milestones include drilling a well to a predetermined depth and measuring subsurface properties to a target resolution.

STPI then conducted semistructured interviews with 24 stakeholders from DOE, national laboratories, industry, and academia to validate and expand the initially identified technical challenges, understand the barriers that researchers were facing when trying to address these challenges, and discuss technology that could overcome these barriers.

STPI summarized the results of these interviews, including technical challenges and potential research activities for FORGE, in an informal memorandum. This memorandum served as a preliminary, skeletal draft of the road map, and it provided the starting point for discussion in a community workshop.

In August 2018, STPI hosted a FORGE Roadmap Development Workshop at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. Nearly 30 EGS subject matter experts from across academia, national laboratories, industry, and government attended and provided input. In a series of breakout sessions, attendees reviewed the technical challenges and research activities identified in STPI’s interviews, generated a list of technical milestones for FORGE’s 5 years of operation, discussed the dependencies among the research activities and milestones on the FORGE timeline, and produced qualitative and quantitative criteria to measure progress in each of the research activities.

The steps in this process—a literature review, interviews with subject matter experts, and a stakeholder workshop—represent a progression of inputs that helped elucidate EGS community perspectives on current challenges to commercial EGS development and research activities that would help FORGE solve those challenges.

After this information had been collected, STPI worked with DOE on the technical content of the road map in preparation for its publication last February. STPI and DOE consolidated, structured, and prioritized this content to provide the greatest utility to the FORGE managers and operators.

The Way Ahead

Clean, geothermal energy has the potential to make up a much larger share of the U.S. energy portfolio than it does at present, but to get there, the field of EGS will have to make substantial progress. The FORGE road map is designed to help the FORGE initiative move toward this goal as effectively as possible, especially given the variety of viewpoints on what research is most important with the limited funding and time available.

The fundamental difficulties faced by the EGS community in charting a path forward are hardly unique, and so the successful process used in developing this road map could be applicable to other research communities. Collaborative processes such as the one described here look beyond literature reviews and individual research projects, and they build on themselves as they progress. Such processes can incorporate diverging viewpoints to bring out the common challenges and potential solutions that might help a research community gain consensus on how to move forward. Although a community may not agree on the exact path to success, having a common end point and a set of research priorities can help everyone forge ahead.

References

U.S. Department of Energy (2018), Department of Energy selects University of Utah site for $140 million geothermal research and development, https://www.energy.gov/articles/department-energy-selects-university-utah-site-140-million-geothermal-research-and.

U.S. Geological Survey (2008), Assessment of moderate- and high-temperature geothermal resources of the United States, U.S. Geol. Surv. Fact Sheet, 2008-3082, 4 pp., https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3082/.

Ziagos, J., et al. (2013), A technology roadmap for strategic development of enhanced geothermal systems, in Proceedings of the 38th Workshop on Geothermal Reservoir Engineering, pp. 11–13, Stanford Univ., Stanford, Calif., https://pangea.stanford.edu/ERE/pdf/IGAstandard/SGW/2013/Ziagos.pdf.

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From MIT News: “Understanding the impact of deep-sea mining”

From MIT News

December 5, 2019
Mary Beth Gallagher | Department of Mechanical Engineering

Mining materials from the sea floor could help secure a low-carbon future, but researchers are racing to understand the environmental effects.

Professor Thomas Peacock (left) with graduate students Rohit Balasaheb Supekar (center) and Carlos Munoz Royo (right) aboard the RV Sally Ride. Image: John Freidah

While aboard the research vessel Sally Ride off the coast of San Diego, Peacock, Alford and a multistakeholder team of researchers deployed a discharge hose and studied sediment plumes to assess the environmental impacts of deep-sea mining.
Image: John Freidah

Polymetallic nodules containing minerals essential to energy storage lie at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. In deep-sea mining, a collector vehicle is sent to pick up these nodules from the deep seabed. The vehicle creates a sediment cloud known as a ‘collector plume,’ seen here in the foreground, that is then carried away by ocean currents. Image courtesy of the DeepCCZ expedition.

Resting atop Thomas Peacock’s desk is an ordinary-looking brown rock. Roughly the size of a potato, it has been at the center of decades of debate. Known as a polymetallic nodule, it spent 10 million years sitting on the deep seabed, 15,000 feet below sea level. The nodule contains nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese — four minerals that are essential in energy storage.

“As society moves toward driving more electric vehicles and utilizing renewable energy, there will be an increased demand for these minerals, to manufacture the batteries necessary to decarbonize the economy,” says Peacock, a professor of mechanical engineering and the director of MIT’s Environmental Dynamics Lab (END Lab). He is part of an international team of researchers that has been trying to gain a better understanding the environmental impact of collecting polymetallic nodules, a process known as deep-sea mining.

The minerals found in the nodules, particularly cobalt and nickel, are key components of lithium-ion batteries. Currently, lithium-ion batteries offer the best energy density of any commercially available battery. This high energy density makes them ideal for use in everything from cellphones to electric vehicles, which require large amounts of energy within a compact space.

“Those two elements are expected to see a tremendous growth in demand due to energy storage,” says Richard Roth, director of MIT’s Materials Systems Laboratory.

While researchers are exploring alternative battery technologies such as sodium-ion batteries and flow batteries that utilize electrochemical cells, these technologies are far from commercialization.

“Few people expect any of these lithium-ion alternatives to be available in the next decade,” explains Roth. “Waiting for unknown future battery chemistries and technologies could significantly delay widespread adoption of electric vehicles.”

Vast amounts of specialty nickel will be also needed to build larger-scale batteries that will be required as societies look to shift from an electric grid powered by fossil fuels to one powered by renewable resources like solar, wind, wave, and thermal.

“The collection of nodules from the seabed is being considered as a new means for getting these materials, but before doing so it is imperative to fully understand the environmental impact of mining resources from the deep ocean and compare it to the environmental impact of mining resources on land,” explains Peacock.

After receiving seed funding from MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI), Peacock was able to apply his expertise in fluid dynamics to study how deep-sea mining could affect surrounding ecosystems.

Meeting the demand for energy storage

Currently, nickel and cobalt are extracted through land-based mining operations. Much of this mining occurs in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which produces 60 percent of the world’s cobalt. These land-based mines often impact surrounding environments through the destruction of habitats, erosion, and soil and water contamination. There are also concerns that land-based mining, especially in politically unstable countries, might not be able to supply enough of these materials as the demand for batteries rises.

The swath of ocean located between Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States — also known as the Clarion Clipperton Fracture Zone — is estimated to possess six times more cobalt and three times more nickel than all known land-based stores, as well as vast deposits of manganese and a substantial amount of copper.

While the seabed is abundant with these materials, little is known about the short- and long-term environmental effects of mining 15,000 feet below sea level. Peacock and his collaborator Professor Matthew Alford from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California at San Diego are leading the quest to understand how the sediment plumes generated by the collection of nodules from the seabed will be carried by water currents.

“The key question is, if we decide to make a plume at site A, how far does it spread before eventually raining down on the sea floor?” explains Alford. “That ability to map the geography of the impact of sea floor mining is a crucial unknown right now.”

The research Peacock and Alford are conducting will help inform stakeholders about the potential environmental effects of deep-sea mining. One pressing matter is that draft exploitation regulations for deep-sea mining in areas beyond national jurisdiction are currently being negotiated by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), an independent organization established by the United Nations that regulates all mining activities on the sea floor. Peacock and Alford’s research will help guide the development of environmental standards and guidelines to be issued under those regulations.

“We have a unique opportunity to help regulators and other concerned parties to assess draft regulations using our data and modeling, before operations start and we regret the impact of our activity,” says Carlos Munoz Royo, a PhD student in MIT’s END Lab.

Tracking plumes in the water

In deep-sea mining, a collector vehicle would be deployed from a ship. The collector vehicle then travels 15,000 feet down to the seabed, where it vacuums up the top four inches of the seabed. This process creates a plume known as a collector plume.

“As the collector moves across the seabed floor, it stirs up sediment and creates a sediment cloud, or plume, that’s carried away and distributed by ocean currents,” explains Peacock.

The collector vehicle picks up the nodules, which are pumped through a pipe back to the ship. On the ship, usable nodules are separated from unwanted sediment. That sediment is piped back into the ocean, creating a second plume, known as a discharge plume.

Peacock collaborated with Pierre Lermusiaux, professor of mechanical engineering and of ocean science and engineering, and Glenn Flierl, professor of Earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences, to create mathematical models that predict how these two plumes travel through the water.

To test these models, Peacock set out to track actual plumes created by mining the floor of the Pacific Ocean. With funding from MIT ESI, he embarked on the first-ever field study of such plumes. He was joined by Alford and Eric Adams, senior research engineer at MIT, as well as other researchers and engineers from MIT, Scripps, and the United States Geological Survey.

With funding from the UC Ship Funds Program, the team conducted experiments in consultation with the ISA during a weeklong expedition in the Pacific Ocean aboard the U.S. Navy R/V Sally Ride in March 2018. The researchers mixed sediment with a tracer dye that they were able to track using sensors on the ship developed by Alford’s Multiscale Ocean Dynamics group. In doing so, they created a map of the plumes’ journeys.

The field experiments demonstrated that the models Peacock and Lermusiaux developed can be used to predict how plumes will travel through the water — and could help give a clearer picture of how surrounding biology might be affected.

Impact on deep-sea organisms

Life on the ocean floor moves at a glacial pace. Sediment accumulates at a rate of 1 millimeter every millennium. With such a slow rate of growth, areas disturbed by deep-sea mining would be unlikely to recover on a reasonable timescale.

“The concern is that if there is a biological community specific to the area, it might be irretrievably impacted by mining,” explains Peacock.

According to Cindy Van Dover, professor of biological oceanography at Duke University, in addition to organisms that live in or around the nodules, other organisms elsewhere in the water column could be affected as the plumes travel.

“There could be clogging of filter feeding structures of, for example, gelatinous organisms in the water column, and burial of organisms on the sediment,” she explains. “There could also be some metals that get into the water column, so there are concerns about toxicology.”

Peacock’s research on plumes could help biologists like Van Dover assess collateral damage from deep-sea mining operations in surrounding ecosystems.

Drafting regulations for mining the sea

Through connections with MIT’s Policy Lab, the Institute is one of only two research universities with observer status at the ISA.

“The plume research is very important, and MIT is helping with the experimentation and developing plume models, which is vital to inform the current work of the International Seabed Authority and its stakeholder base,” explains Chris Brown, a consultant at the ISA. Brown was one of dozens of experts who convened on MIT’s campus last fall at a workshop discussing the risks of deep-sea mining.

To date, the field research Peacock and Alford conducted is the only ocean dataset on midwater plumes that exists to help guide decision-making. The next step in understanding how plumes move through the water will be to track plumes generated by a prototype collector vehicle. Peacock and his team in the END Lab are preparing to participate in a major field study using a prototype vehicle in 2020.

Thanks to recent funding provided by the 11th Hour Project, Peacock and Lermusiaux hope to develop models that give increasingly accurate predictions about how deep-sea mining plumes will travel through the ocean. They will continue to interact with academic colleagues, international agencies, NGOs, and contractors to develop a clearer picture of deep-sea mining’s environmental impact.

“It’s important to have input from all stakeholders early in the conversation to help make informed decisions, so we can fully understand the environmental impact of mining resources from the ocean and compare it to the environmental impact of mining resources on land,” says Peacock.

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From National Renewable Energy Laboratory: “Wind Pioneer Paul Veers”

NREL

From National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Nov. 6, 2019
Ernie Tucker

From Farm to Wind Farms, He’s Aloft as New Senior Research Fellow.

Paul Veers (right) at NREL’s Flatirons Campus with Eric Lantz, Katherine Dykes, and Tyler Stehly, who together developed WISDEM, the wind-plant integrated system design and engineering model. Photo by Dennis Schroeder, NREL

Tending cows on a Wisconsin dairy farm taught Paul Veers the value of hard work—and also that he didn’t want to be a farmer.

“The routine starts at 6 a.m. and ends at 8 p.m., seven days a week,” said the newly appointed research fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

As Veers was finishing his bachelor’s degree, his father offered him a chance to take over the 160-acre farm, saying he’d keep the 35 cows around until his son decided. “I thought about it for a millisecond,” Veers laughed. “I said, ‘Go ahead and sell the herd. I’m going elsewhere.’”

After studying engineering mechanics at the University of Wisconsin (a degree that, he says, “allows me to not do anything practical whatsoever—it’s really fundamental, the mechanics of engineering”), he earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University.

In 1980, a rural connection helped launch his career in science and wind energy research when Veers interviewed for his first job in operations at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. He met with “an old Tennessee farmer” who was impressed with Veers’ background. “He knew that on a farm, when the machinery breaks, the farmer had to get out there and fix it. There’s nothing else you can do.”

Yet Veers’ experience was different.

“My family wasn’t very mechanical,” Veers admitted. “I got the job under false pretenses” because his family relied on a friend who had a garage who could fix machines much more quickly.

Nonetheless, Veers joined Sandia’s applied mechanics department, which consulted on projects across the laboratory. While he worked on a large assortment of technologies that included nuclear reactors, he also encountered wind turbines.

His future career took off. “Wind energy was hands down the most interesting,” he said. “The field was wide open.”

Back in the early 1980s, the question was: Why are these machines breaking, and how do we figure out how to build them so they don’t break? “No one really knew how to do that,” Veers said. “That’s what drew me in.”

The Turbulent World of Wind

Heading into the field of wind energy for a career wasn’t exactly a safe choice at the time. Veers recalled that, early on at Sandia, he was introduced to a senior staffer in nuclear weapons research at a cocktail party. “He asked me what I was focused on, and I said wind energy,” Veers said. The would-be mentor paused a moment, then said, “Oh, that is truly, truly trivial. You ought to find something worthwhile. That is never going to turn into anything.”

Doubters did not deflect him. Veers persevered in the wild days of wind, when researchers did “dangerous stuff” with these balky new machines. And when federal funding became iffy for renewable energy development, he stayed put even as managers suggested staffers look elsewhere for secure jobs.

“I wasn’t bright enough to realize this could be a problem,” he said. Still, he was not convinced that wind energy was the solution.

“I really did not know if wind would become a major player,” Veers said. “I did not have a passion. Originally, I thought wind energy was an amazingly interesting problem to solve.”

Gradually, his viewpoint shifted. “The more I learned, the more I thought this could work,” he said. “This could make a difference.”

At that time, the general vision was that someday wind power might provide 5% of U.S. electricity. “Wouldn’t that be a wonderful success?” he recalled thinking. Now, it’s surpassed that figure and keeps climbing.

“Our sense is we’re going to hit 10% easily,” Veers said. “The goal is 50%. We now have the vision, if we keep pushing the frontiers with the technology, that it is going to increase to 20% or 30% globally.”

For Veers, it is “amazingly satisfying to see that this work we’re doing is paying off.”

NREL Associate Laboratory Director for Mechanical and Thermal Engineering Sciences Johney Green welcomes Paul Veers as a new NREL research fellow. Photo by Dennis Schroeder, NREL.

Early Contacts with NREL

While based at Sandia, Veers had frequent contacts with NREL. “I worked with NREL from day one,” he said.

Early on, he established himself as an expert in vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) and wind inflow analytical modeling tools. Sandia operated one of the largest research VAWTs in the world, and Veers was one of the lead research engineers in that program.

Brian Smith, partnership manager for the National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) at NREL, recalls meeting Veers in the 1980s. “Unfortunately, VAWTs never reached the commercial promised land,” Smith said. “And Paul, always taking the long view, adeptly switched to horizontal axis wind turbines without a hitch in his recognized expertise.”

Still, Veers did make a trip up to NREL’s Flatirons Campus to check on the one vertical axis wind turbine located there.

Also while at Sandia, he investigated wind turbine fatigue because he realized the assumptions regarding turbulence were inadequate. As a result, Veers developed one of the first analytical tools that modeled upwind flow characteristics. He also contributed to wind turbine system design tools that predict aerodynamic and structural dynamic performance.

The system to simulate turbulence can be applied to wind turbine computational models, an approach often referred to as the “Veers Method.” Variations of it are still in use today.

Aside from his technical talents, colleagues and peers value Veers’ communication skills.

“Paul has the uncanny ability to understand the physics of wind energy across many scientific disciplines and communicate the complexities to non-experts in writing and in words,” Smith said. “This skill set is truly unique in the world and extremely valuable.”

Take his explanation of a wind turbine for example: “It is a big piece of machinery that takes energy in one form and makes electricity.”

For a variety of reasons, Veers impressed many at NREL early on. NREL Fellow Bob Thresher met Veers at a wind turbine dynamics workshop in 1984. “Even then, as a young researcher working at Sandia, he stood out as a clear and careful thinker with great ideas to drive wind energy research forward,” Thresher said.

“Over the years, Paul has tirelessly worked across the national laboratory complex, contributing to the advancement of wind energy science and technology development,” he added.

Thresher describes Veers as an enthusiastic collaborative partner in the creation of the North American Wind Energy Academy. Veers skillfully brought university researchers together with national laboratory and industry researchers to address the longer-term research issues facing wind energy today.

Veers made it a point to reach out. “I was trying to make the other labs successful,” he said. “Unless we do that together, we’re not going to have a mission that’s fruitful.”

With his ability to network, as well as his connections to NREL, it was only a matter of time before he headed north to Colorado.

Paul Veers holds a photo of his four daughters—who provide one reason that he’ll continue to explore wind power and keep his job, he joked. Photo by Ernie Tucker, NREL.

An Innate Affinity for NREL

When NREL’s chief engineer position opened up in 2010, Veers jumped at the chance. United with old friends such as Thresher and Smith, as well as Sue Hock and Mike Robinson, Veers was set to join an established group. In his view, a major draw was, and is, NREL’s close-knit wind energy workforce.

“We all have to work together to make something that’s useful,” he said. “That’s often why this group is like a family. The teamwork that goes on here is really exceptional.”

Veers tackles leadership roles. He represents NREL on DOE’s Atmosphere to Electrons (A2e) Executive Management Committee. And for 12 years he was chief editor for Wind Energy, an international journal for progress and applications in wind power.

Recently, he was the lead author of a Science article analyzing three challenges to wind energy potential. It followed NREL convening more than 70 wind experts representing 15 countries in 2017 to discuss a future electricity system where wind could serve the global demand for clean energy.

“People think that because wind turbines have worked for decades there’s no room for improvement. And yet, there’s so much more to be done,” Veers said. “We distilled all the information into three big things connected to wind energy: the atmosphere, the machine, and the grid and [wind farm] plant.”

The possible upside of such innovation is clear.

“Addressing these challenges by taking an interdisciplinary wind energy science and engineering approach will lead to solutions that advance the state of the art in wind plant energy output,” said article co-author and NREL Associate Laboratory Director for Mechanical and Thermal Engineering Sciences Johney Green.

For Veers, the challenge is real. It keeps him showing up for work—although he also jokes that the fact that he and his wife Karen have four daughters born over a span of five years is also an incentive to keep his job.

Veers remains modest about his achievements. “I have many faults. I’m not very outgoing, and sometimes not very articulate,” he said. His colleagues back him up. Smith joked that Veers had an unbroken record of beginning presentations with a joke—that falls flat.

Whatever his attributes, Veers believes the key to success is the team. “It is an attitude that attracted me to NREL and this wind group in the first place,” he said. “That attitude is where the mission is much more important than personal glory or success.”

For Veers, choosing wind farms over dairy farms provided the best harvest of his talents.

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The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), located in Golden, Colorado, specializes in renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is a government-owned, contractor-operated facility, and is funded through the United States Department of Energy. This arrangement allows a private entity to operate the lab on behalf of the federal government. NREL receives funding from Congress to be applied toward research and development projects. NREL also performs research on photovoltaics (PV) under the National Center for Photovoltaics. NREL has a number of PV research capabilities including research and development, testing, and deployment. NREL’s campus houses several facilities dedicated to PV research.

NREL’s areas of research and development are renewable electricity, energy productivity, energy storage, systems integration, and sustainable transportation.

From University of Washington: “New technique lets researchers map strain in next-gen solar cells”

From University of Washington

October 31, 2019
James Urton

People can be good at hiding strain, and we’re not alone. Solar cells have the same talent. For a solar cell, physical strain within its microscopic crystalline structure can interrupt its core function — converting sunlight into electricity — by essentially “losing” energy as heat. For an emerging type of solar cell, known as lead halide perovskites, reducing and taming this loss is key to improving efficiency and putting the perovskites on par with today’s silicon solar cells.

In order to understand where strain builds up within a solar cell and triggers the energy loss, scientists must visualize the underlying grain structure of perovskite crystals within the solar cell. But the best approach involves bombarding the solar cell with high-energy electrons, which essentially burns the solar cell and renders it useless.

Researchers from the University of Washington and the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in the Netherlands have developed a way to illuminate strain in lead halide perovskite solar cells without harming them. Their approach, published online Sept. 10 in Joule, succeeded in imaging the grain structure of a perovskite solar cell, showing that misorientation between microscopic perovskite crystals is the primary contributor to the buildup of strain within the solar cell. Crystal misorientation creates small-scale defects in the grain structure, which interrupt the transport of electrons within the solar cell and lead to heat loss through a process known as non-radiative recombination.

Image of a perovskite solar cell, obtained by the team’s improved method for electron imaging, showing individual grain structure.Jariwala et al., Joule, 2019

“By combining our optical imaging with the new electron detector developed at FOM, we can actually see how the individual crystals are oriented and put together within a perovskite solar cell,” said senior author David Ginger, a UW professor of chemistry and chief scientist at the UW-based Clean Energy Institute. “We can show that strain builds up due to the grain orientation, which is information researchers can use to improve perovskite synthesis and manufacturing processes to realize better solar cells with minimal strain — and therefore minimal heat loss due to non-radiative recombination.”

Lead halide perovskites are cheap, printable crystalline compounds that show promise as low-cost, adaptable and efficient alternatives to the silicon or gallium arsenide solar cells that are widely used today. But even the best perovskite solar cells lose some electricity as heat at microscopic locations scattered across the cell, which dampens the efficiency.

Scientists have long used fluorescence microscopy to identify the locations on perovskite solar cells’ surface that reduce efficiency. But to identify the locations of defects causing the heat loss, researchers need to image the true grain structure of the film, according to first author Sarthak Jariwala, a UW doctoral student in materials science and engineering and a Clean Energy Institute Graduate Fellow.

“Historically, imaging the solar cell’s underlying true grain structure has not been possible to do without damaging the solar cell,” said Jariwala.

Typical approaches to view the internal structure utilize a form of electron microscopy called electron backscatter diffraction, which would normally burn the solar cell. But scientists at the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics, led by co-authors Erik Garnett and Bruno Ehrler, developed an improved detector that can capture electron backscatter diffraction images at lower exposure times, preserving the solar cell structure.

The images of perovskite solar cells from Ginger’s lab reveal a grain structure that resembles a dry lakebed, with “cracks” representing the boundaries among thousands of individual perovskite grains. Using this imaging data, the researchers could for the first time map the 3D orientation of crystals within a functioning perovskite solar cell. They could also determine where misalignment among crystals created strain.

The thin lines show the grain structure of a perovskite solar cell obtained using a new type of electron backscatter diffraction. Researchers can use a different technique to map sites of high energy loss (dark purple) and low energy loss (yellow).Jariwala et al., Joule, 2019

When the researchers overlaid images of the perovskite’s grain structure with centers of non-radiative recombination, which Jariwala imaged using fluorescence microscopy, they discovered that non-radiative recombination could also occur away from visible boundaries.

“We think that strain locally deforms the perovskite structure and causes defects,” said Ginger. “These defects can then disrupt the transport of electrical current within the solar cell, causing non-radiative recombination — even elsewhere on the surface.”

While Ginger’s team has previously developed methods to “heal” some of these defects that serve as centers of non-radiative recombination in perovskite solar cells, ideally researchers would like to develop perovskite synthesis methods that would reduce or eliminate non-radiative recombination altogether.

“Now we can explore strategies like controlling grain size and orientation spread during the perovskite synthesis process,” said Ginger. “Those might be routes to reduce misorientation and strain — and prevent defects from forming in the first place.”

Co-authors on the paper are Hongyu Sun, Gede Adhyaksa, Adries Lof and Loreta Muscarella with the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics. The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. National Science Foundation, the UW Clean Energy Institute, TKI Urban Energy, the European Research Council and the Dutch Science Foundation.

See the full article here .

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