Where federal energy research money should go

The U.S Department of Energy on Monday launched a $400 million program to fund development of disruptive energy technologies in a program modeled after the Department of Defense program that spawned space exploration and the Internet.

Called Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), the mission is to fund research and development on "transformational energy technologies" to cut the country's reliance on fossil fuels. The Energy Department's ARPA-E office will start taking applications next month for research projects, which will be accepted based on their technical feasibility and potential commercial impact.

Only bold, high-risk ideas need apply, according to the Energy Department, and President Obama has even likened this research to the space race of the 1960s--only it will be harder. "Only truly transformational technologies that can contribute greatly to the ARPA-E's Mission Areas have any chance of funding. We are not looking for incremental progress on current technologies," according to the Energy Department's solicitation document.

So where should this money go? While it's impossible to say what specific programs could land a slice of the ARPA-E funding, there are significant categories that don't generate many headlines but bear watching beyond more established green technologies:

Making solar power cheap
Using the sun to power our world makes sense because it is a massive and free source of energy. But how do you capture it cheaply?

There are thousands of people working on this very problem in myriad ways. For a breakthrough, many scientists have said we need solar power to be as cheap as applying a coat of paint. Some are actually trying to do this. New Scientist reports on researchers in the U.K. who are doing this using dye-based solar cells sprinkled into paint.

The key here, as in so many energy-related endeavors, is the material. Right now, solar cells are made from silicon, which is abundant but expensive, or other chemical combinations. But there's a field of research and development around organic solar cells made from relatively cheap polymers. IBM and Harvard, for example, last year launched a project to pinpoint which are the chemical compounds with the most potential for converting sunlight into electricity.

Biohydrocarbons
Some researchers have found ways to turn plants into the stuff in our fuel tanks--gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel--without having to wait millions of years, of course. There are different techniques but the end goal of researchers and a few companies, including Virent Energy and Sapphire Energy, is to take biomass, such as sugarcane and algae, and convert it into a fuel that's chemically equivalent to what's pumped through our pipelines today.

For biofuels to be a healthy part of the energy mix, the product needs to be produced sustainably and to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions compared to petro-fuels. Determining what's sustainable requires a complicated lifecycle analysis, but so-called green gasoline has the advantage of fitting into the existing fuels infrastructure. And in theory, a plant-based hydrocarbon can use a replenishable feedstock that takes carbon out of the air as it grows.

The perfect battery
If there was ever an area that needs a technology breakthrough, it's energy storage. Better storage would make electric vehicles less expensive and make it easier to use more wind and solar power on the grid. It's difficult to say if there is a preferred method or chemistry. But what seems vital is to design a storage system around a material that is abundant, environmentally benign, and recyclable.

Battery company executives brush off the importance of lithium supply, but the lithium-ion battery boom has raised awareness of lithium supply, which is mostly found in South America and China. As we see different green technologies develop, minerals and metals other than lithium are likely to see a spike in demand.

Thermoelectricity
There are some thermoelectric materials that can generate an electrical current when heat is applied and vice versa. This technology isn't anything revolutionary--thermoelectric modules are what heat and cool car seats today. But what is intriguing is the potential for generating electricity--any form of usable energy, really--from waste heat. Imagine if you could convert all the heat going up the smokestacks of power plants and home furnaces into usable electricity. That would be efficient.

The challenge is similar to cheap solar cells in that the efficiency right now is too low for this technology to be deployed broadly. There are a handful of companies, including GMZ Energy, which is trying to come up with more efficient materials. Auto companies are also trying to outfit cars with thermoelectric chips so that an exhaust pipe, for example, could generate enough juice to make a more fuel-efficient ride.

Microbial fuel cells
What if you could make electricity by plugging an LED light into the ground? Or take waste water or sewage and turn it into usable energy? There are companies and researchers working on these problems using microbial fuels cells, which use an electrochemical energy conversion to make electricity.

One Harvard researcher is pursuing this technology as a way to deliver cheap electricity to developing countries that need off-grid power sources, and the potential market is huge. Others companies, including Emefcy in Israel, see it as a way to treat waste water while generating electricity from a renewable source: waste.

Clearly, these are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the technologies needed to better preserve our natural resources. One could easily list 100 more--hydrogen storage, water purification, marine power, enhanced geothermal, making methanol with carbon dioxide, or for a real home-run swing, cold fusion. What's your moonshot?

[myles taylor]

Solar solar solar! Every other form of energy comes directly from there anyway. That's where we get our energy. Go to the source! We need to put all our backing behind solar and batteries as a close second. There have to be so many ways to use the sun's power that we aren't even tapping the surface of.

[joyofsomeone]

Well, all other form of energy except geo-thermal. That's home-grown! :P

[i_am_still_wade]

Two problems with solar energy: (1) It is insanely inefficient. The best production solar panels get 11% efficiency and the best a lab has done is around 25%. Toyota is considering putting solar panels on the Prius. If the Prius sat in the sun all day long, the solar panel would give it 6 miles. Solar has a LONG way to go before it is even a little bit viable. (2) To make a solar panel you have to do some very eco-unfriendly things.

If solar efficiency can get to 50% then it would make sense to deploy them on rooftops en masse. However, even if solar was the ideal and impossible 100% efficient, then to produce as much energy as a nuclear reactor would take up far more space than that nuclear reactor.

Nuclear is the best source of energy. You have a better chance of seeing a flying unicorn than having a meltdown in this country, seriously. Modern reactors product only 10 cubic feet of waste per year. There is only one problem: people have the wrong perception about them. They picture Chernobyl even though US reactors are different than Soviet reactors. The eco-nuts hate them because they don't want cheap energy. (But they disguise that with propaganda.)

[davea0511]

to i_am_stil_wade (below):

Dude, you don't know what you're talking about. Most production silicon PV panels now get 13% - 16% on average and the best done in a lab is %40 (not 11% and 25%). Solar thermal (not PV) are well over 50% efficient in converting photons to electrons. Solar thermal fields already produce electricity on par with coal, and beat coal when you consider levelized costs, and without levelized costs they and are expected to beat the price of coal in the southwest within the next 3 years.

Time to update your research.

Regarding nuclear, yeah, it has it's place, but you need to clue in before you trash solar. A lot has changed.

[smallvoice]

Are we really short of energy, seeing that we waste so much of it, like leaving lights at every store and buildings in towns, even during the daytime due to a possibility of litigation or whatever?
Why can't we go out to the other parts of the world and build houses, schools, hospitals, and manufacturing shops, and help them farm? Such is the noblest investment, and it will come back to us like a boomerang. We must give them copies of the Bible in their language also, to enable them to stand on a firm ground. They will come to our rescue when we need their help without us asking them to help us.

[monkeyfun14]

We don't need to shove religion down their throat.
That causes enough issues and wars as it is.

[davea0511]

monkeyfun14, you have issues.

[tmcmurph]

Try funding the MYT engine from Angel Labs LLC.

Your SUV will get the mileage of a Prius! It is the engine of the second industrial revolution. All engines, pumps, compressors, generators etc will produce much more with a lot less.

[scdecade]

The money should go right back into the pockets of the people who earned it. All the government is going to do is waste the money on pet projects of political backers. Why is it desirable to let the government splash cash around on projects that have nothing to do with protecting freedom and following the Constitution? If the government cared about energy and the environment then why is hemp illegal? Is it because we're supposed to do things the hard way? If the government cared about energy and the environment why don't they crack down on polluters right now? This is all a joke and all this money is going to be wasted.

[monkeyfun14]

You would be a perfect candidate to live in a 3rd world country where no money is used for research.

[scdecade]

The top 10 tech companies invest more than $20 Billion a year on r&d. Actually, there's an entire industry devoted to finding innovative ideas, seeding them with money, and giving them business advice on how to best capitalize on their ideas. It's called venture capital and I'm not aware of any 3rd world country with a multibillion dollar VC industry. Go back to grazing on the grass sheeplehead.

[martin1212]

Because some research has timescales that are too long and risks that are too high for commercial enterprises to want to invest in. That is where government funding comes in. There is a role for both sides, it doesn't need to be an either/or thing.

[Axil128]

America should fund reactors that are safe and don?t melt down. In his open letter to the President Obama, the climatologist Dr. Jim Hanson recommended the Thorium fuel cycle and the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR). Dr. Edward Teller, the father of Fusion, after a lifetime of work on every aspect of nuclear technology had at the end of his life come to this conclusion in his final study: the LFTR is the best of all possible reactor types.

The LFTR, which is currently in development in France, Japan, and Russia, is a very simple, efficient, and elegant type of reactor. It can start up on any kind of nuclear fuel, bomb material, or nuclear waste product to produce very high temperature heat and at the same time breed more fuel in the bargain. This thrifty approach to nuclear energy greatly appeals to me, but I became even more interested in the LFTR when the details of a new patent were revealed by Dr LeBlanc (see below @ minute 53). It opens up the possibility of building a very compact but powerful reactor that can run for 30 years without refueling. With no danger of a core meltdown or runaway reaction, it can be operated remotely in an unattended fully automated intrusion detecting mode and sited underground while it breeds self perpetuating new fuel within the thorium structure of the reactor itself.

In order to get to its fuel, U233 that has been produced inside the very solid metal walls of this 200 ton reactor containment vessel, a proliferator must destroy and disassemble the reactor, lift its heavy reactor core out of a 100 meter deep reinforced aircraft crash proof hole in the ground, then cut the thorium containment vessel up into small pieces while enduring heavy killing gamma radiation exposure, next reprocess these reactor pieces using isotopic separation since the U233 is denatured with enough U238 to make chemical separation of bomb grade U233 impossible, and do all this without being detected. Now, this is a tall order for any proliferator and may just be an impossible assignment.

At the end of the service life of the Lftr, the reactor vessel is sent back to the factory where it is reduced to liquid fluoride salts that become the feedstock of a next new Lftr. This feedstock can only be used by the new Lftr and not for bombs. A few handfuls of waste products are held at the factory for a few hundred years to cool down before they are mined for the many precious elements contained within like platinum and iridium. Now that is what I call a safe, efficient and thrifty mode of operation!

To learn more see one of the following:
Aim High
http://rethinkingnuclearpower.googlepages.com/aimhigh

What Fusion Wanted To Be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8

Liquid Fluoride Reactors: A New Beginning for an Old Idea
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F0tUDJ35So

[WaltonCats]

LFTRs are indeed an interesting solution, but Rubbia's energy amplifier is better I think. A lead-cooled, solid fuel reactor does no require the complex chemistry that LFTR needs, but still burns 232Th/233U and minor actinides, and requires an achievable spallation driver, which in addition allows greater flexibility in neutronics over those coming from the fuel alone.

[-fjtorres-]

Bussard's Polywell Fusion Project is getting minimal funding from the Navy as they crunch out the numbers from the last phase of research; hopefully they will get funded for the next scale-up research since it is looking like electrostatic-confinement fusion is getting close (~10 years) to production scale. Unless there is something drastically wrong with the laws of physics as we currently know them, it *should* work. Given that most of the Bussard work is out in the open it would be a shame if the US ends up having to buy fusion reactors from another country for lack of proper funding in a *natively-developed* technology. (And yes, other countries *are* looking into electrostatic-confinement fusion.)

If you want a low-cost "moonshot" solution there are many far worst investments than what it will take to finish Bussard's work and nothing with a higher potential payoff.
N-O-T-H-I-N-G.
Might as well swing for the fences, especially since the cost is so low.

[JedRothwell]

Cold fusion is closer to commercial reality than most people realize, and much closer than plasma fusion. It has produced thousands of times more energy per gram of fuel than any chemical reaction, and it can probably generate millions of times more. In some experiments, it has reached temperatures and power density comparable to the core of a conventional fission reactor.

There has been tremendous opposition to cold fusion because of academic politics. This opposition should have stopped 19 years ago, after nearly 100 laboratories first confirmed that cold fusion is real. Serious funding for this research is long overdue.

For lots more information on cold fusion, see LENR-CANR.org. I do mean LOTS more: a bibliography of 3,500 papers and several thousand pages of very boring scientific papers and books.

[davea0511]

>Cold fusion is closer to commercial reality than most people realize

Hehehe ... I think you're confusing commercial reality with commercial scam reality. Fyi ... it ain't even a laboratory reality.

[lioreshed]

For further details about Emefcy's microbial fuel cell technology, please visit: www.emefcy.com

Go green!