The Sharvelle System

2010-8-31 – 1:13 pm

Big News biogas fans. Via Green Car Congress, we learn that a Colorado State University professor is developing an anaerobic digester, which uses much less water than conventional technology. A CSU press release claims this process for turning animal waste into methane is more economically feasible and easier for feedlots and dairies in Western states to start doing.

Sharvelle’s system separates the digestion process into two major steps. Water is trickled over dry waste in a vessel to capture organic materials and convert nearly 60% of the solid material into liquid organic acids. The liquid is put into another reactor which is heated to incubate the bacteria living in the digester. These bacteria then convert waste into methane.

That separation of processes also assists Western farming and ranching operations that must contend with rocks and sand in the waste when they scrape it from their lots. These materials are detrimental to operation of conventional anaerobic digestion technology. With Sharvelle’s system, remaining solids from the hydrolysis step are separated and can be composted.

By jcwinnie | Posted in agriculture, development, energy, waste, water | Tagged , | Comments (0)

As Silly as Mine Safety

2010-8-29 – 2:19 pm

Geoffrey Styles has summarized well how our activities have upset the balance of the carbon cycle, “overloading it through the rapid release of vast quantities of stored carbon that had accumulated over geological time in fossil fuels.” If we accept the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change, then the goal of climate policy is to cut that overloading by eliminating carbon-intensive energy sources, e.g. coal, and replacing them with much more efficiency and with lower-carbon energy.

No Coal
“The coal industry destroy the land, pollute the air and water, impoverish communities, and sicken tens of thousands of people a year.”
“Yes, but it’s for the Greater Good.”
“What Greater Good?”
“Destruction of Life on the Planet as We know It.”

Some reject the idea of human-caused climate change out of principle; they have a God-given right to destroy life on the Planet as we know it. And, some reject the idea because of money; the idea threatens how and where their profits are made. (Or, it is profitable to support the denial.)

A tactic of those denying human-caused climate change is to use a basic understanding (which came about at the time of the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of a United States of America, see The Invention of Air) that we need oxygen and plants need carbon dioxide. How plants make use of CO2 is part of the carbon cycle.

GP Wayne explains how this fact is used to deceive. Since it is recycled, a key part of the deception is that the CO2 will go away. The extra CO2 is cumulative because natural processes have not and increasingly cannot absorb all the extra CO2. Because the excess CO2 chiefly comes from burning fossil fuels, the level of atmospheric CO2 is building up, and that build up is accelerating. “Man-made CO2 has increased the overall level of CO2 in the atmosphere by a third since the pre-industrial era”.

Carbon Cycle
“Carbon is exchanged through natural processes among the land, ocean, atmosphere, and living things.” Our growing carbon footprint has upset the balance.

Consider what happens when more CO2 is released from outside of the natural carbon cycle – by burning fossil fuels. Although our output of 29 gigatons of CO2 is tiny compared to the 750 gigatons moving through the carbon cycle each year, it adds up because the land and ocean cannot absorb all of the extra CO2. About 40% of this additional CO2 is absorbed. The rest remains in the atmosphere, and as a consequence, atmospheric CO2 is at its highest level in 15 to 20 million years (Tripati 2009).

Editor’s note: Tripati, et al suggest that a natural change of 100ppm normally takes 5,000 to 20,000 years. The recent increase of 100ppm has taken just 120 years and 2.3ppm between 2007 and 2008. This blog has suggested before such increases show non-linear threshold behavior.

P.S. The title comes from Don Blankenship calling Washington and state politicians caring about coal miner safety “as silly as Global Warming.”

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The Invention of Air: The Story of Science, Faith, Revolution and the Birth of America ASIN: 1594488525

[ISBN-0525947647]
Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right ASIN: 0525947647

By jcwinnie | Posted in climate, energy | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2)

137 Contaminated Coal Waste Sites in 34 States

2010-8-27 – 7:29 pm

The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has a history of severely underreporting coal ash waste pollution and its threat to human and environmental health. This blog reported before that the EPA had begun a greater effort to regulate coal ash sites.

At the coal companies behest, coal state “representatives” quickly attacked. Such pandering incensed Grist’s David Roberts who sees the coal industry destroy the land, pollute the air and water, impoverish communities, and sicken tens of thousands of people a year. He sees the disregard for the safety of the people who dig the coal as another example of how coal kills and how our “elected” representatives continue to allow such malfeasance.

Coal Plant
“You could not ask for a more craven illustration of the bankruptcy of national energy politics and the obeisance national legislators still must pay the coal industry, no matter what havoc it wreaks” than federal policy on coal waste sites.

Renee Schoof reports that “39 sites in 21 states where coal-fired power plants dump their coal ash are contaminating water with toxic metals such as arsenic and other pollutants, and that the problem is more extensive than previously estimated.”

The analysis of state pollution data by the Environmental Integrity Project, the Sierra Club and Earthjustice comes as the Environmental Protection Agency is considering whether to impose federally enforceable regulations for the first time. An alternative option would leave regulation of coal ash disposal up to the states, as it is now.

The EPA will hold the first of seven nationwide hearings about the proposed regulation Monday in Arlington, Va. A public comment period ends Nov. 19.

The electric power industry is lobbying to keep regulation up to individual states. Environmental groups say the states have failed to protect the public and that the EPA should set a national standard and enforce it.

“This is a huge and very real public health issue for Americans,” said the director of the study, Jeff Stant of the Environmental Integrity Project. “Coal ash is putting drinking water around these sites at risk.”

The TVA Kingston Power Plant toxic spill
EIP is a nonpartisan organization that advocates for enforcement of environmental laws. They have focused upon coal ash sites, like the impoundment at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Power Plant from which 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash laden with arsenic, lead and radioactive elements spilled in December 2009. The cleanup nightmare continues. The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports that the TVA is shipping some of the coal ash to two landfills, one in Taylor County near Mauk, Georgia, and the other in Perry County in Alabama, as part of a two-week “disposal test.”

“If people ask, is there a problem EPA should address, this report answers, ‘Yes’ with an exclamation mark,” said Lisa Evans, an attorney for the environmental law firm Earthjustice.

Evans said that the state regulation hasn’t protected people living near the waste sites from health problems. Many states have allowed the dumps to be built without adequate liners or monitoring and have done little when contamination was discovered, she said.

Of the 39 sites analyzed, 35 had groundwater monitoring wells on the grounds of the waste disposal area. All of them showed concentration of heavy metals such as arsenic and lead that exceeded federal health standards.

The other four had only water monitoring data from rivers or lakes where the waste sites discharged water. Scientists found contamination that damaged aquatic life.

The new report, following a previous study by the environmental groups and EPA’s own tally, brings the number of contaminated coal waste sites to 137 in 34 states.

Thursday’s report specified the amount of arsenic, cadmium, lead, selenium and other pollutants found at each site. The pollutants are linked to cancer, respiratory diseases and other health and developmental problems.

Most states don’t require monitoring of drinking water near the waste sites. The study found five sites where monitoring figures were available, and all of them had some contamination. In four, tests showed problems at one or more drinking-water wells. In Joliet, Ill., where the information was too limited for analysis, at least 18 nearby wells were closed because of boron contamination, the report said.

The U.S. burns more than 1 billion tons of coal a year to generate about half of the nation’s electricity. It ends up with at least 125 million tons of coal waste, including ash and the sludge left from scrubbers that remove air pollutants.

Federal enforcement of coal-ash disposal rules would mean classifying the waste as hazardous. Opponents have argued that this would add costs and make it harder to recycle some of the waste to help hold down disposal costs.

The report from the environmental groups said that more than a third of the reused coal ash is for structural fill or to fill up empty mines. The report said those uses could result in water contamination.

By jcwinnie | Posted in advocacy, denial, enforcement, health, intention, policy, politics, statistics, waste, water | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Welcome to the Anthropocene

2010-8-26 – 9:11 pm

“Without doubt,” writes John Cook, “the most significant of all the human causes of changing climate is the dramatic increase in CO2.”

Of course there are also natural sources of the CO2 in the atmosphere, such as vegetation, but fortunately there are differences that scientists can measure between the CO2 derived from fossil fuels and the CO2 derived from plants. The changing concentrations of the two types demonstrate that the additional CO2 can only be the result of human activity.


“After remaining relatively steady for the last 650,000 years or more, in just the last two hundred years the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has suddenly shot up from 280, to more than 380 parts per million. And it’s still rising. This dramatic 30% increase has all taken place at the same time as humans have been burning fossil fuels at a greater and greater rate.”

Human activity—from coal-fired power plants to car tailpipes—is responsible for nearly 30 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide wafting into the atmosphere yearly. We know that roughly 15 billion metric tons remains in the atmosphere for a century or more.

A portion of the rest ends up in the ocean—acidifying saltwater and making the oceans inhospitable to calciferous marine life. Recently, the world witnessed the sharp contrast of a living coral reef with a bleached and dead one. The Wildlife Conservation Society released initial field observations that indicate that a dramatic rise in the surface temperature in Indonesian waters has resulted in a large-scale bleaching event that has devastated coral populations.

And, as this blog has warned before, Earth’s oceans are losing their ability to absorb carbon dioxide. With the oceans unable to take up as much CO2 as in the past 200 years, and a diminished ability to take up CO2 by the biosphere, the atmosphere inevitably must take up more, which will accelerate global heating.

With an increase in the average global temperature comes catastrophic climate change. By 2100 there could be an increase of as much as 4.3°C, which approaches something out of a disaster movie. As this blog has noted before, “A six degree global average temperature rise in the next one hundred years could render the world something completely different.

Speaking of catastrophic, across the globe, phytoplankton — the food for zooplankton which is food for many other ocean species — is in decline. As authors of a recent Nature article warn, the decline in phytoplankton “will have massive impacts for not just the marine food chain but ocean systems on the whole.” Less plankton, less oxygen. We are doing a terrible job of protecting these ocean systems.


Co-trustees conduct studies to identify the extent of resource injuries, the best methods for restoring those resources, and the type and amount of restoration required. “Like the UN study of the Nigeria delta funded by Royal Dutch Shell that exonerates Shell, eh?”

MoJo Kate Shepherd reminds us that “just weeks before the Gulf oil spill, the Obama administration announced a massive expansion of offshore drilling — opening hundreds of thousands of acres of virgin territory along the eastern seaboard and Gulf Coast and within the Arctic Ocean.” Now it seems that it’s largely up to the president’s Oil Spill Commission to determine how to proceed on offshore drilling, and MoJo Kate dourly notes, “this is a question of how, not if.”

The commission held its first hearing wanted to know who, exactly, endorsed the drilling expansion.

Among the witnesses were Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Nancy Sutley, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. At three points in their hourlong appearance, commission members asked them to clarify whether their offices had been consulted before the vast expansion of offshore drilling was announced. (It was asked repeatedly because it took three tries to get a clear answer on the subject.)

The answer from both Sutley and Lubchenco about whether they’d been asked to give their opinion on the plan: Nope.

NOAA… is the agency charged with protecting ocean and coastal resources and responsible for evaluating the extent to which drilling operations might impact endangered species, marine mammals, or fisheries. One would hope that its guidance in the expansion plan would be crucial; but while Lubchenco said her agency offered comments on previous leasing plans and there was “formal and informal agency discussion at various points in this process,” NOAA was not asked to approve or disapprove of the plan.

By jcwinnie | Posted in climate, denial, geology, survival, world | Tagged , , | Comments (3)

Beacon Solar Energy Project

2010-8-25 – 7:51 pm

Todd Woody reports on licensing of the nation’s first large-scale solar thermal power plant in two decades. Licensing of the 250-megawatt Beacon Solar Energy Project comes after a two-and-a-half-year environmental review. The author is now hopeful that several other big solar farms will receive approval from the California Energy Commission in the next month.

Solar Thermal Power Plant Schematic
The Beacon solar thermal electric power plant will use long rows of mirrored parabolic troughs, which focus sunlight on liquid-filled tubes to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine. While using water may have been a business decision for NextEra developers, there certainly are other options, e.g., indirect dry cooling (Heller system) or using a molten salt loop to collect heat from the sun.

“I hope this is the first of many more large-scale solar projects we will permit,” said Jeffrey D. Byron, a member of the California Energy Commission, at a hearing in Sacramento on Wednesday. “This is exactly the type of project we want to see.”

Developers and regulators have been racing to license solar power plants and begin construction before the end of the year, when federal incentives for such renewable energy projects expire. California’s three investor-owned utilities also face a deadline to obtain 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by the end of 2010.

Still, it has been long slog as solar power plants planned for the Mojave Desert have become bogged down in disputes over their impact on protected wildlife and scarce water supplies.

Parabolic Troughs Solar Thermal
The 50 MW La Florida solar farm uses parabolic trough technology and a molten salt system for thermal storage. The new, Archimede solar thermal electric power plant in Italy does not use molten salt just for thermal storage. It uses a molten salt loop to collect heat from the sun.

In March 2008, NextEra Energy Resources filed an application to build the Beacon project on 2,012 acres of former farmland in California’s Kern County… Some rural residents immediately objected to the 521 million gallons of groundwater the project would consume annually in an arid region on the western edge of the Mojave Desert. After contentious negotiations with regulators, NextEra agreed to use recycled water that will be piped in from a neighboring community.

“It’s been a lengthy process, an almost embarrassingly long lengthy process,” said Scott Busa, NextEra’s Beacon project manager, at Wednesday’s hearing. “Hopefully, we’re going from a lengthy process to a timely process.”

However, an attorney for a union group that has been critical of Beacon told commissioners that obstacles still stand in the way of the power plant.

“Despite all the hard work that has been done, this project won’t get built anytime soon,” said Tanya Gulesserian, representing California Unions for Reliable Energy. She cited the absence of a deal to sell electricity from the Beacon power plant to a utility.

Mr. Busa responded that NextEra is in the final stages of negotiating a power purchase agreement.

By jcwinnie | Posted in energy, thermodynamics, water | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

Headed for the Waimanalo Gulch

2010-8-24 – 1:30 pm

“That sounds ominous”

What?

“The title of your post, especially since I have trouble with pronunciation of the name of the place.”

Sign of a car going off a cliff
There exists an underlying conflict between “a cultural growth / debt imperative” and a planet with finite sources and sinks.

It probably would come tripping off your lips if you were native Hawaiian. Waimanalo Gulch is adjacent to “the largest concentration of Native Hawaiians on Oahu” and that’s where the bales probably will end up.

“The bales?”

They are nicely plastic-wrapped and Mike Chutz, president of Hawaiian Waste Systems, says they contain nothing ecologically dangerous.

“Nicely plastic-wrapped bales of what?”

Honolulu garbage. HuffPoz Herbert Sample tells us that Honolulu has a problem: What to do with its garbage?

Honolulu makes up 80 percent of Hawaii’s population and generates nearly 1.6 million tons of garbage a year. More than a third of the trash is incinerated to generate electricity. The remaining garbage is sent to the 21-year-old Waimanalo Gulch landfill on the island of Oahu’s southwestern coast.

City officials signed a contract for burning 40 million pounds at an existing waste-to-power plant over the next six months.

“That’s quite a bit…”

Well, they were motivated. The gigantic piles of odious shrink-wrapped rubbish have been moldering in the heat of a Hawaii industrial park for more than five months. So, we’ve come around again to that question, is it better to bury it or burn it?

Or, hey, I know, let’s make it a problem for somebody else. Hawaiian Waste Systems is Seattle-based firm, and Honolulu officials had counted on “a plan to ship at least 100,000 tons of blue, plastic-wrapped garbage bales each year to a landfill near an Indian reservation in Washington state… But” (can you imagine) “the tribe vehemently objected and won a court ruling last week that put the plan on hold indefinitely.”

The city hopes to start operating a third trash furnace at its electricity-generating plant in Kapolei, allowing the burning of about 902,000 tons a year.

Still, that leaves this island with a lot of garbage generated from some 907,000 residents, 51,000 military service members and families, and an average of 80,000 tourists a day. They produced almost 1.6 million tons in the fiscal year that ended June 30, a drop from the 1.8 million tons the previous year that is largely due to the recession and a decline in tourism.

Hey, wait a sec, wasn’t Bobby Jindal wanting to build some artificial barriers? By gosh, we could help the Louisiana Governor out faster than you can say “Piyush Amrit”. Let’s get those spin doctors working on it.

“Which ones?”

They got all those movie stars before…

“Oh, do you mean Sweet Sustainability?”

Yeah, remember, in the lounge, when she said she was working for the “They Made Me Wet My Pants” Foundation (chuckle).

“So… Do you want me to take Tyler off the theme park concept?

Marvin with Acme DisintegratorHawaiian Waste Systems

No, no, let’s keep our options open.

Other AG posts on the topic of burning municipal solid waste

By jcwinnie | Posted in thermodynamics, waste | Tagged , | Comments (0)

SOLON in Thailand

2010-8-24 – 9:19 am

This blog just had mentioned that developers generally will choose silicon when they choose photo voltaic for utility-scale solar electric power plant, and the Big Gav gives us a Pacific* example.

* Editor’s note: Australia runs with the APEC (Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate) “pack of polluters”. Germany leads in PV production and as this blog has noted before, the Dragon has its eye on this pie.

From the Climate Spectator, we learn that Australian renewable energy company CBD Energy has secured a $300 million project to build a 99MW solar photovoltaic power plant in Thailand.

While this represents the largest ever renewable energy contract for CBD Energy, it simply is another example of why Germany is the leader in the global Photo Voltaic market. CBD Energy is in business with the German solar company SOLON SE.

SOLON power plant
“As the photovoltaic market continues to grow on a global scale, SOLON has expanded its international operations. In the first few years of its history, SOLON was active almost completely in Germany. By 2007, the company achieved 70 % of their group sales abroad.”

SOLON, founded in 1997, is one of the leading producers of photovoltaic modules in Germany and a specialist for the integration of photovoltaic technologies into buildings. About 70% of the photovoltaic plants on the buildings at the German Federal Government come from SOLON. The SOLON Mover is the largest industrially manufactured turnkey solar tracking system in the world. This system enables entire towns to be supplied with solar energy.

The contact to build a utility-scale photo voltaic power plant in Thailand “includes a power purchase agreement with Thailand’s electricity authority, Provincial Electricity Authority of Thailand.”

The Thai government announced its intention to source 20 per cent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2020, a similar target to Australia’s, and has a range of tax and investment incentives to attract investment in its renewable energy sector.

By jcwinnie | Posted in collaboration, development, energy, finance | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

New Jersey Offshore Wind

2010-8-22 – 10:52 am

Offshore wind power is a sustainable source of energy. Friends and foes alike recognize that the relatively short time from blueprint to operation makes wind energy the next best hope for reducing carbon emissions in the near term. (Banana farmers know that negawatts are least cost, most sustainable.)

Still this blog has despaired that the state of New York, despite being the headquarters for GE Energy, which wants a greater share of the off-shore wind market, would continue to fail. Despite having areas with excellent 7 to 9 wind quality close to major transmission lines, New York would not be one of those state where wind power development is most needed.

This blog despaired that developers of New York offshore wind development would continue to meet too great an opposition. Yet there is a glimmer of hope. Could the hundreds of large turbines that New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg envisioned off the Long Island Shore actually materialize off the New Jersey Shore? And, then, would not the opposition in New York look rather foolish?

Offshore wind farm
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Located 30 kilometers off the west coast of Jutland in the North Sea, the 209 megawatt Horns Rev 2 now is the largest off-shore wind farm and inspiration for Mayor Bloomberg.

Timothy B. Hurst reports that New Jersey legislature has passed the Offshore Wind Economic Development Act.

The Offshore Wind Economic Development Act (pdf) directs the state’s Board of Public Utilities (BPU) to establish an offshore renewable energy certificate program that calls for a percentage of electricity sold in the state to be from offshore wind energy. The act would support the development of at least 1,100 megawatts of offshore wind energy capacity.

The bill was signed into law yesterday by Gov. Chris Christie yesterday at a former BP port facility that will be transformed into a regional hub for the offshore wind industry.

“Developing New Jersey’s renewable energy resources and industry is critical to our state’s manufacturing and technology future,” Christie said.

The package will offer incentives including financial aid and tax credits to attract wind energy developers to the state’s waters.

Two offshore wind development companies, Fishermen’s Energy and Deepwater Wind, already have plans to develop offshore wind energy off the coast of New Jersey.

Wind Speed, U.S. East Coast, Mid-Atlantic States
A report released last year by the Interior Department said shallow-water offshore wind farms could supply as much as 20% of the electricity in most coastal states. Researchers at the University of Delaware project that an average of 33 percent (and at most 47 percent) of yearly averaged wind power from interconnected farms could serve as reliable base load electric power. And, along the Atlantic Coast, much of that potential is in the form of off-shore wind energy. In the above map, the purple, red and dark blue areas are winds over 7.5 meters/sec (16.6 mph), more profitable and thus potentially good candidates for early development of wind turbines.

As this blog has noted before, wind power for the Eastern Interconnection — a service area in which more than 70 percent of the U.S. population lives — is a core climate solution. If utilities take responsibility for their impact upon the climate, then they would more likely choose wind as base load. Such a system requires sufficient geographic diversity of turbines and an effective distribution system.

In the US East Coast, as in much of the coastal areas of the world, the large wind power resource is over ocean and not over land. As offshore wind development moves forward in New Jersey, industry advocates are hopeful that the first Atlantic Coast wind farm will become a reality. The proposed Cape Wind offshore wind farm in Massachusetts is still fending off some last-ditch legal challenges. In neighboring Rhode Island Governor Donald Carcieri is hopeful for off-shore wind development. He notes that states are leading the way in off-shore wind development because it spurs economic development, helps to stabilize energy costs, and moves our country towards energy independence in a sustainable fashion.

By jcwinnie | Posted in climate, development, economics, energy | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

Wyandot Solar Farm

2010-8-21 – 9:15 pm

Where there is utility coöperation in buying back the power, in states that have feed-in tariffs, and in spite of a bad economy, smart property managers who increasingly recognizing the value of DER (Distributed Energy Resources) are investing in Building Integrated Photo Voltaic systems. Because of their lower cost, these solar systems generally use TFPV (Thin Film Photo Voltaic) panels.

Wyandot Solar Farm
Ohio is a key state that could help save the world by switching from coal-fired generation to sustainable utility-scale energy supply. Gov. Ted Strickland and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown have joined industry and education leaders to detail tax-cut and regulatory measures to encourage wind and solar facilities in their state.

As this blog has reported before TFPV has been the choice for installation on warehouse roofs. Still developers generally will choose silicon when they have chosen photo voltaic for utility-scale solar electric power plant.

This was not the choice of PSEG Solar Source, the Newark, NJ-based company that owns Wyandot Solar Farm in north-central Ohio. Presently, the second largest east of the Mississippi River, this utility-scale solar plant uses 160,000 thin-film solar panels set on 84-acres of former farmland.

The Phoenix Sun provides one possible reason for their choice of technology, which is cheaper to produce than silicon-crystal based photovoltaic panels, but less efficient at converting sunlight into electricity. The developers used a local approach; First Solar at its Perrysburg, Ohio, manufacturing plant produced the panels. The plant has 12MW capacity, enough electricity to power an estimated 1,500 homes.

Another reason explained PSEG Solar Source Curt Judy, “The thin-film technology is also very well suited at capturing lower radiance or low sunlight which we tend to see in the winter months.”

By jcwinnie | Posted in development, energy, factor | Tagged , | Comments (2)

Thermoplastic Resin Transfer Molding

2010-8-19 – 1:12 pm

As this blog has noted before Amory Lovins and others believe in advanced thermoplastic composite structures because they combine light weight with strength. Thermoplastic components — reinforced with textile structures — perform much better in crash tests; they “absorb the forces generated in a collision through viscoelastic deformation of the matrix material without splintering.

Green Car Congress relays some important news from the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology (ICT) in Pfinztal (Germany). Researchers “have developed a new way to make thermoplastic fiber composite materials. The materials engineers have designed the manufacturing process for large-scale use in vehicle construction.

Concept car from Hypercar, Inc.
Thermoplastics are incredibly tough. They can absorb 12 times as much crash energy per pound as steel. The concept car from Hypercar, Inc. shown above includes lightweight, crushable, plastic cones within the panels.

Modern cars are now built from a mixture of steels, aluminum and fiber-reinforced plastics. Highly stressed load-bearing structures and crash components that are designed to buckle on impact help to reinforce the body in order to protect the vehicle’s occupants in the event of a collision. Automakers have previously constructed these parts from composites using a thermoset (i.e. infusible) matrix. However, notes Fraunhofer, this approach has a number of disadvantages: as well as being difficult to implement efficiently in a mass production environment, it can also be potentially hazardous since this material tends to delaminate into sharp-edged splinters in a collision. A further problem is the fact that thermosets cannot be recycled.

Researchers had previously failed to come up with a suitable manufacturing technique for thermoplastic composite structures made from high-performance fibers. The ICT engineers have now developed a process suitable for mass production which makes it possible to manufacture up to 100,000 parts a year.

Our method offers comparatively short production times. The cycle time to produce thermoplastic components is only around five minutes. Comparable thermoset components frequently require more than 20 minutes.

—Dieter Gittel, a project manager at ICT

The Fraunhofer researchers have named their technique thermoplastic RTM (T-RTM). It is derived from the conventional RTM (Resin Transfer Molding) technique for thermoset fiber composites. The composite is formed in a single step.

We insert the pre-heated textile structure into a temperature-controlled molding tool so that the fiber structures are placed in alignment with the anticipated stress. That enables us to produce very lightweight components.

—Dieter Gittel

Kohlenstofffasermatte
A cloth of woven carbon fiber filaments, a common element in composite materials.

The preferred types of reinforcement are carbon or glass fibers, and the researchers have also developed highly specialized structures. The next step involves injecting the activated monomer melt into the molding chamber. This contains a catalyst and activator system required for polymerization. The researchers can select the system and the processing temperature in a way that enables them to set the minimum required processing time.

As a demonstration, ICT engineers crafted a trunk liner for the Porsche Carrera 4 that weighs up to 50% less than the original aluminum part. To improve the crash behavior of the vehicle’s overall structure, the ICT engineers also calculated the optimum fiber placement.

The cost of the thermoplastic matrix material and the cost of its processing in T-RTM are up to 50% lower than the equivalent costs for thermoset structures.

There also is a renewed focus upon the life cycle of plastics, from the raw material used in manufacturer to how well these materials recycle. The GCC article notes that when thermoplastic products have reached end of life, “they can be shredded, melted down and reused to produce high-quality parts.”

A 2004 article supports this claim; thermoplastic resins, e.g., Cyclics Corporation CBT(R) resin, enable thermoforming and recycling. “Capitalizing on the water-like processing viscosity of CBT resin,” Radius Engineering Inc., a global leader in RTM injection systems developed a way to make low pressure cast parts and high fiber content thermoplastic composites. The parts “are lightweight, have improved damage tolerance, high stiffness, and high mechanical strength.”

Radius chemical engineers combined CBT resin and a catalyst in a “one-part system,” eliminating the need for meter mixing equipment and allowing their use of pressure and flow control injectors. Because of CBT resin’s extremely low viscosity, we believe that even larger, more complex parts can be injected in 60-120 seconds, with very high quality”, said Dimitrije Milovich, President of Radius Engineering, The 2004 article noted that this thermoplastic resin development also suggested the possibility of low pressure molding of traditionally injection molded thermoplastic parts.

By jcwinnie | Posted in chemistry, design, development, factor, manufacturing, safety | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

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