Zark's

Changes in BioFuel Laws

From yesterday - CharlesT corrects me that space elevators originated prior to Clarke's 1979 science fiction novel.  He is right - see his comment and hyperlink on the left column.  Thanks!

Minister announces lower biofuel target tells that Ireland has reduced the 2010 target for transport fuel from 5.75% to 3%.  A European partner, France plans to end biofuel tax breaks by 2012.  The government said the policy change was due to the increased cost of petroleum providing competitive pricing for biofuel products.  Also, there was tension caused by diverting human food supplies to produce synthetic petroleum.  In the United States, between 1/4 and 1/3 of the corn harvest is consumed by ethanol production.  Germany also, is ending a tax break for biofuels.

EU in crop biofuel goal rethink tells that an original goal of 10% biofuel has been cut to 6%.  The policy reversal from two years ago when biofuels seemed to be nirvana, has resulted from new studies on deforestation, CO2 production, and higher food prices.  Similarly [Australia] scraps biofuel mandates explains original goals of 10% have been cut to 2%, again citing world food shortages and rising prices. 

In contrast, India approves biofuel rise.  In less than ten years, India expects to increase from 5% biofuel to 20% biofuel blends.  India has additionally specified that the biofuel must com from non-edible plant sources.  An Indian plant source, the jatropha, is also grown in Haiti, as told in Plant could help meet Haiti's energy needs.

Biofuel demand to lift palm oil price soon explains that palm oil prices are expected to begin rising as Indonesia and Malaysia implement laws for biofuels.  (Malaysia is the largest exporter of palm oil, producing 14 million tons in 2004.)  Last Friday Indonesia announced the use of biofuels mandatory for 2009.  Palm oil is very controversial for biofuels as environmentalists fear the destruction of rainforests to plan palm plantations

These are very different data points.  What do you think they mean? 

Nano Tubing

Have you ever noticed that research and development tends to focus on the hot topic of the time, rather than having uniform discoveries and research?  There are a couple of reasons for it.  First, it is extremely difficult to find good Ph.D. dissertation topics that have not already been endlessly researched.  Many a student will spend a year or two, trawling for a topic, since a dissertation committee will not approve a topic that does not allow for innovative and original research.  It is much easier to have a topic approved for an emerging technology, because the published literature is scarce.

As engineers and scientists, we also have to sell our ideas and concepts.  In any almost any organization I know, there tens and hundreds more ideas than available funding.  So what gets funding?  Ideas that are splashy and new. 

A splashy and new technology now appearing in the media is carbon nanotubes.  There are several forms of carbon such as: a) diamond, b) graphite, c) glassy carbon, d) many more, and k) Buckministerfullerenes.  The last is not a misspelling - the form discovered in 1985 is named after architect Buckminister Fuller, who famously experimented with geodesic structures.   As you might guess, carbon nanotubes belong to the form or allotrope of carbon called Buckminsterfullerenes.

Chemically, carbon nanotubes have sp2 bonds which is the mixing of atomic orbitals between adjacent atoms which have strength exceeding the sp3 bonds of diamond.  Nanotubes are the strongest and stiffest materials known to mankind.  Because a nanotube can have a length to diameter ratio greater than one million, they are not as strong in compression, because the walls will buckle. 

As you can imagine when you turn researchers loose on a topic, there are many different variations of carbon nanotubes - multiwalled, torus, etc.  By changing the chemical structure, a nanotube can conduct currents 1000 times greater than copper and also conduct heat 20 times greater than copper.  This miracle material though, appears to endanger humans as discussed In study, researchers find nanotubes may pose health risks similar to asbestos.

Japan hopes to turn sci-fi into reality with elevator to the stars tells one of the more futuristic applications of nanotubes might be the long-desired space elevator.  Not as desirable as Star Trek's transporter, but much preferable to launching rockets through the atmosphere, the 22,000 mile elevator was originally proposed by Arthur C. Clarke in his 1979 novel, The Fountains of Paradise.  With the strength of carbon nanotubes and their ability to conduct electricity efficiently, Japanese scientists are hopeful about the material.  An international conference will be hosted in November to discuss a possible schedule for elevator construction.

How to Power Planes Without Petroleum

According to the Weekly Petroleum Status Report, aviation fuel represents almost 8% of American petroleum consumption.  The 46.4% used for motor vehicles is more easily replaced with alternatives such as hydrogen fuel cells, batteries, and hybrid power.  For starters, airplanes need more than a 40 mile range before recharging, so different alternatives are needed.

Jet fuel from algae passes first test tells that California startup Solazyme has developed a biofuel from algae that has the same energy density and flashpoint as jetfuel.  It also resists freezing at high altitudes, a requirement that other biofuels fail.  Solazyme produces this new biofuel in vats without light, something different from their competitors.  It still costs more than even today's aviation fuel.  One of the big advantages is that it is produced in vertical tanks, not in rainforests or farmland. 

As an aside, the spot price for jet fuel was $3.20, down $0.40 from the week before.  Last year, the spot price was $2.37. Note that in the case of gasoline, retail is $1.03 higher than the spot price.  Some reports tack on $4.30 as a transportation fee to the spot price for jet fuel, although I have not confirmed it.

Air Force Holds Throttle on Future of Green Jet Fuel: Test Flight explains that a test flight refueled an F-22 from a KC-135, with both planes powered by a 50% blend of synthetic fuel.  The fuel is produced by the Fischer-Tropsch process, which converts carbon monoxide and hydrogen into a liquid petroleum equivalent.  It has lots of drawbacks - it even produces carbon dioxide in the manufacturing process.

U.S. Air Force Synthetic-Fuel Program in Limbo tells that support within the Air Force for synthetic fuels is waning.  There are many obstacles to successful transition.  As an example, traditional jet fuel causes 'O' rings to swell, ensuring non-leaking connections.  The Fischer-Tropsch fuels do not have that property, so the Air Force spends hundreds of thousands of dollars investigating leaks from $1 'O' rings. 

Mmm.  I have the feeling that we need to apply more engineering resources to alternative aviation power sources.

Removing the Bang Out of Fertilizer

During summers as a college student, I worked at a lead mine as junior project engineer.  It was a valuable experience, learning about mining and smelting.  Mines are dangerous - three men in my van pool have been killed in mining accidents; one of them during my last summer at the mine.  As a young college student, I considered myself indestructible and welcomed excuses to take a package or documents down into the mine.  I remember the mine safety engineer, whose first name was Leo.  One afternoon he gave me a tongue-lashing for needlessly exposing myself to the dangers of the mine.  Looking back now - thanks Leo, it was a lesson not just about the mine.

At the smelter, we used dynamite; sticking it into long pipes with a running hose of water to break up voids that would build up inside the fiery furnaces.  We would toss sticks of dynamite a little gingerly and cut the sticks with a pocket knife.  The real danger was with the blasting cap that was inserted into the last stick of dynamite.  The smelter furnace was so big and so noisy that you could hardly hear six sticks of dynamite exploding.

I was surprised when I started going underground that the explosive used for mining was not dynamite, but something called ammonium nitrate / fuel oil, or ANFO for short.  Basically, you just mix diesel fuel and fertilizer; then explode it with a blasting cap similar to dynamite.  Aside from cost, the advantage was that ANFO could be quickly poured into the holes drilled into the rock.  Wiki tells that ANFO represents about 80% of the industrial explosives used in the United States.

Sadly, the industrial explosive has been often exploited by those with malicious intent.  The World Trade Center bombing of 1993 and the Oklahoma City Federal Building were executed with ANFO.  For this reason, civil authorities everywhere are always watching large purchases of fertilizer, even the farmers spreading it on their fields. 

A Fertilizer Good for Only Growing Things, Not Destroying Them explains that a little bit of chemistry can remove the explosive ignition of ANFO.  By mixing the ammonium nitrate with ammonium sulfate, the resulting compound catches fire, but does not explode.  It is compared to tossing a match on a wooden log instead of a gallon of gasoline.  The new fertilizer is being sold by Honeywell, of all companies as Sulf-N26.  Click on the link to see a video. 

Changes in France

French restaurants feel the pinch tells that 3000 French restaurants went out of business in the first six months of the year.  To be certain, the French citizens are feeling economic distress like much of western world.  But other things are also going on - they are becoming more like Americans, switching to sandwiches and less formal fare.  Americans should be too smug, because the financial bailouts of Wall Street which are essentially nationalization, show the Americans are becoming the United States of France. 

Pope Benedict XVI Warns France—and Europe explains that the real religion of France has been secularism.  Lost in all of the noise about Wall Street, the Pope visited France last week and had meetings with President Sarkozy.  French observers believe that Sarkozy intends to undermine the secularism of France and there could be a Catholic revival in France. 

When Software Becomes Crimeware

As a refresher, crimeware is malware designed to automate financial crime.  News from the Rock Phish Gang tells that a European crime organization is responsible for 1/2 of the world's phishing attacks.  Recall phishing is when a user is tricked into believing a fradulent website is a real site and financial information is provided to the fraudulent site, and after that, real crime is committed.  Sadly, too many well-known and trusted websites are subject to frequent hacking, and all it takes is to simply be unlucky enough to visit the site before the hacking is detected.

In April, the Rock Phish gang released a Trojan named WSNPOEM (see the hyperlink for Symantec's information about the Trojan's technical details).  This malware was designed to capture banking information.  The group increased their product offerings and distributed them using another crimeware product, Neosploit.  Curiously, Neosploit exploit kit shutters operations? wonders whether the Russian-based operation has ceased selling the product.  This was a GUI-based product that allowed exploitation specifically for operating system and browser.  Still, the article explains there are plenty more kits for criminals such as IcePack, Black Sun, Cyber Bot, Mpack and Zunker. 

Apparently the Rock Phish gang has hooked up with Asprox.  That is bad news, as Asprox computer virus infects key government and consumer websites tells that the U.K.'s health services websites were hacked with the website. The unfortunate visitors to the government websites had a botnet downloaded to their computer which patiently waited for financial information to be transmitted. Then it was relayed. At least 2 million computers were infected.  All it takes is to be unlucky enough to visit a respected website immediately after it has been hacked.

Even worse, Phishing drops as Rock Phish invests in technology upgrade tells that the St. Petersburg, Russia, based crime organization took a few months out from phishing to upgrade their IT infrastructure.  They are now back faster and stealthier than ever, targeting European and U.S. banks.  (Also, they probably did not lose money in their technology refresh - they had more stolen passwords than they could ever use.)

Did You Miss Overshoot Day?

I have to confess - I missed it.   'Earth Overshoot Day' to mark overuse of resources explains that yesterday was organized to highlight the statistic that mankind is currently harvesting 40% more resources than the earth can support.  The name, overshoot, refers to the last day of the year that the world's population is sustainable.  In other words, we used up this year's resources in less than 9 months.  Similar to a trade deficit, we are accumulating a global ecological deficit.  If you are marking your calendar, we reached overshoot day two weeks earlier than in 2007.

Today is Overshoot Day tells that the world's population could be sustained with 4.4 acres of land per person.  Yes, the western nations and a few of the oil-producing nations far exceed that ration.  As an example, the city of Edinburgh has an ecological footprint 100 times its actual size.  This deficit we are generating or spending corresponds to extinction of species, deforestation of the rain forests, and the release of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Dire overpopulation predictions were made in 1970, with the small book, "The Sun is Going Down for All of Us", about the most chilling I have ever read.  The reason those predictions did not occur - about that time the world began consuming escalating amounts of energy.  That energy expenditure temporarily allowed the earth to support a population that was previously considered unsustainable.  Of course, our energy consumption has been unsustainable, with the world eventually experiencing peak oil earlier this year.  In addition, we have been releasing tons of CO2, plausibly partially responsible for climate change.

So what should we do?  Like most behavior issues, we must admit we have an overpopulation problem.  There is a continuum of choices and outcomes.  We can have lots and lots of people on the planet with a very low standard of living, or we can have not so many people on the planet and a better standard of living.  Note - I am not advocating an immediate reduction in the human population!

Unraveling the Secrets of Ebola

Ebola is one of the most frightening viruses.  It has a 90% mortality rate and the victims die a horrible bleeding death.  Under the electron microscope, the virus displays the familiar shepherd's crook, and is about 1000 nm in length.  This corresponds to about 280 amino acids.  Viruses cannot reproduce by themselves.  They must trick the host or infected cell into reproducing the virus. 

A virus contains DNA, not RNA.  A new public encyclopedia, Citizendium, explains the difference between DNA and RNA as RNA produces the proteins coded within the DNA structure.  RNA has a different sugar unit, two OH molecules instead of the single OH as in DNA.  Thymine is also present in RNA, but it is replaced with uracil.  DNA again, is generally double-stranded in living organisms and is much longer than the short RNA molecule contained in a virus.

Medical personnel have only recently been given new tools to fight viruses.  Antiviral drugs were first developed for herpes and hepatitis.  As I blogged recently, antivirals have also been successful against some influenza strains.  There are several different strategies in developing antiviral drugs.  One is to prevent the virus from entering into the cell.   Another is to inhibit the replication of the viral RNA.  Yet another is inhibit the cell's release of the replicated virus.  Tamiflu exploits this weakness in influenza.

Ebola cell invasion strategy uncovered explains that scientists have discovered how Ebola enters the cell.   A biochemical reaction called the phophoinositide-3 kinase pathway causes the cell to draw the virus inside its cellular membrane.  The University of Texas scientists designed a drug that halts the pathway and the disease is defeated.   Possible Cure for Ebola Could Revolutionize Antivirals suggests that this technique can be used against other viruses as well. 

I am awed by the secrets that medical researchers are discovering.  Quite possibly one of them will save my life or others that I know.

Living in the Noise Age

Electromagnetically we can prove today's world is noisier than decades earlier.  Rural cable television systems once were able to receive weak signals with a large vertical antenna and distribute them to their customers.  Because there is so much interference and noise, many of those farther-away stations can no longer be received. 

Closer to home, we had used an FM modulator to play a satellite radio through the sound system of an automobile.  What worked a few years ago no longer works because there are simply no vacant channels.  There is either a clear signal or noise throughout the entire FM band, rendering an FM modulator worthless. 

But what is noise?  We might consider it as anything we do not want to receive.  That is not quite sufficient because teenagers often consider their parent's counsel as something they do not want to hear.  Likewise for coastal residents who do not want to be warned of imminent death from an approaching hurricane. 

For several decades there has been noise about diet and cancer.  A particular food will be accused of causing cancer one month and then the next month touted as an anti-oxidant.  In this last 6 weeks before the Presidential election, there is going to be media noise at unprecedented levels.  Sheesh. 

Think back to the early American days.  A farmer might have been out in the fields with his horse or mule, hearing nothing all day but songbirds, and other sounds of nature.  Contrast that with today.  We do not live in the Information Age, but the Noise Age.  There is conflicting information, video, and sound, much of which interferes with each other.  As in a noisy restaurant where you have to essentially shout to the person across the table to be heard, we are culturally shouting and exaggerating in order for our opinion or voice to stand out and be heard.  Little wonder then, that civility is vanishing in our culture.  

In this overpopulated world, is there a solution?  Mmm.  I am not optimistic.  There are too many companies, countries, and even individuals to compete in getting their voice or message heard.  I think it is just going to get noisier.

Lithium-Ion Battery Technology

I began using laptop computers when they used nickel-metal batteries.  The things I learned with those batteries are contrary to the care and feeding for lithium-ion batteries.  For those that are used to the cordless tools (who doesn't have a Dewalt or Makita power drill?), the lessons are similar.  I had researched the battery when trying to understand the design decisions of automotive manufacturers for their electric vehicles - more about that later.

Lithium-ion batteries are much safer than lithium batteries which actually have lithium metal anodes.  Lithium-ion batteries, instead have an anode of carbon, a metal oxide cathode, and lithium salt for the electrolyte.  The lithium-ion electrolyte is very sensitive to either over-charging or deep discharge.  Either will permanently damage the battery.  As a consequence, the products that use the batteries must have sophisticated electronic circuitry to monitor the voltage of the battery and turn the product off, or disable the recharging, depending upon the status of the battery.

Because of this, lithium-ion batteries are not sold for general consumer use - they are sold for specific products that have the protective electronic circuitry.  Although they have a higher energy density than nickel-metal batteries, they require far more care and feeding.  They do not have memory like the other batteries, so it is not necessary to discharge them completely (recall the electronic circuitry in the product is not going to permit it).  Lithium-ion batteries have a limited shelf-life because the battery electrolyte begins aging when manufactured, not upon first use.  Also on the positive side, they discharge much slower when unused.

BatteryUniversity.com advises that a lithium-ion battery typically provides 300-500 discharge cycles.  Their guidelines for prolonging lithium-ion battery life are: a) Several partial discharges are preferable to deep discharge, b) keep the batteries cool, but do note expose them to freezing temperatures, c) avoid purchasing batteries before they will be used.

3 burning questions on Li-ion safety for battery guru Peter Roth tells that the lithium-ion battery has 6 times the energy density of lead-acid and 2-3 times the energy of nickel-metal batteries.  Most Li-ion electrolytes are flammable (as witnessed with the laptop battery scare of two years ago).  Peter still thinks the batteries are safer than driving with 20 gallons of gasoline in the fuel tank.