Ride-sharing startup Lyft continues to grow, adding new markets where users can hail a ride via their mobile phones and have a mustachioed car pick them up. With the launch of service in Indianapolis, St. Paul, and Atlanta, the company now has operations in 10 markets nationwide.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/GlhD_lVuB8A/
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WITH the Scottish Government consultation document on their version of the forthcoming common agricultural policy CAP coming out next month, NFU Scotland yesterday repeated its call for Scotland?s beef sector to receive the maximum permitted linked support payments.
The UNION?S argument was that beef production accounts for almost a quarter of Scotland?s agricultural output but the latest statistics have continued to show falling cow numbers.
Data on payments made through the Scottish Beef Calf Scheme revealed that the number of calves claimed in 2012 fell to 402,000, down from 432,000 in 2011. In that same period, the number of businesses claiming under the scheme has fallen by 500, suggesting, the union claims, that many producers are simply walking away from keeping beef cows.
Union president Nigel Miller underlined how seriously he saw the position: ?The number of Scottish producers keeping beef cows has been on the slide for some time ? down almost 1,000 from the last CAP deal in 2005.
?These dramatic figures for 2012 beef calf scheme claims are alarming with the realistic expectation that figures for 2013 will be poorer again.?
Source: http://www.scotsman.com/union-s-fears-for-scottish-beef-sector-1-3064223
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With Google celebrating the ninth anniversary of its IPO on Monday and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announcing plans to retire on Friday, this week was hardly short on news or AllThingsD staffers discussing it on various TV shows. Below, a quick rundown of our editors? media appearances during the past week.
Mike Isaac showed up on CNBC Monday to discuss Google on the ninth anniversary of its IPO.
Lauren Goode appeared on Fox to discuss Yahoo topping Google as the most visited Web site in the United States last month.
Walt Mossberg joined ?Nightly Business Report? to talk about Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer?s decision to retire.
Kara Swisher appeared on ?CBS This Morning? Saturday, also discussing Ballmer.
Walt also showed up on The Wall Street Journal?s ?Digits? program to talk about TiVo?s new Roamio service.
Finally, Walt joined CSPAN to discuss the future of personal electronics.
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It is almost unfair. I have been playing on my pc the last couple of days & I always finish 1st/2nd. Playing against iOS & Android is such a joke. My k/d ratio is almost triple the mobile platform players.
Just proof pc vs other platforms is not an even run.
__________________
i7 930 on Corsair H50/ EVGA X58 Classified3 / 12gb G.SKILL DDR3 1600 / MSI GTX 670 / Corsair TX750 / HAF 932
Source: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1775051&goto=newpost
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Chilean power generator E-CL is looking to increase LNG imports via its GNL Mejillones terminal in northern Chile.The firm is in negotiations with suppliers, however,...
This news article is one of hundreds published daily by Business News Americas about the commodities, markets, movements, companies, projects, economics and politics integral to the development of Latin America. Including news and insight from South America, Central America and the Caribbean, BNamericas includes Oil & Gas insight and forecasts for business opportunities in Chile. The business development service focuses on major projects, active companies, such as GDF Suez, E-CL, BG, Endesa Chile, BHP Billiton, Codelco, GNLM; and business and sales contacts, providing networking opportunities with leading executives throughout Latin America. Contact us today! Phone:+56 (2) 2941-0300
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Hall of Famer Robin Yount was at Miller Park on Friday to commemorate the 20th anniversary of his retirement with the Milwaukee Brewers.
Naturally, The Kid was asked about Ryan Braun and his suspension for a failed test for performance-enhancing drugs.
"In Ryan's case I don't know all the facts but what I will say hopefully all of this that has gone on is just a bump in the road for baseball," Yount said. "I hope this will put an end to this once and for all. I hope the guys who are testing the system realize they can't beat it and let everybody go out there on an even playing field.
"It's very important to baseball that we get rid of this. It's not what we want to focus on as an industry. We want to focus on the game itself. This will pass. There are no players bigger than the game. It's not our brightest moment, but maybe this will make the guys aware they can't beat the system and we won't have to worry about it anymore."
In an interview with the Journal Sentinel during the height of the steroid scandal several years ago, Yount said he would have been tempted to use during his playing days, when they were not illegal and there was no drug test.
"It's just not necessary anymore with drug testing in place," Yount said. "I'm no expert on it, but I would certainly like to believe it's a good enough program where you can't get away with it.
"There was an argument before drug testing that you had to do it to keep up. But I'd like to believe those days are gone. I hope this puts an end to it."
Yount, 57, who played 20 years with the Brewers and later came back as a bench coach, was asked if he felt the hurt the city has experienced with Braun.
"I'm sure," he said. "Let's face it. An organization without your star player gets hurt in a lot of ways. It's just unfortunate. The way I see it, it becomes a very selfish attitude is what I think you end up finding here. If these guys would realize there's more to it than themselves... they're hurting their teammates, they're hurting the fans they play for because they're paying your salary."
Yount, who also coached with Arizona, said he has no interest getting back in the game because the commitment takes too much time from the other things in life important to him.
Ramirez closer: Third baseman Aramis Ramirez, who has been on the disabled list since July 7 with left knee tendinitis, is getting closer to returning to the Brewers lineup.
"He ran and took BP again (Friday)," manager Ron Roenicke said. "It's hard to predict when he'll be back, but he's getting closer to it. He feels better all the time and he's anxious to get back in the lineup. I know that."
Roenicke was asked about the next steps for Ramirez.
"It's really about the pain," he said. "It's thepatella tendon that's bothering him. It's the first step and trying to stop after he's running. Anytime you put a load on that tendon it's sore. But that's getting better all the time. Hopefully he's getting to the point where he doesn't have pain anymore."
Estrada update: Right-hander Marco Estrada, who has been on the DL since June 5 with a hamstring pull, is scheduled to get one more rehab start after Friday.
By Thursday, the Brewers should know if he is ready to rejoin the team or stay in Arizona for more work.
Roenicke was not ready to say that Estrada would go back into the rotation when he returns.
"I think first we need to get him pitching well," he said. "We filled in OK with the starters we have, but I want him to pitch well. He knows it's important for him to finish out the season."
Lucroy back behind the plate: After making his MLB debut at first base Wednesday night at Chicago, catcher Jonathan Lucroy was back behind the plate against the Nationals.
"The real reason Luc was at first base (Wednesday) was that he came into my office," Roenicke said. "He knows he hits Edwin Jackson well. (Wily) Peralta was pitching that day and (Lucroy)knew 'Maldy' (Martin Maldonado) was going to catch. He wanted in the lineup, which was great."
Lucroy committed an error that did not hurt the Brewers in the 6-1 loss.
"I think he did OK at first," Roenicke said. "I was fine with him. I don't know how much he'll be there. I think we'll only get him there when it's a matchup. If there's a pitcher he hits really well and we need him in the lineup, we'll do it. Most of the time, we'll have him back there catching."
Part of the problem is that Juan Francisco, who was back at first Friday night, is struggling offensively and defensively.
"Francisco, hopefully he continues to get better offensively," Roenicke said. "The first base part is a lot of confidence. When he dropped a couple of balls, now it's in his mind.
"We need him to relax a little bit and become more confident in what he does. He's got good hands. He shouldn't have that problem. When you make a mistake, mentally it gets to you."
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As an undergraduate chemistry student, I was captivated by the opening lines of Fritjof Capra's influential book The Tao of Physics. Capra describes an epiphany on a beach, when he suddenly "saw" the cosmic dance of the atoms and molecules all around him.
Capra had to use his mind's eye, but it is now possible for anyone to see molecules in motion thanks to David Glowacki, a theoretical chemist at the University of Bristol, UK .
Glowacki's day job involves computational modelling of atoms and molecules; he is one of the developers of a widely used software package called CHARMM (Chemistry at Harvard Macromolecular Mechanics) that simulates systems containing many particles.
He has now turned his hand to an artistic project in the hope of breaking new scientific ground. Danceroom Spectroscopy uses models of molecules in the air around us ? largely nitrogen and oxygen ? and projects them into a room where they appear as shimmering, dancing lights on the walls.
The fun really starts when the people come in. The system includes motion sensors which add bodily movements to the simulation. People are represented as "force fields" ? a technical term in molecular modelling that refers to a molecule's potential energy ? that the team can alter to repel or attract virtual particles.
The effect is visually stunning, especially when combined with dance, as Glowacki has done in a series of performances called Hidden Fields .
The dancers' movements also affect the music. Glowacki's team can calculate the dancers' vibrational spectra by measuring the speed at which they move and putting the numbers through a mathematical operation called a Fourier transform. This information is then used to make the music respond to the dancers' movements.
Glowacki is now making Danceroom Spectroscopy react to yet another kind of input ? sound waves. Tonight at the Bristol Proms, violinist Nicola Benedetti's instrument will be rigged up so the sound from each string can be monitored and the sounds converted into visuals.
At the moment, the project is more art than science. Even so, the methods developed for Danceroom Spectroscopy are pushing scientific and computational frontiers.
It takes a whopping amount of computer power to run such a vast number of molecular calculations simultaneously. A few years ago, it took 6 parallel processors to run my research calculations on 100 water molecules. Danceroom Spectroscopy requires 5000 processors, says Glowacki.
Then there is the impact on molecular modelling, which is used to research drug design, nanochemistry and protein folding. The code behind the project is research-grade, says Glowacki. He hopes to use it to make game-like simulations in which chemists and aspiring citizen scientists can walk around moving atoms and manipulating proteins, for example. This could accelerate the speed at which new proteins can be discovered.
Danceroom Spectroscopy is touring the US and Europe over the next two years, with events being announced online.
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Slackers unite! Imgur for iOS is now here, giving you one more reason to shirk your responsibilities rather than tackle your to-do list. The release looks an awful lot like the Android version, but don't let that stand as a deterrent, because there's plenty of functionality to enjoy. This includes the ability to upload, submit and vote on images, and even manage your albums and account. You can also browse images by ranking or what's gone viral, and then share them via email, SMS and Twitter. If anyone (such as your boss) gives you guff for spending too much time on Imgur, just remind 'em that happiness is good for productivity. Couldn't hurt, anyway.
Source: Imgur (App Store)
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In this July 18, 2013 photo, a farmer rides past a row of solar panels in Cantarana, Cuba. The country's first solar farm opened this spring with little fanfare and no prior announcement. It boasts 14,000 photovoltaic panels which in a stroke more than doubled the country's capacity to harvest energy from the sun. (AP Photo/Franklin Reyes)
In this July 18, 2013 photo, a farmer rides past a row of solar panels in Cantarana, Cuba. The country's first solar farm opened this spring with little fanfare and no prior announcement. It boasts 14,000 photovoltaic panels which in a stroke more than doubled the country's capacity to harvest energy from the sun. (AP Photo/Franklin Reyes)
In this July 18, 2013 photo, a woman holds an umbrella as protection from the sun in front of a sign that reads in Spanish; "Energy with Revolution" in Cantarana, Cuba. Cantarana is already saving the island around $800 a day and will pay for itself after a little more than a decade into its 25-year expected lifespan. It's a notable change in the mindset for a country that relies on imports for half its energy consumption and is vulnerable to the political ebb and flow in other countries. (AP Photo/Franklin Reyes)
In this July 17, 2013 photo, workers install a high-voltage power line that will carry the current generated by solar panels at Cuba's first solar farm in Cantarana. In April, the solar farm came online and began contributing the first solar power to the island's energy grid. Cuba already had about 9,000 panels in use, but all of them were for small-scale, isolated usage like powering rural hamlets, schools and hospitals. (AP Photo/Franklin Reyes)
In this July 17, 2013 photo, workers are framed by solar panels at Cuba's first solar farm in Cantara. The project, one of seven such farms in the works, is a possible road map to greater energy independence in cash-poor Cuba, where leaders are being forced to consider renewables to help keep the lights on after four failed attempts to strike it rich with deep-water oil drilling and the death of petro-benefactor Hugo Chavez. (AP Photo/Franklin Reyes)
CANTARRANA, Cuba (AP) ? It's like a vision of the space age, carved out of the jungle: Thousands of glassy panels surrounded by a lush canopy of green stretch as far as the eye can see, reflecting the few clouds that dot the sky on a scorching Caribbean morning.
Cuba's first solar farm opened this spring with little fanfare and no prior announcement. It boasts 14,000 photovoltaic panels which in a stroke more than doubled the country's capacity to harvest energy from the sun.
The project, one of seven such farms in the works, shows a possible road map to greater energy independence in cash-poor Cuba, where Communist leaders are being forced to consider renewables to help keep the lights on after four failed attempts to strike it rich with deep-water oil drilling and the death of petro-benefactor Hugo Chavez.
"For us this is the future," said Ovel Concepcion, a director with Hidroenergia, the state-run company tasked with building the solar park 190 miles (300 kilometers) east of Havana in the central province of Cienfuegos.
"This is just like having an oil well," he told The Associated Press on a recent tour of the facility.
Outside experts have chastised Cuba for missing an opportunity to develop alternative energy sources; just 4 percent of its electricity comes from renewables. That lags behind not only standard-setter Germany (25 percent) but also comparable, developing Caribbean nations such as the Dominican Republic (14 percent).
Located on rural land unfit for farming, the solar park at Cantarrana, which translates roughly as "where frogs sing," is a tentative step toward redressing that oversight.
Construction began at the end of last year, about the same time that officials announced that a fourth exploratory offshore oil well drilled in 2012 was a bust and the only rig in the world that can drill in the deep waters off Cuba under U.S. embargo rules set sail with no return date.
In April, the solar farm came online and began contributing the first solar power to the island's energy grid. Cuba already had about 9,000 panels in use, but all of them were for small-scale, isolated usage such as powering rural hamlets, schools and hospitals.
The solar farm now generates enough electricity to power 780 homes and had saved the equivalent of 145 tons of fossil fuels, or around 1,060 barrels of crude, through the end of July. Peak capacity is expected to hit 2.6 megawatts when the final panels are in place in September.
That's just a drop in the energy bucket, of course.
Cuba gets about 92,000 barrels of highly subsidized oil per day from Venezuela to meet about half its consumption needs, according to an estimate by University of Texas energy analyst Jorge Pinon.
But hopes are high that solar can be a big winner in Cuba, which enjoys direct sunlight year-round, allowing for consistent high yields of 5 kilowatt-hours per square meter of terrain.
"The possibility of solar energy on a large scale could contribute to the island's future energy security," said Judith Cherni, an alternative energy expert at the Imperial College London Center for Environmental Policy who is familiar with Cuba's efforts.
Six other solar parks will come online in the coming months in Havana and the regions of Camaguey, Guantanamo, the Isle of Youth, Santiago and Villa Clara, though Concepcion did not specify their size.
Concepcion did not say how much the Cantarrana park cost, but said the industry standard for a facility of its size is $3 million to $4 million. The government, which controls nearly all economic activity in Cuba, financed construction, and the panels were manufactured at a factory in the western province of Pinar del Rio.
Cantarrana is already saving the island around $800 a day and Concepcion said it should pay for itself after a little more than a decade into its 25-year expected lifespan.
The project is a notable change in mindset for a country that relies on imports for half its energy consumption and is vulnerable to the political ebb and flow in other countries.
After the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc in the early 1990s, a loss of Soviet subsidies plunged Cuba into a severe crisis. Blackouts sometimes darkened Havana for 12 hours at a time.
Chavez's election in Venezuela in 1998 helped ease the crunch, but his death this March made clear that Havana can hardly depend on the tap staying open forever.
Chavez's handpicked successor, Nicolas Maduro, has vowed to maintain the special relationship with Cuba. But he won election by a razor-thin margin, and the Venezuelan opposition will almost certainly cut the Cuba subsidy if it wins power.
Pinon, of the University of Texas, predicted it will be at least three to five years before serious deep-water oil drilling can resume in Cuba.
Cuba's fuel uncertainty apparently prompted President Raul Castro to issue a decree in December creating seven working groups to chart a 15-year plan to develop alternative energy including solar, wind, biomass and others.
Cuba already has a handful of experimental wind farms and some small, isolated hydroelectric facilities, though experts say Cuba's shallow rivers are not ideal for large-scale power generation. The island has had the most success burning biomass from sugarcane, but harvests have fallen in recent years.
According to a government report from May, the island hopes to get 10 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030.
"The reality is that cheap, abundant oil is over, and we have to turn toward these technologies," said Vicente Estrada Cajigal, a specialist on regional alternative energy initiatives and the former president of Mexico's National Association for Solar Energy. "That treasure in the Gulf (of Mexico), I have my doubts."
Estrada Cajigal said the cost of solar panels has fallen by 80 percent in recent years, making it an ever more attractive option.
But other experts were cautious about how much photovoltaic energy can contribute to the island.
Mexican energy consultant Francisco Acosta said that the shaky Cuban economy's intricate ties to fossil fuels are not easily undone, and the country has no choice but to continue to rely heavily on petroleum and derivatives.
Solar "is a good idea, but to a certain point. ... In a country like Cuba, stable energy is that which comes from hydrocarbons," Acosta said.
Cherni said unanswered questions remain about how Cuba will fund its alternative energy ambitions. But she said the island's goal for 2030 seems about right, given that more-developed nations with greater resources are committing to 15 or 20 percent from renewables by 2020.
"So 10 percent is a good start," Cherni said.
___
Andrea Rodriguez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ARodriguezAP
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. ? A Florida education official says the state's education commissioner will resign because of allegations he changed a charter school's grade during his previous job as Indiana's school chief.
The official told The Associated Press of Tony Bennett's resignation on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to disclose the information before a formal announcement. The official says Bennett will resign because of the scandal surrounding Christel House Academy, an Indiana charter school run by a major Republican donor.
Emails published by the AP this week show Bennett and his Indiana staff scrambled last fall to ensure Christel DeHaan's school received an "A," despite poor 10th grade algebra scores that initially earned it a "C."
Bennett lost his re-election bid last November in Indiana. He was hired by Florida in December.
Before his election as Indiana's top educator, Bennett was a longtime Southern Indiana teacher and administrator?including a short tenure as Greater Clark Schools superintendent.
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H&M?which previously offered online shopping to parts of Europe?finally has a virtual store for U.S. customers. And you won't have to queue up at a brick-and-mortar location for its upcoming Isabel Marant collection?the site will even sell H&M's designer collaborations.
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NEW YORK (AP) ? Two fossilized dinosaur skeletons found on a Montana ranch in 2006 are coming up for sale in New York City.
The nearly complete skeletons are billed as the Montana Dueling Dinosaurs.
They'll be offered as a single lot at Bonhams on Nov. 19. The auction house estimates it could bring $7 million to $9 million.
Bonhams says the dinosaurs ? a plant eater and a meat-eater ? appear to be locked together in mortal combat.
They're being sold by the owners of the ranch where the fossils were found. It's located in the fossil-rich Hell Creek formation, where dinosaurs once roamed.
Each of the specimens is well preserved.
Paleontologists believe one may be a close relative of Tyrannosaurus rex. The other may be a new species similar to a Triceratops.
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Public release date: 1-Aug-2013
Share ] Contact: Alan Weimer
alan.weimer@colorado.edu
303-492-3759
University of Colorado at Boulder
A University of Colorado Boulder team has developed a radically new technique that uses the power of sunlight to efficiently split water into its components of hydrogen and oxygen, paving the way for the broad use of hydrogen as a clean, green fuel.
The CU-Boulder team has devised a solar-thermal system in which sunlight could be concentrated by a vast array of mirrors onto a single point atop a central tower up to several hundred feet tall. The tower would gather heat generated by the mirror system to roughly 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,350 Celsius), then deliver it into a reactor containing chemical compounds known as metal oxides, said CU-Boulder Professor Alan Weimer, research group leader.
As a metal oxide compound heats up, it releases oxygen atoms, changing its material composition and causing the newly formed compound to seek out new oxygen atoms, said Weimer. The team showed that the addition of steam to the system -- which could be produced by boiling water in the reactor with the concentrated sunlight beamed to the tower -- would cause oxygen from the water molecules to adhere to the surface of the metal oxide, freeing up hydrogen molecules for collection as hydrogen gas.
"We have designed something here that is very different from other methods and frankly something that nobody thought was possible before," said Weimer of the chemical and biological engineering department. "Splitting water with sunlight is the Holy Grail of a sustainable hydrogen economy."
A paper on the subject was published in the Aug. 2 issue of Science. The team included co-lead authors Weimer and Associate Professor Charles Musgrave, first author and doctoral student Christopher Muhich, postdoctoral researcher Janna Martinek, undergraduate Kayla Weston, former CU graduate student Paul Lichty, former CU postdoctoral researcher Xinhua Liang and former CU researcher Brian Evanko.
One of the key differences between the CU method and other methods developed to split water is the ability to conduct two chemical reactions at the same temperature, said Musgrave, also of the chemical and biological engineering department. While there are no working models, conventional theory holds that producing hydrogen through the metal oxide process requires heating the reactor to a high temperature to remove oxygen, then cooling it to a low temperature before injecting steam to re-oxidize the compound in order to release hydrogen gas for collection.
"The more conventional approaches require the control of both the switching of the temperature in the reactor from a hot to a cool state and the introduction of steam into the system," said Musgrave. "One of the big innovations in our system is that there is no swing in the temperature. The whole process is driven by either turning a steam valve on or off."
"Just like you would use a magnifying glass to start a fire, we can concentrate sunlight until it is really hot and use it to drive these chemical reactions," said Muhich. "While we can easily heat it up to more than 1,350 degrees Celsius, we want to heat it to the lowest temperature possible for these chemical reactions to still occur. Hotter temperatures can cause rapid thermal expansion and contraction, potentially causing damage to both the chemical materials and to the reactors themselves."
In addition, the two-step conventional idea for water splitting also wastes both time and heat, said Weimer, also a faculty member at CU-Boulder's BioFrontiers Institute. "There are only so many hours of sunlight in a day," he said.
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and by the U.S. Department of Energy.
With the new CU-Boulder method, the amount of hydrogen produced for fuel cells or for storage is entirely dependent on the amount of metal oxide -- which is made up of a combination of iron, cobalt, aluminum and oxygen -- and how much steam is introduced into the system. One of the designs proposed by the team is to build reactor tubes roughly a foot in diameter and several feet long, fill them with the metal oxide material and stack them on top of each other. A working system to produce a significant amount of hydrogen gas would require a number of the tall towers to gather concentrated sunlight from several acres of mirrors surrounding each tower.
Weimer said the new design began percolating within the team about two years ago. "When we saw that we could use this simpler, more effective method, it required a change in our thinking," said Weimer. "We had to develop a theory to explain it and make it believable and understandable to other scientists and engineers."
Despite the discovery, the commercialization of such a solar-thermal reactor is likely years away. "With the price of natural gas so low, there is no incentive to burn clean energy," said Weimer, also the executive director of the Colorado Center for Biorefining and Biofuels, or C2B2. "There would have to be a substantial monetary penalty for putting carbon into the atmosphere, or the price of fossil fuels would have to go way up."
###
C2B2 is an arm of the Colorado Energy Research Collaboratory involving CU-Boulder, the Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden. The collaboratory works with industry partners, public agencies and other institutions to commercialize renewable energy technologies, support economic growth in the state and nation and educate the future workforce.
For more information on the chemical and biological engineering department visit http://www.colorado.edu/chbe/. For more information on C2B2 visit http://www.c2b2web.org. For more information on the Biofrontiers Institute visit http://biofrontiers.colorado.edu.
Contact:
Alan Weimer, 303-492-3759
alan.weimer@colorado.edu
Charles Musgrave, 303-735-0411
charles.musgrave@colorado.edu
Jim Scott, CU-Boulder media relations, 720-381-9479
jim.scott@colorado.edu
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Public release date: 1-Aug-2013 Share ] Contact: Alan Weimer
alan.weimer@colorado.edu
303-492-3759
University of Colorado at Boulder
A University of Colorado Boulder team has developed a radically new technique that uses the power of sunlight to efficiently split water into its components of hydrogen and oxygen, paving the way for the broad use of hydrogen as a clean, green fuel.
The CU-Boulder team has devised a solar-thermal system in which sunlight could be concentrated by a vast array of mirrors onto a single point atop a central tower up to several hundred feet tall. The tower would gather heat generated by the mirror system to roughly 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,350 Celsius), then deliver it into a reactor containing chemical compounds known as metal oxides, said CU-Boulder Professor Alan Weimer, research group leader.
As a metal oxide compound heats up, it releases oxygen atoms, changing its material composition and causing the newly formed compound to seek out new oxygen atoms, said Weimer. The team showed that the addition of steam to the system -- which could be produced by boiling water in the reactor with the concentrated sunlight beamed to the tower -- would cause oxygen from the water molecules to adhere to the surface of the metal oxide, freeing up hydrogen molecules for collection as hydrogen gas.
"We have designed something here that is very different from other methods and frankly something that nobody thought was possible before," said Weimer of the chemical and biological engineering department. "Splitting water with sunlight is the Holy Grail of a sustainable hydrogen economy."
A paper on the subject was published in the Aug. 2 issue of Science. The team included co-lead authors Weimer and Associate Professor Charles Musgrave, first author and doctoral student Christopher Muhich, postdoctoral researcher Janna Martinek, undergraduate Kayla Weston, former CU graduate student Paul Lichty, former CU postdoctoral researcher Xinhua Liang and former CU researcher Brian Evanko.
One of the key differences between the CU method and other methods developed to split water is the ability to conduct two chemical reactions at the same temperature, said Musgrave, also of the chemical and biological engineering department. While there are no working models, conventional theory holds that producing hydrogen through the metal oxide process requires heating the reactor to a high temperature to remove oxygen, then cooling it to a low temperature before injecting steam to re-oxidize the compound in order to release hydrogen gas for collection.
"The more conventional approaches require the control of both the switching of the temperature in the reactor from a hot to a cool state and the introduction of steam into the system," said Musgrave. "One of the big innovations in our system is that there is no swing in the temperature. The whole process is driven by either turning a steam valve on or off."
"Just like you would use a magnifying glass to start a fire, we can concentrate sunlight until it is really hot and use it to drive these chemical reactions," said Muhich. "While we can easily heat it up to more than 1,350 degrees Celsius, we want to heat it to the lowest temperature possible for these chemical reactions to still occur. Hotter temperatures can cause rapid thermal expansion and contraction, potentially causing damage to both the chemical materials and to the reactors themselves."
In addition, the two-step conventional idea for water splitting also wastes both time and heat, said Weimer, also a faculty member at CU-Boulder's BioFrontiers Institute. "There are only so many hours of sunlight in a day," he said.
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and by the U.S. Department of Energy.
With the new CU-Boulder method, the amount of hydrogen produced for fuel cells or for storage is entirely dependent on the amount of metal oxide -- which is made up of a combination of iron, cobalt, aluminum and oxygen -- and how much steam is introduced into the system. One of the designs proposed by the team is to build reactor tubes roughly a foot in diameter and several feet long, fill them with the metal oxide material and stack them on top of each other. A working system to produce a significant amount of hydrogen gas would require a number of the tall towers to gather concentrated sunlight from several acres of mirrors surrounding each tower.
Weimer said the new design began percolating within the team about two years ago. "When we saw that we could use this simpler, more effective method, it required a change in our thinking," said Weimer. "We had to develop a theory to explain it and make it believable and understandable to other scientists and engineers."
Despite the discovery, the commercialization of such a solar-thermal reactor is likely years away. "With the price of natural gas so low, there is no incentive to burn clean energy," said Weimer, also the executive director of the Colorado Center for Biorefining and Biofuels, or C2B2. "There would have to be a substantial monetary penalty for putting carbon into the atmosphere, or the price of fossil fuels would have to go way up."
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C2B2 is an arm of the Colorado Energy Research Collaboratory involving CU-Boulder, the Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden. The collaboratory works with industry partners, public agencies and other institutions to commercialize renewable energy technologies, support economic growth in the state and nation and educate the future workforce.
For more information on the chemical and biological engineering department visit http://www.colorado.edu/chbe/. For more information on C2B2 visit http://www.c2b2web.org. For more information on the Biofrontiers Institute visit http://biofrontiers.colorado.edu.
Contact:
Alan Weimer, 303-492-3759
alan.weimer@colorado.edu
Charles Musgrave, 303-735-0411
charles.musgrave@colorado.edu
Jim Scott, CU-Boulder media relations, 720-381-9479
jim.scott@colorado.edu
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Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-08/uoca-ct073113.php
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