Stunning images by Felix Pharand–Deschenes at Globaia : A Cartography of the Anthropocene
Cities are yellow ; roads are green ; ships are blue ; airlines are white: image globaia
Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
A cartography of the anthropocene
October 20, 2011Nikon small world winners
October 4, 2011The first prize in the Nikon Small World competition 2011 goes to Dr. Igor Siwanowicz of the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried, Germany for his portrait of a Chrysopa sp. (green lacewing) larva (20x)
Portrait of a Chrysopa sp. (green lacewing) larva (20x) by Igor Siwanowicz
But my favourite is this one which “only” got an honourable mention as an image of distinction by Debora Leite of University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, of a Sugarcane root cross section (20x) which reminds me of a fractal:
Debora Leite University of São Paulo, Sugarcane root cross section (20x)
All the images can be seen here.
The coming gas glut: Shale gas gets going in Poland
September 19, 2011An estimate of the world’s recoverable shale gas reserves in 32 countries is as at least as much again as the world’s proven natural gas reserves as of 2010. This does not include large parts of Africa and Russia, the Middle East and SE Asia. It does not include known resources within the 32 countries but which have not yet been assessed. Fears of any kind of “peak” gas scenario being attained are rapidly disappearing into the future.
US EIA: The initial estimate of technically recoverable shale gas resources in the 32 countries examined is 5,760 trillion cubic feet. Adding the U.S. estimate of the shale gas technically recoverable resources of 862 trillion cubic feet results in a total shale resource base estimate of 6,622 trillion cubic feet for the United States and the other 32 countries assessed. To put this shale gas resource estimate in some perspective, world proven reserves of natural gas as of January 1, 2010 are about 6,609 trillion cubic feet, and world technically recoverable gas resources are roughly 16,000 trillion cubic feet, largely excluding shale gas. Thus, adding the identified shale gas resources to other gas resources increases total world technically recoverable gas resources by over 40 percent to 22,600 trillion cubic feet.
Outside of the US the recovery of shale gas is being planned in many countries. In Europe the rush to recover and use shale gas is being led by Poland which has been dependant upon its own coal and on Russian gas. The shale is not very deep down and is mainly in thinly populated areas. And now the recovery has started and commercial production should start within 10 – 20 months.
Shale gas is abundant in Poland: map via Wikipedia
Wall Street Journal: Shale gas is burning in Poland after gas firm PGNiG SA torched a flare on one of its rigs. Poland wants to become one of the major players in the European gas market within the next two decades, with the state-controlled natural gas firm starting commercial production in 2014.
PGNiG has begun technical production of natural gas from its shale gas concession in Lubocino, a village in northern Poland, and plans successive drilling as the company hopes to tap the country’s potentially vast unconventional hydrocarbon reserves.
Outside the U.S., Poland is the first country where companies are making a serious effort to develop shale gas, which Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has called the country’s “great chance,” as it could reduce Poland’s dependence on Russia for gas, create tens of thousands of jobs and fill state coffers.
PGNiG now plans to drill horizontally and conduct further fracturing procedures on this concession, which may be completed in 10-20 months and will enable commercial extraction. …….
Prime Minister Tusk Sunday said he was “moderately optimistic” commercial shale gas production would begin in 2014, which would by 2035 free it from its overreliance on Russia’s OAO Gazprom for natural gas supplies and allow it to be a major player in Europe’s gas.
“After years of dependence on our large neighbor, today we can say that my generation will see the day when we will be independent in the area of natural gas and we will be setting terms,” Mr. Tusk said. Poland’s domestically produced shale gas should be competitively priced compared to gas imported from Russia, a government official said earlier. Exploration in Poland won’t pose a danger to the environment, he added.
China and India have not yet even fully mapped all the shale gas reserves they have but plans for commercial gas production from the reserves already known to exist are being prepared. With the slow-down expected in building nuclear plant the gas “glut” comes just in time for the gas based power production that will be needed when the economic recovery is established. Moreover all intermittent, subsidised renewable energy (solar and wind) need capacity back-up and the only viable option is gas based power plants.
Jaguar Land-Rover thrives under Tata and fuels Tata Motors profits
September 18, 2011
When the Tata Group with Ratan Tata acquired Jaguar Land-Rover (JLR) in 2008 there were many disturbing and even depressing omens. The financial crisis of 2008 was just beginning to emerge. JLR was bleeding cash and Ford Motor Company were happy to bail out for the $2.3 billion that the Tata Group paid. In India Tata shareholders and analysts were concerned that they had bitten off more than they could chew. The Tata Group had relatively low debt and the levels of debt that they would have to take on not only for the acquisition but almost as much again for investment in JLR raised the fears that JLR could bring not only Tata Motors but the whole group down. The price was seen as being too high for what was considered a “vanity” acquisition. In the UK there were fears that the strong Jaguar and Land-Rover brands would be hurt badly by coming under Indian ownership. Jobs would be lost to Mumbai and technology would be stolen the story went. The company culture would be destroyed and innovation would come to an end. How could an Indian company messing around with a car like the Nano have the audacity to think that they could offer anything to two thoroughbred brands such as Jaguar and Land-Rover?
But 3 years on the story of JLR under Tata is an island of optimism in a gloomy sea. And it is not just optimism. The “vanity” acquisition has a gilded edge. JLR profits are up sharply and it contributes more than 50% of Tata Motors profits. An Indian company that dealt primarily with cheap small cars and trucks succeeded where Ford Motor Co and few others before had failed.
The Telegraph: Jaguar Land Rover is poised to deliver a major boost to the Government’s plans to boost growth by confirming this week that it will build a £400m engine plant in the Midlands that will potentially create up to 2,000 jobs.
JLR’s fortunes have undergone a dramatic transformation under the ownership of Indian group, Tata Motors, which bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford in 2008. ….
The company was forced to turn to the Government for support in 2009 when car sales around the world crashed, but walked away from negotiations when Lord Peter Mandelson, the trade secretary, demanded strict terms including the right to appoint the chairman. The company then secured debt from commercial lenders and was able to reap the benefits of a surge in demand for Jaguars and Land Rovers in Asia.
In the year to March 31, JLR made a record pre-tax profit of £1.1bn after increasing sales by 26pc to 243,621. Under the leadership of chief executive Ralf Speth and Tata chairman Ratan Tata, JLR is investing £1.5bn a year in new products and has ambitions to drive production at its three Midland plants to 500,000 vehicles a year. The company has already hired 3,000 staff this year, including a record 350 graduates, and now employs almost 21,000 people in the UK.
JLR’s engines are currently supplied by Ford from plants including Bridgend and Dagenham in the UK……
Mr Tata also played down the loss of Carl-Peter Forster, who has stepped down as Tata Motors chief executive. He said: “The credit for the turnaround of Jaguar Land Rover goes to the management team and workforce. No single person can or should take credit.”
And the culture-clash that was feared just did not happen. Instead a new spirit seemed to be infused into JLR. Kevin Stride, the chief engineer of the highly-acclaimed XF program said in 2009
“There’s a real buzz around the brand at the moment, Even in a difficult world, there’s a buzz because we’re feeling empowered, we’ve got the right product line-up to go and tackle the world and we’re gaining some confidence.
“If you went to people at different function levels in Jaguar Land Rover and asked what they thought of Tata, you’d get a big thumbs-up. It’s a good place to be at the moment. For individuals like myself, it’s changed for the better. We had a great relationship under Ford. People were cynical about that, but they were a very good company to work for. With Tata, it’s different, but different in a good way. …. We are held accountable very clearly as an independent company, whether in engineering or marketing or finance, we are held accountable for proper business performance, which in the old regime was a little filtered. It was very difficult to see cause and effect. We were not able to be as focused as we are now. ….. Tata has a very healthy way of approaching all the businesses they own. They don’t centralise it, they don’t put layers of bureaucracy in it. They evaluate the business model; if they like it, they buy the company and demand that they deliver on the business plan. You can’t just meander off and fail. ……. Cultural change is the hardest thing to do. It does take time. But we’ve been with Tata for a year, we are more agile already, people (within JLR) are questioning why we do things and if it adds value, and we are feeling more empowered to go and attack it. If it doesn’t make any sense and it adds another layer, let’s not do it any more.…. Since Tata have come in, we’ve now got an insight into how they deal with Indian sources and sources within the whole of South-East Asia. My perception is that they are extremely focused businessmen and extremely principled in what they do, which is great coaching for us as a company. We’ve gone and looked at how they operate as a company – how they source components, how they design them, how they manufacture them – and we’ve got quite a bit to learn from them on the business side.
Jaguar is able to offer an insight into quality processes in the premium world. In terms of our engineering simulation and development, we’re pretty advanced for a company the size of Jaguar Land Rover. That’s something we’ll be able to provide benefit to the Tata Group in years to come”.
And the story is far from over yet. While cash management is the mantra of the moment, there are ambitious plans for the introduction of new models and upgrades of the existing ones in a long-term plan that runs until 2014. Tata Motors and JLR are now in “very intensive discussions” with a leading Chinese car maker about forming a historic joint venture that would see the company also produce its luxury cars in China.
CarAdvice: With tough economic times hurting sales of Tato’s famous Nano, Jaguar Land Rover are now generating a massive 57 percent of Tata’s revenue. The British brands have seen their pretax profit increase 20-fold to 1.12 billion pounds ($1.76 billion) for the fiscal year. As it stands today, Tata and its Jaguar Land Rover division is valued at over $12 billion.
It wasn’t just a matter of good fortune that the brands have become successful, in fact, Jaguar is still striving to improve with sales down 27 percent for the last quarter. Land Rover on the other hand, has seen significant growth (up 22 percent for last quarter) following strong demand for its upmarket SUVs.
The Range Rover Evoque has already seen more than 20,000 pre-orders, despite not going on sale till September.
Tata is investing a massive $2.5 billion into Jaguar Land Rover product development each year to keep the flow of new products coming. This should see Jaguar offer a significantly larger range to turn the sales slide around. The multi-billion dollar annual investment will see the development or upgrade of 40 new vehicles across the two brands over the next five years. The two that we look forward to the most are the Jaguar C-X75 supercar and an entry-level sedan to rival the Mercedes-Benz C-Class and BMW 3 Series.
The C-X75 is meant to showcase Jaguar’s engineering prowess and build its brand credibility to compete with its German rivals. The hybrid supercar can accelerate from 0-100km/h in under three seconds and run on electric power alone for around 50km: image CarAdvice.com.au
It will be tough for Jaguar to mount a serious challenge to Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz but perhaps with Tata Motors this is not impossible. And it will be a healthy and welcome development for the car industry.
First private space flight to the ISS in November?
August 16, 2011California-based rocket maker SpaceX said that it will make a test flight in late November to the International Space Station, now that NASA has retired its space shuttle program.The Dragon space capsule to be launched by a Falcon Heavy rocket has been given a November 30th launch date by NASA.
The Space X news release is here.
Space X Dragon capsule: image spacetourismnow.com
“SpaceX has been hard at work preparing for our next flight — a mission designed to demonstrate that a privately-developed space transportation system can deliver cargo to and from the International Space Station (ISS),” the company, also called Space Exploration Technologies, said in a statement.
The mission is the second to be carried out by SpaceX, one of a handful of firms competing to make a spaceship to replace the now-defunct US shuttle, which had been used to carry supplies and equipment to the orbiting outpost.
“NASA has given us a November 30, 2011 launch date, which should be followed nine days later by Dragon berthing at the ISS,” the company said.
It said the arrival of the vessel at the space station would herald “the beginning of a new era in space travel.”
“Together, government and the private sector can simultaneously increase the reliability, safety and frequency of space travel, while greatly reducing the costs,” SpaceX said.
The company won $75 million in new seed money earlier this year, after it became the first to successfully send its own space capsule, the gumdrop-shaped Dragon, into orbit and back in December 2010.
A nano-battery on a nano-wire
August 2, 2011“Nano” will surely be the word of the year in science and “graphene” – I predict – will be the material of the year. No doubt the words will also be used to generate unjustified publicity in many cases. But such is the interest and the potential that the developments in nano-technology will accelerate and it will not be long before applications are in every-day use. One of the limiting factors is the availability of energy sources at the nano-scale but even that limitation may soon be overcome.
A research team at Rice University have managed to squeeze a whole lithium-ion energy storage device into a single nanowire, which could be used as a rechargeable power source for future generations of nanoelectronics. The work is reported in a paper published by the American Chemical Society’s Nano Letters
Building Energy Storage Device on a Single Nanowire by Sanketh R. Gowda, Arava Leela Mohana Reddy, Xiaobo Zhan, and Pulickel M. Ajayan, Nano Lett., DOI: 10.1021/nl2017042, July 14, 2011
Nano-wire battery
Abstract
Hybrid electrochemical energy storage devices combine the advantages of battery and supercapacitors, resulting in systems of high energy and power density. Using LiPF6electrolyte, the Ni–Sn/PANI electrochemical system, free of Li-based electrodes, works on a hybrid mechanism based on Li intercalation at the anode and PF6– doping at the cathode. Here, we also demonstrate a composite nanostructure electrochemical device with the anode (Ni–Sn) and cathode (polyaniline, PANI) nanowires packaged within conformal polymer core–shell separator. Parallel array of these nanowire devices shows reversible areal capacity of
3 μAh/cm2 at a current rate of 0.03 mA/cm2. The work shows the ultimate miniaturization possible for energy storage devices where all essential components can be engineered on a single nanowire.
From PC World:
A team of scientists has created a battery so small that it fits into a “nanowire,” a wire whose thickness is less than the wavelength of visible light. It’s the smallest battery ever made, and it could end up powering a whole generation of nanotechnology.
The potential of nanotechnology—the practice of building machines so small that they can’t even be seen—has been talked about for decades. In medicine, for example, the idea of creating tiny robots that could enter a person’s bloodstream and target intruders or diseased cells has been touted as one of the most promising applications of the field, but it’s remained purely theoretical.
One of the hurdles standing in the way of such wondrous nanodevices is their power supplies—making batteries at such a tiny scale is difficult. Now a team of engineers from Rice University appears to have solved that problem by creating a battery just 50 microns, or about the thickness of a human hair.
To create the battery (see the diagram), the researchers first coated a nanowire template with a thin layer of copper. They then filled the pores (which create the individual nanowires) halfway with a nickel/tin alloy to create the anodes. At this point, they put on a thin layer of polyethylene-oxide gel, which acts as both an electrolyte and an insulator from the other nanowires. Next they filled the remainder of the pore with a polyaniline material to create the cathodes. A layer of aluminium goes on top to complete the circuit.
Every nanowire is just 150 nanometers (nm) thin. To put that in perspective, the lowest wavelength of visible light is about 400 nm. However, the complete battery is about 50 microns tall, or about the width of human hair. The researchers ended up creating an array of nanowire batteries that was about 0.08 square inches in area, though it’s theoretically scalable to even larger sizes.
With a larger array that includes several layers stacked on top of each other, the tech could theoretically lead to batteries with massive energy density. And since the electrochemical materials don’t contain lithium, they’re easy to synthesize and manipulate at room temperature.
The nanowire batteries aren’t without their limitations, however. After being charged and discharged 20 times, they lose their ability to hold a full charge. The researchers are working on addressing this limitation, however, by playing with the polymer thickness and trying out different kinds of electrodes.
Although it’s in the early stages, the new battery technology could help usher in an era of practical nanomachines. With a real microscopic power source, the science-fiction scenario of tiny machines acting as doctors, builders, and explorers just took a step toward reality.
The team had reported last December on the creation of 3-D nano-batteries
Last December, Ajayan’s team encased vertical arrays of nickel-tin nanowires in PMMA, which is a polymer known as Plexiglas. The Plexiglas was an electrolyte and insulator in this case, and the nanowires were grown by electrodeposition in an anodized alumina template on top of a copper substrate. The template’s pores were stretched with a chemical etching technique, causing a gap between the alumina and the wires, and then the researchers drop-coated PMMA to enclose the wires with a smooth covering. The template was removed with a chemical wash, and a forest of tiny electrolyte-encased nanowires appeared. This particular battery had encased nickel-tin as the anode and a cathode had to be attached to the outside, but in the new battery packs, the cathode is packed into the nanowires.
The team created two versions of the battery pack. The first combines a nickel-tin anode, polyethylene oxide (PEO) electrolyte and polyaniline (PANI) cathode layers, which allows for the efficient movement of lithium ions through the anode to the electrolyte and the cathode. The ions are stored in bulk allowing the device to charge (and discharge) rapidly.
The second version squeezes the same characteristics into a single nanowire, with centimeter-scale arrays containing thousands of nanowire devices where each is approximately 150 nanometers wide.
The new process uses PEO as the electrolyte, which stores lithium ions and acts as a electrical insulator between the nanowires in an array. The widened alumina pores were drop-coated with PEO to coat the anodes, and leaves tubes at the top allowing PANI cathodes to be drop-coated as well. The circuit is finished off with an aluminum current collector placed at the top of the array.
3-D printing!! Cool
July 16, 2011A 3-D printer.
Very cool!!
3D printing is a form of additive manufacturing technology where a three dimensional object is created by laying down successive layers of material. 3D printers are generally faster, more affordable and easier to use than other additive manufacturing technologies. 3D printers offer product developers the ability to print parts and assemblies made of several materials with different mechanical and physical properties in a single build process. Advanced 3D printing technologies yield models that can serve as product prototypes.
Rolls Royce settles with Qantas for over $100 million
June 22, 2011Qantas has reached a settlement with engine maker Rolls-Royce over last year’s mid-air disintegration of a the Trent 900 engine, which temporarily forced the grounding of its entire fleet of A380s. The terms of the agreement have not been revealed but will give Qantas a $100 million (A$95 million) boost in profits. For Rolls Royce the cost of the Qantas settlement is therefore likely to be somewhat greater and my guess would be in the region of $110 million.
My estimate made in November 2010 that Rolls Royce would face a hit of around $300 million for direct costs and in settlement costs seems to be not far off the mark. The cost to Rolls Royce of loss of future sales remains intangible and perhaps only temporary.
Alan Joyce, the Qantas chief executive, said the terms of the agreement are confidential, but said the settlement’s profit and loss impact would amount to a A$95m boost to the Australian airline’s bottom line.
Mr Joyce said the settlement marks an end to the legal proceedings Qantas launched against Rolls-Royce in the Federal Court of Australia in December.
In November, a Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine on a Qantas A380 disintegrated shortly after takeoff from Singapore, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s interim report on the A380 incident said a manufacturing defect in an oil pipe deep within one of the engines led to an oil leak, which sparked a fire. The fire caused a disintegration of one of the engine’s giant turbine discs, sending pieces of it shooting through the plane’s wing and raining onto the ground below.
The engine explosion was the most significant safety issue an A380 had ever faced since it began passenger flights in 2007, and prompted intense scrutiny of Rolls-Royce engines.
The settlement will help Qantas recover from the millions it lost following the incident. The airline was forced to temporarily ground its entire fleet of A380s for a series of inspections, and Joyce said the plane damaged by the explosion won’t return to service until February.
“Qantas and Rolls-Royce have had a long and successful commercial partnership spanning several decades,” the airline said in a statement. “Qantas looks forward to a continued strong relationship with Rolls-Royce on the basis of the settlement announced today.”
The compensation payment helped boost the airline’s expected underlying pretax profit for the year to June 30 to between A$500 million (£326m) and A$550 million (£359m), up from A$377 million (£246m) a year ago.
…… Qantas shares rose 0.8 per cent to AU$1.84 in afternoon trading.
This leaves Rolls Royce the task of settling with Airbus and some less costly settlements with Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines.
My estimate is that it will take another 2 to 3 quarters for most of these costs to have worked their way through Rolls Royce’s accounts. However RR will have to bear an increased and continuing service cost regime for some time to come for the Trent 900.
The Trent 1000 for the Dreamliner is still a long way off from generating real revenues for Rolls Royce.
The wrecked Trent 900 engine after the Qantas plane landed in Singapore.Photo: AFP
It could be time to buy Rolls Royce again.
The Age of Fossil Fuel may be just beginning
June 3, 2011A little bit over the top from Michael Lind in Salon but still fundamentally not wrong:
Are we living at the beginning of the Age of Fossil Fuels, not its final decades? The very thought goes against everything that politicians and the educated public have been taught to believe in the past generation. According to the conventional wisdom, the U.S. and other industrial nations must undertake a rapid and expensive transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy for three reasons: The imminent depletion of fossil fuels, national security and the danger of global warming.
What if the conventional wisdom about the energy future of America and the world has been completely wrong?
As everyone who follows news about energy knows by now, in the last decade the technique of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” long used in the oil industry, has evolved to permit energy companies to access reserves of previously-unrecoverable “shale gas” or unconventional natural gas. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, these advances mean there is at least six times as much recoverable natural gas today as there was a decade ago.
Natural gas, which emits less carbon dioxide than coal, can be used in both electricity generation and as a fuel for automobiles.
……
Two arguments for switching to renewable energy — the depletion of fossil fuels and national security — are no longer plausible. What about the claim that a rapid transition to wind and solar energy is necessary, to avert catastrophic global warming?
The scenarios with the most catastrophic outcomes of global warming are low probability outcomes — a fact that explains why the world’s governments in practice treat reducing CO2 emissions as a low priority, despite paying lip service to it. But even if the worst outcomes were likely, the rational response would not be a conversion to wind and solar power but a massive build-out of nuclear power. Nuclear energy already provides around 13-14 percent of the world’s electricity and nearly 3 percent of global final energy consumption, while wind, solar and geothermal power combined account for less than one percent of global final energy consumption. ….
In the meantime, it appears that the prophets of an age of renewable energy following Peak Oil got things backwards. We may be living in the era of Peak Renewables, which will be followed by a very long Age of Fossil Fuels that has only just begun.
Power generation from shale gas is here to stay
May 31, 2011The capital cost of building different types of power plants is a reality that cannot be wished away:
November 2010 Capital costs for power plants
Gas fired combined cycle plant use the least capital of all power generation plants. With shale gas set to become even cheaper than natural gas and with gas fired plants having capacity factors well above 90% compared to the 25% of wind power or the 30% of solar plants, it is a no-brainer to conclude that wherever shale gas is available it is going to be used for power generation.
Where it is not available coal fired plants and nuclear plants will continue to be used.
Intermittent renewable power plants are going to need subsidies for a long time to come to get anywhere near the cost of electricity from gas. At best they could be useful to augment production of electricity but being intermittent cannot really contribute to reliable capacity.
The k2p blog 