by Amanda Little
Photo courtesy PNNL via FlickrJet-engine wind turbines, fuel made from big batches of algae, enzymes that trap power
plant CO2. Sound seriously far-fetched? They may be. But these concepts are fetching
serious investment dollars from the Department of Energy. DOE Secretary Steven
Chu—a Nobel Prize-winning inventor himself—has launched a new program dubbed “ARPA-E.” It’s modeled
after DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the Pentagon’s
technology-innovation program that was responsible for the
internet, cell phones, GPS, and other technical breakthroughs. ARPA-E is doling out multimillion dollar grants
to the nation’s most visionary energy innovators—thrill-seeking, over-achieving
uber-geeks from start-up companies and universities across America. To offer a
glimpse of what they’re up to—and what America’s energy future might look like—we
singled out seven of ARPA-E’s 37 recipients. These guys (yes, they’re all guys)
are pursuing high-risk endeavors that may never see commercial applications.
But if they do, the rewards could be staggering in scope.
The
pioneer: Dr. Walter
Presz, founder and Senior Technical Advisor at FloDesign Wind Turbine Corp.
The
concept: An entirely
new spin on wind energy. With compact blades enclosed in a cylindrical casing, this high-efficiency turbine looks—and operates—like a jet engine. Instead of using energy to create thrust, it uses the thrust of the wind to create energy. An air pump behind the blades pulls in twice as much air as a conventional machine. In
wind tunnel experiments, FloDesign’s small-scale prototype generated three
times more energy than a standard long-blade turbine of the same size. The
encased blades are also quieter and safer for humans—and birds—and the turbine’s
compact size means it can be placed along highways, medians and
bridges, in suburbs and maybe even cities-all places where bulky conventional
wind turbines cannot go.
The
payout: $8,325,400.00
The
goal: A commercially
viable prototype within two years, and ultimately a machine that is 30 percent
cheaper than a conventional wind turbine of the same size.
The hurdles: Because of its expensive fiberglass casing, FloDesign turbines require more materials than conventional turbines of the same size—which
adds to production costs. And if winds exceed certain speeds, the generator that creates power inside the turbine could overheat. Presz is exploring cheaper materials for mass production, and also designing better
air-flow controls for cooling.
The
promise: “I’ve
worked on propulsion technologies for practically every aircraft in the skies
today-from Stealth Bombers and the F16 to the Boeing 737. But
this is by far the biggest reward I’ve worked for in my career. The U.S. is way
behind Europe and Asia in wind. Now we have the potential to change the entire
industry—pushing it from the propeller age into the jet age.”
The
pioneer: Dr. Donald
Sadoway, Professor of Materials Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
The
concept: Batteries
made of liquid metals. Picture a container of oil and vinegar—these liquids
don’t mix, they stratify into two layers. The liquid metals in MIT’s battery stratify
too—into three distinct layers (cathode, anode and electrolyte) that interact
with each other and conduct electrical current. Conventional batteries made of
solid metals are expensive and hard to build big. But liquid batteries could be
enormous in size—large enough to store power from wind, solar, and other
intermittent sources of energy, and discharge it on demand. They could also be
sited at or near the buildings they’re powering, eliminating the need for new transmission lines to urban
centers. Don’t expect to see liquid car batteries, though—all that
sloshing would disrupt the current.
The
payout: $6,949,624.00
The
goal: In the next 18
months Sadoway and his team plan to scale up their prototype “from the size of
a shot glass to the size of a deep-dish pizza box,” which could provide enough power
for a home office. (By 2015, he plans to have a trash barrel-sized liquid battery that would power a small home.) For continuous wind and solar power on the grid, however, the
batteries might have to be as big as an eighteen-wheeler, or bigger. It’s too
early to put a timeframe on that super-sizing.
The hurdles: Cost, scale, and the laws of
physics. A lithium-ion battery—commonly used in small-scale
applications like cell phones and laptops—that was big enough to power a house or a
neighborhood, would cost more than 1000 times what we now pay for energy
from the grid. We need a new approach. The question is whether the
laws of physics will cooperate. Energy doesn’t like to be stored; it likes to
move. Capturing and containing energy cheaply and on a grand scale “is a
seemingly impossible challenge,” said Sadoway, “but that’s what makes it so
exciting.”
The
promise: “All these
people working to improve solar-cell efficiency and wind-turbine
performance—that’s great. But it won’t make a difference if you can’t store
and discharge that power on demand. Liquid batteries could give us electricity from the sun even when the sun isn’t shining, and from the wind when it isn’t blowing. Storage is everything. It’s
a world-changer.”
The
pioneer: Ross
Youngs, founder and CEO Algaeventures Inc.
The
concept: An
affordable method for mass-producing algae to make alternative fuels, animal
feeds, fertilizers, plastics, chemicals, and oils. The trick is the mass production part, because while it’s easy to grow
algae, it’s hard to separate these tiny aquatic plants from their watery
environment. Algaeventures’ new method uses an absorbent plastic membrane to
rapidly “sop up” the water around the algae, making it possible to harvest,
de-water, and dry algae on a massive scale using relatively little energy. Youngs’
process could make algae-based biofuel cost-competitive with gasoline.
The
payout: $5,992,697.00
The
goal: Youngs is
currently harvesting algae from water at a rate of 500 liters per hour. His
goal is to reach 15,000 liters per hour—for proof of concept—by next
year, and 50,000 liters per hour—for commercial applications—by 2012.
The
hurdles: Scaling up
the volume and bringing down the cost. Youngs is fine-tuning the chemistry of
his machine’s permeable membrane, experimenting with new, more absorbent and
durable materials and perfecting the weave of the membrane’s tiny plastic
threads. He’s also tinkering with ways to move the algae-laden water through
the machine in ever-greater volumes.
The
promise: “All
terrestrial plants evolved from algae. It has been around for
billions of years. As a resource it’s incredibly versatile—in theory, it could
be used in virtually every application fossil fuels are used for, but without
the negative environmental effects. To me, it’s a panacea. It could be as critical to
the future of civilization as it was to its formation.”
The
pioneer: Bruce
Lanning, Director of Thin-Film Technologies, ITN Energy Systems, Inc.
The
concept: Smart windows:
glass coated with a thin plastic layer of “electrochromic film” which, when
excited by an electrical current, can control the amount of light and heat
that passes through. (Think those eyeglass lenses that automatically tint in
sunlight, only on a much bigger scale.) On hot August afternoons your
office windows could switch from translucent to opaque—shutting out excess light and
heat. On bright winter days they’d let the warmth penetrate. Smart controls can
tint and un-tint windows automatically—maximizing daylight and minimizing
the use of overhead lighting. The energy efficiency benefits could be huge,
given that buildings lose 30 to 40 percent of their heat through windows.
The
payout: $4,986,249.00
The
goal: Scale up the window size, and develop a mass production process that will hold down cost. ITN’s current prototype window measures from 18 to 40 inches; most commercial
applications require a 60-inch span. Lanning plans to make a 60-inch window, and predicts full-scale manufacturing of ITN’s plastic-coated smart
windows within four years.
The
hurdles: Cost and
durability. Window-dimming technology has been in development for years.
Initially the film was deposited directly onto the glass window, a difficult
process to affordably mass-produce. ITN cut costs by depositing the film
onto a flexible plastic sheet that can be adhered to glass. Costs have to shrink
even further, and the plastic film must prove durable enough to last for decades and withstand the
elements. Lanning is also working on dimming speed (how long it takes the
window to transition from clear to tinted and back again) and on the color of
the tint (rose, yellow, blue, or grey).
The
promise: “Energy
loss associated with windows totals four quads annually in the U.S. If we switched all
the windows in the nation to LowE [the industry standard for highly efficient
windows], still two quads of energy would leak out. Smart windows could eliminate
all four quads.” [“Quads” is short for quadrillion BTUs of energy. But you knew that.]
The
pioneer: Dr. Emanual
Sachs, founder and Chief Technical Officer of 1366 Technologies, Inc.
The
concept: Silicon-based solar at the cost of coal. Right now, more than 80 percent of all
solar panels sold worldwide are made with high-cost crystalline silicon. Next-gen, thin-film technologies
show some promise, but those depend on rare elements such as indium and
tellurium. Silica—the principal component of sand and the second most abundant element on earth, after oxygen—could be the ticket to
affordable solar. Making solar panels from silicon is wasteful; thin wafers
are shaved off large cylindrical columns of refined silicon, which means that half
the silicon ends up as dust. With his new “direct wafer” method, Sachs
solves the problem by using molten silicon—no sawing needed. The single-step manufacturing process uses much less energy too, which cuts the cost of each wafer by more than 70 percent. If successful, “direct wafers”
would open up a market for solar that’s unconstrained by cost or materials.
The
payout: $4,000,000.00
The
goal: Sachs’s
prototype wafers are four inches square with efficiencies of roughly 12 percent. That’s a bit higher than thin film solar, but not as efficient as the 15 to 21 percent range of standard crystalline silicon panels. Sachs plans to produce six-inch square
wafers—the commercial standard—with 16 percent efficiency by the end of 2011. Long term, he aims for
21 percent efficiency at one-third the cost of today’s installed silicon-based panels.
The
hurdles: Efficiency
and mass production. Currently Sach’s molten direct-wafer technology is about 20 to 50 percent less
efficient than the standard. The more efficiency you strive for, the more
difficult the challenge becomes. In other words, it’s a lot harder to get from
18 to 20 percent efficiency than from 15 to 18. One efficiency-boosting approach Sachs is trying is to introduce textures into the molten crystalline wafers in order to trap more
light. He also has to develop commercial-scale production methods. It’s not clear yet that his molten wafer method can make that leap.
The
promise: “Sunlight
is the original, omnipotent form of energy—fossil fuels themselves are a
product of plants grown by sunlight. The question is how to capture this diffuse
resource. We are trying to harness the primordial power of nature with the
least effort—to find out what nature wants to do and help it on its way.”
The pioneer: Dr. Harry Cordatos, Chemical
Engineer and Project Manager at United Technologies
The concept: Equip coal-burning power plants with a filter that uses an artificial enzyme to capture CO2. Along with other air-breathers, we humans use the
enzyme carbonic anhydrase to remove CO2 from our bodies. This enzyme reacts
with CO2 faster and more efficiently than any chemical known to man. Taking a cue from the human body, Cordatos
is incorporating a synthetic version of carbonic anhydrase into a thin polymer membrane
which can capture CO2 before it enters smokestacks and channel the pollutant into a different chamber where it can be compressed and piped underground.
The payout: $2,251,183.00
The goal: Perfect the recipe for a synthetic version of carbonic anhydrase that can be placed inside a membrane (or filter), and measure the membrane’s performance in a smokestack environment. Within two years Cordatos hopes to show proof of concept for this process that could capture C02 at two-thirds the cost of prevailing commercial methods.
The hurdles: Knowledge, durability, and cost. We
currently use chemicals called “amines” to scrub CO2 from the air in enclosed
environments such as submarines and space shuttles (five percent CO2 in the air
can be lethal). The amine method could remove 90 percent of CO2 from
smokestacks too, but it would raise the cost of electricity by about 80
percent. Carbonic anhydrase is a vastly cheaper alternative, if Cordatos can determine how his synthetic
anhydrase will behave inside a smokestack. There’s a high risk that contaminants
in the flue gasses could deactivate the enzyme.
The promise:
“It’s humbling to see how much better nature is than industry at doing
the things we need to do. Over millions of years of evolution, human bodies
have developed an extremely efficient method for removing carbon dioxide. This
is as good as it gets! It would behoove us to try to mimic that.”
The pioneer: Steve Bobzin, Director of
Technology, CERES
The concept: “Super crops” that produce high
yields with far less water and nitrogen fertilizer. Adapting technologies from
the human genome project, CERES identified traits within sorghum, switchgrass,
miscantis, and other biofuel crops that enable the plants to use nitrogen and water more efficiently.
Test crops grown in greenhouse laboratories have gotten as much as double the yield per
acre for each crop, and the same yield per acre using half the nitrogen. These super
crops could produce cheap cellulosic biofuels or be used as a biomass feedstock
in power plants—competing with coal as well as oil.
The payout: $4,989,144.00
The goal:
To reproduce laboratory yields in the fields. Bobzin is testing four
genetic traits in three crops (sorghum, switchgrass and miscantis) on roughly 10-acre
plots in Arizona, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas—states with different
climate challenges. If the three-year experiment reproduces greenhouse
results, they’ll begin testing the seeds on larger plots in more places, putting the innovation on track for commercial-scale development.
The hurdles: Mother Nature. Transitioning from the controlled greenhouse environment to
the great outdoors introduces a range of risks: weather, humidity, insects,
soil moisture, wind, and mold, to name a few. These stresses could inhibit the genetically tweaked traits from functioning as well as they did in the greenhouse experiments.
The promise: “I have spent my entire career
with a desire to do things that would improve life for society, and the promise here is greater than any other innovation I’ve worked for. We
could replace oil, we could significantly offset the use of coal with homegrown
crops—providing energy security and freeing ourselves from dependence on the
Middle East while reinvigorating the rural economy.”
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“Strawberry iced tea at 
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The iPad comes in 
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