Greenpeace

We need some hands-on projects that are small.  Every action cannot be  valiant people braving the arctic waters to confound the whaleboats.  People need some small actions as a place to start, as a way to get the feel for the hands-on experience, and as a way to see themselves succeeding.  The Trash Lure is one such small project idea.

 

At it simplest, the Trash Lure is a fishing plug with a barbless hook that is purpose-designed to snag trash floating in the water.  As we develop this idea it can be money-raising project for wetlands conservation, a contest for high school students, and a hour of morning serenity for anglers.

 

A more detailed discussion with sketches and images can be found at:  Trash Lure http://www.charm.net/~jriley/TrashLure.html .

 

Image a thousand avid fishermen out at dawn clearing trash from marinas and other public water ways.  The cast out with great skill laying the line across a piece of floating trash.  They reel in slowly and then snag it.  They retrieve the item and transfer it to a trash bag.  Imagine the level of consciousness raising of such a morning.

 

Image a high-school contest to design the best trash lure.  Anybody can design one to handle the easy stuff like plastic grocery bags.  Very few can work with the fine finesse needed to snag a Styrofoam coffee cup.

 

Image a card with six Trash Lures sold to finance a Save the Bay effort.

 

Please get back to me if you would like to develop the Trash Lure idea.

 

EEStor is a high-tech startup company in Texas.  They are setting up a factory to build Electrical Energy Storage Units (EESU) designed to be the power storage unit for all-electric cars.  The patent claims that the EESU will be ten times as powerful as anything on the market and cost 1/7 as much to build.  It  will change the world.

 

The EESU will truly be an enabling technology for the all-electric car, but beyond that it would also be an enabling technology for both wind and solar energy.  If we press the hockey stick metaphor for global warming, then EEStor is about to pull a hat trick.

More Information:

For more detailed information and a fair discussion with both pros and cons see:

* On Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EEStor

The company side of the story can be found at:

* http://theeestory.com/

The Technology

This technology is not a battery but is an ultra-capacitor.  It stores the energy in the form of internal fields and does not convert it into chemical compounds.

 

The basic EESU is rated at 30.7 Farads to operate at 3,750 volts and will store 52 kWh of electrical power.  The weight is about 300 lbs and the manufacturing cost will be around $3,000.   The unit will charge as fast as you can push the amps into it and has no intrinsic factors that limit it lifetime.  None of the required materials are toxic or extremely rare.

Why the All-Electric Car is Critical

So far we have given people a vision of a sustainable future in which they must sort our paper from plastic trash in the growing gloom.  This is simply an unattractive future and nobody will buy-in to it.  An all-electric car with an EESU changes all that.

 

Such an all-electric car can have performance like a super car, but with a mid-car price tag.  It will travel 250 miles on a charge without breaking a sweat.  It will be eerily silent, and just about the coolest thing that ever was.  It is a dream car.

 

If the owner pays only a little extra for a sophisticated charge unit that can both buy and sell electricity and accepts an alternative energy premium on his monthly electric bill, then the owner can drive his dream car proudly as a true conservationist.  The owner can integrate his home solar panels into the charger and will have bragging rights about saving American jobs and good old American ingenuity.  He can thumb his nose at the oil sheiks.

Enabling Alternative Energy

 At first glance this seems to be only converting the energy we use for transportation from oil to coal, all be it, while reducing the carbon footprint.  However, after only a year or two this invention will make transportation an integral part of a total green energy system.  Right now wind and solar have the debilitating problem that the available power does not meeting the customer needs in a timely manner.  The power is there, but it comes at the wrong time of day.  This problem could be overcome if large amounts of electrical power could be directly stored. 

 

Imagine a California where everybody who is anybody drives all-electric and most people plug their cars in every night.  The first thing that happens is that the car chargers sell power back to the utility to cover the early evening power peak period when everybody is cooking dinner.  Later, at 2:00 in the morning, the charger buys back power during the daily power use minimum.  The EESU will finally make green power work.

 

This invention could not have come at a better time.  Not only have we just passed over Hubbert's Peak but we are desperate to reduce our carbon footprints.

The Controversy

 The EEStor EESU is just too good to be true.  If the EESU can actually be manufactured at a reasonable cost, then it will change the world, just as the cell phone, and personal computer did before it.  This is a big claim.  Big claims require big proofs that are simply not yet available. 

Pros

EEStor is being funded by a reputable venture capital firm and several industrial investors.  The amount of capital so far committed is estimated to be in excess of 1.5 billion dollars.  The largest publicly held investor, Zenn Motor Company of Canada, has literally bet its whole company on EEStor coming through by spring 2010.  A major US military contractor, Lockheed Martin, has also put up substantial funds to buy the military rights.  This is a level of financial commitment far beyond anything that a fly-by-night operation could get on the public record.

 

This technology is based on an obscure Quantum Mechanical effect but so are many other widely used devices from big hard drives to tunnel diodes.  The manufacture will be very difficult, but EEStor can borrow state-of-the-art techniques from the manufacture of hard drives, microprocessor chips, and pharmaceuticals.  It is completely understandable that it is taking more time than first planned to set up a new plant in the midst of a major recession.

Cons

EEStor is very secretive and has not produced devices for outside independent testing.  They are running well behind their originally claimed time line.  Having their promises hanging out there is actually slowing the development of other promising energy storage technologies that now have to compete for resources with this vapor ware.

 

EEStor's technology claims are so far beyond the state-of-the-art that many technical people do not see how they could possibly work and, even if they did work in the laboratory, how they could be manufactured.

 

It is simply time for EEStor to put up or shut up.

State of Testing

Investors and technical people are not going to take EEStor's claims seriously until they can be verified by independent testing.  Publicly available test results have been few and far between.

 

Zenn automotive is a publicly held company in Canada.  It is required to provide periodic information to its stockholders to justify its substantial investment in EEStor.  Zenn has scheduled a series of tests by an independent laboratory to meet this requirement.

Permittivity, April 2009

The key electrical parameter is the static permittivity of their Barium Titanate, BaTiO3, dielectric medium.  This is the material that makes the super cap super.  In ideal conditions this parameter can range from 1250 to 10,000 for Barium Titanate depending on temperature.  In comparison glass is about 5 and rubber is typically 7.  The problem is that the Barium Titanate must be incredibly pure to show these levels and such purity levels are unheard of in conventional electronic capacitor manufacture.

 

In April 2009, EEStor announced that they have a supplier than can provide BaTiO3 at the required level of purity and that they had passed testing that demonstrated the permittivity necessary to meet their patent specification for the EESU.

 

Subassembly Test July 2009

The first independent test for Zenn was run in July 2009.  The EESU is made up of thousands of  subunits about 25 mm by 25 mm by 10 mm.  EEStor provided a subunit of the EESU for testing at their plant but the measuring equipment of the independent testing company was used.  The tests were run at 300 volts and not the full 3750 volt operating level.

 

The independent testing company reported that the subassembly met the required electronic parameters.  This would indicate that EEStor's scientific claims are sound but it does not demonstrate that the unit could operate at the required voltage or that it can be manufactured in mass at a marketable cost.

Full EESU Test, November 2009?

A second series of independent tests were scheduled for November 2009.  These were planned to be on an assembled EESU at full voltage.  The results of this test have not been made public as of the time of this writing, but are expected sometime in the spring of 2010.  EEStor is late.

The Trillion Dollar Reality Watch

It would literally be worth several trillion dollars to Big Oil to buy up this technology and sit on it.  The value of its reserves and stock are going to be adversely effected by at least that much.  To avoid this possibility, interested people need to watch EEStor developments carefully. At the first sign of interference, we need to raise holy hell.

 

On the other hand, Internet enthusiasts are already following developments at paparazzi levels with every change in the wind reported breathlessly.  This level of pressure could actually slow down development; a reasonable amount of patience is required.

Not Inherently Green

Proponent of the all-electric car will make a lot of claims about it being pure green and zero emissions.  An all-electric car is green only if its supply of electrical energy is green.  If that electricity comes from burning coal then the all-electric car is a coal burner.

 

However, if the energy comes from alternative sources; wind, solar, and hydro; then the all electric car is green.  At the very least the drivers of all-electric cars must pay their utilities a alternative energy premium to have any legitimacy to their claims.

 

It will take several years before there are enough all-electrics on the road and the grid is significantly upgraded so that the all-electric cars truly enable alternative energy.                     

 

Farther Testing

 

Clearly farther public testing will be warranted as soon as EESU cars are available.  This testing should include:

 

• Top Gear -- The lead-footed-idiots of this popular Brit super car and jackass stunt program should be given the opportunity to push the car until it breaks down and then say what a real all-electric super car would be like.
• Myth Busters -- Our boys with their guns simply need to drag a fully charged EESU out to the firing range and shoot bullets into it just to see what happens.

 Future Possibilities

 The greatest nuclear secret of WWII was simply that the bomb worked.  Once that was known, any competent team of  physics could make one, given the publically available information and enough resources.  The spies knocked years off the process, but their work was not go/no-go critical.  We have basically the same situation now.

 

Once EEStor shows the way, there will be a great rush to come up with something even better to beat their patent.  China can be counted on for a big push in this area.

 

There are compounds called highly conjugated polymers.  These can beat Barium Titanate in permittivity.   BaTiO3 tops out at 10,000;  the conjugated polymers can go to 100,000 and they weigh less, but they may be more toxic.

 

A race for the next generation ultra-cap is about to start and EEStor will fire the starting gun.  No wander they are so secretive.

 

Wish EEStor Luck!