Block’s Indicator of Sustainable Growth

By Ray Block

ARPA-E is the acronym for Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, the funding vehicle for new energy research and development (R&D) in the US.

A concept co-conceived  byNobel laureate in Physics, Steven Chu in 2006, when he was director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,   that there should be a resource, whereby researchers could develop new concepts in advanced energy. 

The Bush Administration was responsible in 2007 for establishing ARPA-E, but didn’t ask Congress for any funding, so it existed in name only.

Finally, in 2009, when the  American Recovery and Reinvestment Act  became law, with new Energy Secretary Steven Chu, $400 million was allotted to ARPA-E over two years to develop a ”bolder technology strategy,” as the New York Times described it.   

ARPA-E could happen only in the US, where despite the impossibly high budget deficit,and the equally insurmountable deficit on current account, moneys can be set aside for over- the- top, out- of- this world, wacky ideas, that might conceivably set America on a new path of  technology leadership.

3,600 concepts for funding from companies and university researchers were narrowed down to 300 proposals, with 37 finally chosen as “transformational energy research projects” on October 26, 2009, totalling $151 million.

Some bold research projects, I found of interest,and which could develop into something big included:

FloDesign Wind Turbine Corp awarded $8.3 million, with the promise of much greater energy efficiencies than current wind turbines on the market.  Capital investment in wind energy is becoming quite large, in what has become  the largest renewable energy resource in the world today.

With the US, now leading Europe in wind energy installations, achieving greater efficiencies would make wind power more competitive with natural gas and other energy sources. It could also reduce noise and minimise safety concerns.

The blog, New Energy and Fuel, says that the FloDesign could be based on the venturi, named after the 18th century physicist, Venturi. The claim is that the FloDesign wind turbine, which resembles a jet engine, extracts 3-4 times as much energy from the wind, allowing for much smaller and faster blades. 

Betz law, says that it’s not theoretically possible to capture more than 59.3 per cent of the kinetic energy in wind.  The efficiency of current wind turbines peaks at around 30 per cent. So, let’s see what FloDesign can achieve.

Foro EnergyInc was awarded $9.1 million  for a “hybrid thermal/mechanical drilling technology” for hot rock geothermal drilling of basement rock, which could be as much as 5000 ft underground. This is potentially a very exciting technology for both the US and Australia.

Coming on top of $338 million in new development funding, announced on October 29 2009, for the exploration and development of new geothermal fields,w ith 123  projects in 39 states, research into advanced geothermal technologies, such as Foro could make this a hot investment.

In the ARPA-E funding, four MIT start ups and one MIT research lab scored in all  five projects, two of which involve exciting possibilities in battery developments, for both energy storage and in transportation.

If the two new MIT battery start ups were to achieve the same success of the one time MIT start up, A 123 Systems, which had a sensational debut on Nasdaq in September 2009, the future for them would be very bright.

To recap, Professor Yet-Ming Chiang, the co-founder of A123 Systems,  was able to achieve a 10 times faster rate of charge and discharge  in lithium-ion batteries, that was then available on the market. He did this by doping nanoparticles of lithium iron phosphate with metal.

MIT received a grant of $6.9 million on behalf of  Professor Don Sadoway’s  materials chemistry laboratory  for research on the TR10 liquid metal battery, which is unlike any other. It could become the ultimate energy storage device.

 ”The electrodes are molten metals, and the electrolyte that conducts current between them is a molten salt. This results in a resilient device that can quickly absorb large amounts of electricity. The electrodes can operate at electrical currents “tens of times higher than any battery that’s ever been measured,” says Don Sadoway.

Another MIT start up, FastCAP Systems received  a grant of $5.3 million relating to research associated with Professor Joel Schindall, who has been doing outstanding research on ultracapacitors.

FastCAP Systems will progress this reseach on nanotube enhanced ultracapacitors, with energy density approaching that of standard batteries, but with many times greater power density and thousands of times the cycle life.

Joel Schindall believes that ultracapacitors could eventually play a major role in vehicles, but he also hopes for broader applications in storing renewable energy. “The question is what will be the sweet spot, ” he says. “If we, or anyone else, can achieve better electrical storage capacity, without the chemical reactions that drive batteries, it would be a game changer.”