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A giant plane for giant wind turbines

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Wind turbines have been getting bigger all the time.  Larger turbines have real advantages.  They can operate at lower speeds so they can be deployed in more places.  They capture more wind, so they make more power.  Large wind turbines can have blades more than 200 feet long and even larger ones are on the way.  An offshore wind farm in China has turbines with 400-foot blades.

Giant wind turbines face a thorny problem:  getting the blades to where they are to be installed.  The enormous blades can’t be easily shipped across aging roads and bridges.   Tunnels are too narrow, bridges are too low, and roads can be too tight to allow turns when transporting these massive turbine parts.  Some developers have actually had to build special roads for wind projects.

For nearly a decade, a Boulder Colorado company called Radia has been working on what would be the world’s largest plane.  The WindRunner aircraft would have a dozen times the cargo volume of a Boeing 747.  The WindRunner will be 356 feet long and 79 feet tall.  While its primary purpose would be transporting wind turbine blades, the plane could also be used to aid the military or businesses that are thinking really big.  Product developers often don’t even try to invent really big things because there is no way to transport them.  Radia expects the WindRunner to be rolled out before the end of the decade.

The wind industry is currently facing strong opposition from the Trump administration, but wind energy is not going away and bigger and better wind turbines will ultimately be built and will have to be transported.

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Building the World’s Biggest Plane to Help Catch the Wind

Photo, October 10, 2013, courtesy of Allan Der via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Hydrogen-powered aviation

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The transportation sector is responsible for about a quarter of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions.  Most of the energy used by transport systems comes from fossil fuels.  The transition to electric vehicles – cars, trucks, and buses – is making a real difference.  However, the emissions from the aviation industry have continued to grow faster than those of other forms of transportation.  There have been increased efforts to develop hydrogen-powered aircraft, but the challenges are substantial.

Hydrogen can be used for aviation both as a directly combusted fuel, or to power electric fuel cells.  Its advantages are that its use produces no carbon dioxide, and, in fact, hydrogen produces more energy per pound than jet fuel.

A study by researchers at MIT looked at the prospects for hydrogen use in aircraft and what needs to be done to make it practical.  The biggest issue is that the extra bulk of a hydrogen fuel tank and fuel cells in a plane would have to be offset by weight reductions elsewhere, such as reducing payload (cargo or passengers).  This would mean there would need to be more flights, thereby reducing the gains made.  The researchers argued that improvements in fuel cell power and more weight efficient fuel systems could eliminate the need for additional flights.

The bigger challenge is the infrastructure for generating and distributing hydrogen.  There needs to be green hydrogen – hydrogen produced without carbon emissions – and the infrastructure for getting it to planes where it is needed has to also not produce substantial emissions.

The study suggests that the rollout of hydrogen-based aviation should start at locations that have favorable conditions for hydrogen production.

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Fueling greener aviation with hydrogen

Photo, posted December 20, 2016, courtesy of Dylan Agbagni via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Solar thermochemical hydrogen

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For decades, there has been talk of the hydrogen economy in which hydrogen would take the place of fossil fuels in a wide range of domestic and industrial applications.  Over time, hydrogen’s potential advantages in some applications have diminished but it is still seen as perhaps the most promising way to decarbonize long-distance truck, ship, and plane transportation as well as many heavy-duty industrial processes.

Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, but here on Earth, it is tightly bound up in chemical compounds, notably water and hydrocarbons.  Extracting hydrogen from these compounds takes lots of energy.  To date, most hydrogen is produced from fossil fuel sources, resulting in carbon dioxide emissions.  So-called green hydrogen is made by splitting up water into its component elements.

Getting hydrogen from water generally uses electrolysis, which requires lots of electrical power.  That is why it isn’t the standard way to produce hydrogen; it costs too much to pay for all that power.

MIT scientists have been developing a process to make solar thermochemical hydrogen, or STCH.  STCH uses the sun’s heat to split apart water and no other energy source.  An existing source of solar heat drives a thermochemical reaction in which a heated metal surface grabs oxygen from steam and leaves hydrogen behind.  MIT did not invent the concept; their efforts are to make it practical.

Previous STCH designs were only capable of using 7% of incoming solar heat to make hydrogen.  The MIT process may be able to harness up to 40% of the sun’s heat and therefore generate far more hydrogen. 

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MIT design would harness 40 percent of the sun’s heat to produce clean hydrogen fuel

Photo, posted August 23, 2017, courtesy of Evan Lovely via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Upcycling Plastic Waste | Earth Wise

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People have generated 8 billion tons of plastic waste over time and less than 10% of it has been recycled.  Millions of tons of it escapes into the oceans.  Plastic piles up virtually everywhere on earth.

There are many approaches to dealing with the plastic waste problem and no one of them is a magic bullet.  Engineers at Stanford University have investigated the prospects for upcycling plastic waste for use in infrastructure like buildings and roads.

They used a mix of computer modeling, scientific research, experimental and field data to analyze the potential for using plastic waste in infrastructure.

Among their findings is that recycled glass fiber reinforced polymer composite – which is a tensile plastic commonly used in car, boat, and plane parts – is a promising material for reuse in buildings. 

Roads in which waste plastic is melted down and mixed with conventional paving materials are becoming more common around the world.  India has installed over 60,000 miles of these roads.  Studies show that roads containing waste plastic have the potential to perform better than conventional roads.  They can last longer, are more durable, can tolerate wide temperature swings, and are more resistant to water damage, cracking, and potholes.  Such roads rely less upon virgin fossil resources, which is obviously advantageous.

Upcycling plastic waste in infrastructure is attracting increasing interest because it creates value from something that is strictly a liability and may end up having regulatory advantages as societies move toward more environmentally friendly and sustainable policies.

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Can we use plastic waste to build roads, buildings, and more?

Photo, posted October 7, 2022, courtesy of the Grand Canyon National Park via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Snakes Near A Plane | Earth Wise

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San Francisco International Airport is the seventh-busiest airport in the United States.  In a typical year, approximately 55 million people pass through SFO on their way to destinations throughout North America and beyond.

At some point during their journey to or from the terminals at SFO, each one of those people will pass by a seemingly unremarkable 180-acre parcel of land.  Surrounded by highways and train tracks, the soggy and overgrown vacant lot isn’t just home to rows of power lines.  It’s also home to the world’s largest population of the beautiful and highly endangered San Francisco garter snake.   

According to a recent study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey, there are approximately 1,300 San Francisco garter snakes at SFO’s West of Bayshore property – the greatest concentration of these snakes ever recorded.

Conservationists have long known that the San Francisco garter snake was in trouble.  In fact, it landed on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s very first endangered species list, which was published in 1967.  Over the years, agricultural, commercial, and urban development have destroyed much of its wetland habitat, as well as much of its primary food source, the California red-legged frog.  The snakes have also been a popular target for poachers and collectors.

Since 2008, SFO has been working with the USFWS on a recovery strategy for the species.  Together, they’ve made enhancements to the West of Bayshore habitat, including building rainfed ponds and deepening existing wetlands.  They have also added fences to protect habitat and prevent illegal collection.

But low population counts at other locations means the recovery for the San Francisco garter snake is far from over. 

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Combining genetic and demographic monitoring better informs conservation of an endangered urban snake

A San Francisco Airport Site Is Crawling With Snakes—And That’s a Good Thing

Photo, posted April 16, 2011, courtesy of Brian Gratwicke via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Banning Short Plane Flights | Earth Wise

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Almost everything we do ultimately results in greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere and therefore has an impact on the climate.  But some activities have much more impact than others.  The aviation industry is responsible for about 5% of global warming.

This doesn’t seem like that large a contribution, but only a very small percentage of the world’s population flies frequently and even in richer countries, only around half the population flew in any given year (at least before the pandemic.)

Flying is generally the only practical option for most long-haul trips and unless people give up on seeing the world or conducting global business in person, they are not going to give up taking air trips.

But shorter flights are a different story.  If you are planning to take a reasonably short trip in France, a plane will soon no longer be an option.  The French government says that flights will be banned on any route where the trip could be made on a train in 2.5 hours or less.  The driving force is the reduction of CO2 emissions.  A plane trip emits an average of 77 times more CO2 per passenger than taking a train on the same route.

The Netherlands and Belgium are also considering bans on short-haul flights and Austrian Airlines recently replaced its Vienna-to-Salzburg flights with train service.

Advocates of the flight bans say that not only does taking the train significantly reduce a traveler’s carbon footprint, but it can be cheaper and actually faster than a plane when factoring in the time spent getting to airports, standing in security lines, getting on and off planes, and so on.  Europe’s extensive train system makes this approach broadly practical. Unfortunately, here in the U.S., it is not quite that easy.

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France Will Ban Short Flights That Could Be Replaced By a Train Trip

Photo, posted December 17, 2016, courtesy of Dylan Agbagni via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Jet Fuel From Acetone | Earth Wise

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Acetone is a common organic solvent.  It is used to make plastic, fibers, drugs, and other chemicals.  It is commonly used by consumers as nail polish remover.  Acetone is a manufactured chemical, but it is also found naturally in the environment in plants, among other places. There are now companies that produce acetone entirely by fermentation of plant feedstocks, such as corn.

Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have now developed a process by which acetone can be converted into a fuel additive that can improve the performance of petroleum-based jet fuel, providing both environmental and economic benefits.

The process takes biomass-derived acetone and converts it to isophorone, which they produce by a process called photochemical cycloaddition that creates more complex hydrocarbons.  They then use ultraviolet light to convert the isophorone into cyclobutane, which is a type of hydrocarbon with high energy density that is suitable for aviation fuel applications.

Acetone itself is quite volatile and is unsuitable for fuel applications.  It also cannot be added directly to any fuel supply since it can dissolve engine parts and o-rings.  Cyclobutane, on the other hand, is a safer and more energy-dense fuel that can be a replacement for additives that require high-pressure hydrogen treatment in their synthesis.  Currently, most hydrogen is produced by a process that generates carbon dioxide.  The new conversion process does not result in carbon emissions.

According to the Los Alamos researchers, their process can result in a domestically generated product that will provide environmental benefits, create domestic jobs, improve U.S. energy security, and further U.S. global leadership in bioenergy technologies.

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Acetone plus light creates a green jet fuel additive

Photo, posted December 18, 2007, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

An All-Electric Plane

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The British discount airline EasyJet recently announced a partnership with American company Wright Electric to develop an all-electric commercial airplane that they said could be flying within 10 years.  The goal of the partnership is to develop aircraft with a maximum range of 335 miles, which is long enough for many of the European routes that EasyJet flies from its hub in England.

[Read more…] about An All-Electric Plane

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