This-Above-All: Geoffrey West On the Scale and Unity of Life from Cells to Cities

This-Above-All: Geoffrey West On the Scale and Unity of Life from Cells to Cities

Just as dimensional analysis [pdf] is a fundamental tool of engineering in getting the right units and checking phenomena so too is scaling fundamental to coming to grips with complex systems.

Solar-Thermal Flat Panels Generate Electricity

Two technologies have dominated efforts to harness the power of the sun's energy. Photovoltaics convert sunlight into electric current, while solar-thermal power generation uses sunlight to heat water and produce thermal energy. Photovoltaic cells have been deployed widely as flat panels, while solar-thermal power generation employs sunlight-absorbing surfaces feasible in residential and large-scale industrial settings.

Because of limited material properties, solar-thermal devices have so far failed to economically generate enough electric power. The team has introduced two innovations — a better light-absorbing surface through enhanced nanostructured thermoelectric materials, which was then placed within an energy-trapping, vacuum-sealed flat panel. Combined, both measures added enhanced electricity-generating capacity to solar-thermal power technology, as reported by Zhifeng Ren, a Boston College professor of physics and a co-author of the study. The team is comprised of Gang Chen, MIT's Soderberg professor of power engineering; Boston College and MIT graduate students; and researchers at GMZ Energy, a Massachusetts clean energy research company founded by Ren and Chen.


Ren claims that their team has developed a flat panel that is a hybrid capable of generating hot water and electricity in the same system," he said. "The ability to generate electricity by improving existing technology at minimal cost makes this type of power generation self-sustaining from a cost standpoint." 

Their technology involves using nanotechnology engineering methods. The researchers combined high-performance thermoelectric materials and spectrally selective solar absorbers in a vacuum-sealed chamber to boost conversion efficiency.

The findings open up a promising new approach that has the potential to achieve cost-effective conversion of solar energy into electricity, an advance that should affect the rapidly expanding residential and industrial clean energy markets, claims Ren who further comments, "Existing solar-thermal technologies do a good job generating hot water. For the new product, this will produce both hot water and electricity," he said. "Because of the new ability to generate valuable electricity, the system promises to give users a quicker payback on their investment. This new technology can shorten the payback time by one-third." 

Solar-Thermal Flat Panels Generate Electricity

Iceland’s Jet Engine Stopping Volcanic Ash

Iceland’s Jet Engine Stopping Volcanic Ash


As one involved in superalloy R&D, Quality Assurance and Manufacture this tweet from Materialinsight is worth recording for future aero-engine conception, QA andmanu specs.

Thanks Materialsinsight for the info

Critical Minerals and Metals Defined

Minerals are part of almost all products we use.

NB.  About 80% of all natural elements in the periodic table are metals.


Common examples of metals include copper (Cu) used in electrical wiring and titanium (Ti) used to make airplane frames and paint pigments (TiO2). The Information Age has ushered in a number of new mineral uses in number of products including cell phones e.g., tantalum (Ta) and liquid crystal displays e.g., indium (In). For some minerals, such as the platinum group metals used to make catalytic converters in cars, there is no substitute.

Thus economies, (consumers and industrial sectors) are strongly influenced by factors affecting supplies.

Risks to minerals supplies can include a sudden increase in demand or the possibility that natural ores can be exhausted or become too difficult to extract. Minerals are more vulnerable to supply restrictions if they come from a limited number of mines, mining companies, or nations.

The report referenced in this post NAS Report_Minerals-Critical-Minerals_12034 claims to develop a methodology to identify potentially critical minerals. 

14 Key Findings:

1. All minerals and mineral products could be or could become critical to some degree, depending on their importance and availability.

2. As an indicator of vulnerable supply, import dependence by itself is not a useful indicator of risk.

3. Decision makers in both the public and the private sectors need continuous, unbiased, and thorough mineral information provided through a federally funded system of information collection and dissemination.

4. From the US federal perspective, a critical mineral is one that is both essential in use and subject to the risk of supply restriction.

5. In employing the methodology, it is important to distinguish among three time or adjustment periods: the short term, the medium term, and the long term.

6. In the short and medium terms, significant restrictions of mineral supply may be due to (1) significant increase in demand, (2) thin markets, (3) concentration of production, (4) production predominantly as a by-product, (5) lack of available old scrap for recycling or of the infrastructure required for recycling.

7. More complete information needs to be collected, and more research needs to be conducted, on the full mineral life cycle.

8 Of the 11 minerals or mineral families the committee examined,
[Cu, Ga, In, Li, Mn, Nb, PGMs (ex.Pd,Pt,Rh)  REs (La,Ce...) Ta, Ti, V.]
 those that exhibit the highest degree of criticalness at present are indium,(In) manganese,(Mn) niobium,(Nb) PGMs-Platinum Group Metals-Minerals, and the so called Rare Earth Metals, REs.

9. Over the longer term, the availability of minerals and mineral products is largely a function of investment and the various factors that influence the level of investment and its geographic allocation and success. The long-term availability of minerals and mineral products also requires continued investment in mineral education and research.

10. The committee concludes that US Geological Survey (USGS) Minerals Information Team activities are less robust than they might be, in part because it does not have the status or resources to function as a principal statistical agency. 

11. The criticalness matrix methodology is a useful conceptual framework for evaluating a mineral's criticalness in a balanced manner in a variety of circumstances that will be useful for decision makers in the public and private sectors. A more nuanced and quantitative version of the matrix could be established and used as part of the federal program for collection, analysis, and dissemination of data on minerals. 

12. The criticalness of a specific mineral can and likely will change as production technologies evolve and new products are developed. 

13. The effectiveness of a government agency or program is dependent on the agency's or program's autonomy, its level of resources, and its authority to enforce data collection. Federal information gathering for minerals at present does not have sufficient authority and autonomy to appropriately carry out its data collection, dissemination, and analysis. 

14. The greater the difficulty, expense, or time it takes for material substitution to occur, the more critical a mineral is to a specific application or product or analogously, the greater is the impact of a mineral supply restriction. 


Minerals, Critical Minerals, and the U.S. Economy_Brief Report (2007 The National Academy of Sciences)


Minerals, Critical Minerals, and the U.S. Economy _National Academies Press (NAP) (2008)
FULL BOOK FREE TO READ ONLINE

Material Efficiency and Resource Conservation (MaRess) _A German Approach

Limitations on raw materials and especially so called energy materials, meaning materials used to harness and store energy in renewable, sustainable ways, is again high on the international policy agenda. This is hardly surprisingly following the ever stronger warnings of climate change (CC):global warming (GW), Greenhouse Gases GHG's, and the estimated peeks in fossil fuels, esp. oil and its domination of power for transportation.

In this post, I present of the German Gov approach to the global materials situation. It is a rich resource explaining in simple language in its introduction the reasons for concern:

--"Environmental damage caused by the extraction and exploitation of resources, the associated emissions and the disposal of waste, all lead directly to environmental problems, and as a result, also to social and economic problems. Other factors, such as the insecurity of supplies, the scarcity of resources, the resulting international conflicts, and high and/or volatile raw materials prices, can also lead to strong economic and social dislocation in every country on Earth".

AND HENCE
--"The need to decouple economic growth from resource consumption without downsizing the quality of life."
in reference to:

"Environmental damage caused by the extraction and exploitation of resources, the associated emissions and the disposal of waste, all lead directly to environmental problems, and as a result, also to social and economic problems. Other factors, such as the insecurity of supplies, the scarcity of resources, the resulting international conflicts, and high and/or volatile raw materials prices, can also lead to strong economic and social dislocation in every country on Earth."
- Material Efficiency and Resource Conservation (MaRess) _A German Approach (view on Google Sidewiki)

FREE TRIAL -Large Collection of selected papers on Materials Science and Engineering from Maney Press

JOIN ME IN BUILDING YOUR OWN PERSONAL LIBRARY, from
MANEY PRESS. Many of these journals are edited by members of the chartered Institute of Materials Minerals and Mining-IOM3


7 issues freely available electronically are:1-Technology, History and Society
2-Materials Science and Engineering: overview
3-Energy
4-Surfaces
5-Mining, Extractive Metallurgy and Earth Sciences
6-Natural Materials
7-Imaging


Maney is best known to the Materials Science community as publisher to The Institute of Materials Minerals and Minning-IOM3 edited Materials Science Technology and Engineering peer review journals - all freely available online to members of IOM3

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in reference to: ingentaconnect Publication: Virtual Maney - Materials Science & Engineering (view on Google Sidewiki)

This-Above-All: Iodine-131, Xenon 133, Cesium 137 Northern hemisphere - radiation | FLEXPART: dispersion model_This Above All

This-Above-All: Iodine-131, Xenon 133, Cesium 137 Northern hemisphere - radiation | FLEXPART: dispersion model_This Above All

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