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By Erik Sofge Jul 30, 2009
6 Bright Ideas for the Future of EnergyTo find innovative new solutions to the world's toughest technical challenges, wecalled some of America's smartest engineers and scientists for their quick fixes andlong-term plans. Here, we look at six bright ideas to make a cleaner, more efficient,safer energy future using fusion, CO2 as fuel, trash as power and super-efficienthomes.
Sequester Carbon in Limestone
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Geologist Peter Kelemen, photographed for Popular Mechanics on April 1, 2009, holding a chunk of
peridotite, a rock that could hold the key to mineral carbon sequestration.
More than a decade ago, when geologist Peter Kelemen first saw bleachedwhite rock
formations in Oman, he wasn't happy. The normally darkhued rocks were peridotite whose
composition he was trying to investigate. But every time Kelemen found an exposed
surface, it had reacted with carbon dioxide in the air to form a carbonate similar to
limestone. Goodbye, samples. "I ran in the other direction as fast as I could," he says. That
outlook changed in 2004, when Kelemen had a eureka moment while talking with
colleagues at Columbia University's LamontDoherty Earth Observatory about ways to
sequester CO2 underground and slow the pace of global warming. Most sequestration plans
risk creating a carbondioxide time bomb, with the greenhouse gas stored underground and
always threatening to bubble out. Kelemen thought the peridotite might provide a longer
 lasting solution. His idea is to drill into massive rock formations, heat them and then
pump in CO2enriched water. The rock would then turn to carbonate, trapping the gas in
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enduring, solid form. Kelemen stresses that the realworld practicality of his plan still needs
to be proven. But field observations in Oman, which has more than 3000 cubic miles of
peridotite, have been promising. Next up: investigating the idea in the United States.
Use Fusion to Zap Nuclear Waste
A new hybrid fissionfusion reactor design was developed by this University of Texas team: Erich
Schneider of the mechanical engineering department (second from right) and (from left) Michael
Kotschenreuther, Swadesh Mahajan and Prashant Valanju, all from the school's Institute for Fusion
Studies.
The quest for controlled fusion power, that most futuretopian of engineering feats,
requires patience and enduring faith. Progress is being made, but workable reactors are
decades off. While we wait, fusion may as well make itself useful. Researchers at the
University of Texas recently unveiled a design for a hybrid fissionfusion reactor, a bestof
bothworlds device that would dispose of the deadliest waste from traditional nuclear
power plants while generating power along the way. Most nuclear waste can be reprocessed
for use as fuel in standard fission reactors, although that's not currently the practice in the
United States. The hybrid reactor would be a next step. It would employ fusion reactions to
flood the remaining, highly dangerous transuranic waste with neutrons, allowing it to be
burned in a fission process. Onethird of the resulting energy would be fed back into the
fusion process and the remaining 700 megawatts would be fed into the grid. According to
senior research scientist Swadesh Mahajan, at the end of the process, about 99 percent of
all nuclear waste could be eliminated. "What we really want to do is to tell the world, Please
allow the expansion of nuclear energy, through standard lightwater reactors," Mahajan
says. "It's the only thing that can be ramped up quickly enough to replace coal. Do not
worry about the waste. Because we're going to give you the solution in 20 years. We will
make it in time."
Build Homes that Don't Need Furnaces
(Illustration by Nathan Fariss)
Heat exchanger (left): Airflow in and out of the house is carefully controlled. Fresh air is routedthrough a heat exchanger; it is warmed by air being vented outside.
Continuous insulation (top right): Loft insulation is used between studs. An unbroken layer ofinsulation on the outside wall ensures that the studs don't act as thermal bridges, conducting heat
outside.
Triplepane windows (bottom right): Window frames are surrounded by multiple layers offoam; gaskets have some flexibility, ensuring a tight, enduring fit.
The conventional American home bleeds heat from under doors and around window
sashes—and right through underinsulated walls. While wind turbines and solar panels are
impressive green technologies, the way to really slash one's bills and environmental impact
is to live in a hyperefficient house—and it doesn't get more hyper than the "passive houses"
now being developed. These are essentially maximumsecurity prisons for thermal energy,
with thick insulation that leaves no unprotected studs to conduct heat to the outdoors,
triplepane windows and an overall approach to airtightness that lunar colonies could
aspire to. In Europe, as many as 6000 homes have been passivehousecertified in the past
decade, with thousands more approaching, though not quite meeting, the rigorous
requirements. According to energyefficiency consultant David White, a passive house in
the northeastern United States could consume 90 percent less heat than equivalent homes.
"Passive houses have been shown to be among the most reliable and costeffective
approaches to efficiency," White says. In Germany, offtheshelf windows, gaskets and
other passivehousecertified products have brought construction costs to within 5 percent
of those for conventional homes. In the United States, that price premium can be 11 percent
or more. White sees that number coming down. Since quitting his job at a green design firm
to concentrate on passive housing projects, he's been working 18hour days to keep up with
an influx of new customers. The housing market may have crashed, but passive houses are
on the rise.
Keep Working on Fusion Energy
The National Ignition Facility will be fully operational in 2010.
After decades spent watching shortlived bursts of plasma sputter in researchoriented
magnetic tokamak reactors, it would be easy to abandon the dream of fusion power. But the
ultimate cleanenergy technology may be getting closer. ITER (the letters don't stand for
anything, but the word means "the way" in Latin) is expected to be the world's biggest
tokamak when it's completed in southern France in 2018, and it could lead to efficient
prototype power plants. Next year, the array of 192 lasers that form the heart of the
National Ignition Facility (NIF) at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
will begin firing at a tiny hydrogen target, testing a magnetfree fusion scheme. NIF
director Ed Moses hopes that within a few years, the machine will release 20 times more
energy than it consumes. "If this works, over the next couple of decades we can change the
geopolitical story," he says.
Turn Trash Into Power
The Green Energy Machine, or GEM, is an unlikely altfuel hero. Yet the dumpstersize
cargo container jutting from a building in Waltham, Mass., can heat and power 200,000
square feet of space on a daily diet of 3 tons of garbage. The $850,000 system, which
incorporates a Rube Goldberglike array of devices, can pay for itself in three years,
according to Michael Cushman, vice president of IST Energy, which makes GEMs. It can
save some 540 tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually and—unlike much altenergy
tech—it's ready now. "We welcome revolutionary technology, but this is an evolutionary
solution with substantial potential for high impact," Cushman says. "We don't need a 10
yearoff solution, we need a today solution."
Conjure Fuel from CO
Nanotube arrays can increase the surface area of a catalyst, and thus are one of the
many "next big things" in energy research, especially for batteries. But Craig Grimes, an
electrical engineer at Penn State, has another use for them. In combination with sunlight,
his nanotube membrane converts water and carbon dioxide into liquid fuel, such as butane
2
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and methane. If the technology were integrated into power plants, Grimes says, "it would
basically be a closed loop—you have a fuel, you burn it, you collect the reactants, convert
them back into fuel, and then feed that right back into the plant." He calculates that 4
square inches of the current version of the membrane could yield more than 130 gallons of
fuel daily, squeezing a second act out of hydrocarbons before they enter the atmosphere.
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