Next generation of methanol fuel cell vehicles sees the light of day

 With the aim to develop a cost efficient and environmentally friendly vehicle, the Danish methanol fuel cell manufacturer SerEnergy is now launching a commercial reformed methanol fuel cell vehicle with a driving range up to 800 km on a tank of methanol.

The engineers and mechanics at SerEnergy’s mobility development centre, located in Aalborg, Denmark, has developed a reformed methanol fuel cell (RMFC) vehicle based on the Nissan e-NV200 electric car platform, a car that is being sold in large numbers worldwide. The car is equipped with an urban range extender which enables up to 800 km before the car needs refuelling, and is therefore ideal for an urban driving pattern covering many kilometres, such as taxies, delivery van and other commercial vehicles.

It has been three years since SerEnergy started the development of a fuel cell solution for the mobility segment, with a first-generation RMFC-vehicle based on a Fiat 500 platform. Now, more than a year’s development work has resulted in the launch of the second-generation RMFC-system with great potential on a broad variety of applications such as commercial vehicles and busses.

“This is an important step for us in realizing our vision – to wipe the Internal Combustion Engine from the face of the earth. The market is searching for green alternatives to fossil fuels, so we see great potential in this type of vehicle both nationally and internationally and we are thrilled to see the first cars on the road”, says Mads Friis Jensen, Chief Commercial Officer at SerEnergy.

Positive environmental and economic impact

Besides being environmentally friendly, with zero harmful emissions and an exhaust that is as clean as the air surrounding us, the system also benefits on the overall driving economy with a significant reduction in fuel price as well as being more than double as energy efficient compared to petrol and diesel. As participants in a methanol infrastructure project, SerEnergy has taken part in the development of a filling station for methanol with a refuelling process that is not much different than what we know from traditional fuelling with petrol or diesel.

A perfect hybrid

The vehicles are developed as a hybrid which combines a reformed methanol fuel cell system with a battery pack. The combination of batteries and methanol is an ideal combination where methanol fuels the vehicle on the range and batteries kicks in during start-up and acceleration peaks. When the two technologies are supplementing each other, both technologies can perform as they do best thereby reducing the size of the battery pack and the capacity of the fuel cell significantly, resulting in a vehicle that is both cost and energy efficient.

The second-generation cars hit the road later this summer

The first commercial cars are going to be part of the German “greenfuel” project where innogy, one of the leading energy companies in Europe, is demonstrating the entire value chain of methanol as an alternative liquid fuel over traditional fossil fuels. The RMFC-system has been undergoing thorough testing and has been tested on the roads for more than a year with great results.

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Fisker’s Tesla competitor has 400 mile range and charges in just 9 minutes

Henrik Fisker is a bit of a legend in the automotive design world, so when he announced that he was working on an all-new electric vehicle that would both challenge Tesla’s Model S, and serve as the spiritual successor to the Fisker Karma, there was plenty of interest. Fisker first teased the new car in late 2016, but now we have our first real look at the vehicle and it sure is fancy.

The car, called the Fisker EMotion, will be the first vehicle under the newly formed Fisker Inc. — Fisker sold his Fisker Automotive brand in early 2014, and it was subsequently renamed Karma Automotive — and is one of two planned electric cars from the company, with the second unnamed vehicle being designed for mass market appeal rather than the luxury sector like the EMotion.

The EMotion is definitely a sleek, beautiful car, but what should really get electric car buffs excited is the technology that is packed into it. Fisker says the vehicle is designed with a 400-mile range in mind — beating the sub-350-mile range of the Tesla Model S handily — as well as a fast-charging feature that will allow it to juice up in just nine minutes. That’s incredibly fast, but Fisker says the car relies on patent-pending battery technology designed by researchers at UCLA, and abandons the typical lithium-ion battery trend in favor of supercapacitors using graphene.

The car has a top speed of 161 miles per hour, and will be capable of driving autonomously, though its self-driving capabilities may not be activated until after its retail launch. Pricing and other minor details are still unclear.

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Russian internet giant Yandex shows off its self-driving car

You might take an autonomous taxi in Moscow one day.

Yandex

When Russia's Yandex revealed that it, too, was working on self-driving cars, it was hard not to be a bit skeptical. Wouldn't it be well behind American counterparts with a years-long head start, like Waymo? Clearly, it's making up for lost time: Yandex (or specifically, its on-demand service Yandex.Taxi) has unveiled a prototype self-driving car. The heavily modified Toyota Prius V touts loads of sensors, AI and "proprietary computing algorithms" that can help it navigate around traffic and tricky obstacles. The demo video below doesn't show any mind-blowing concepts, but that's really the point -- Yandex is showing that it already has a functional machine.

The experimental car is limited to closed-circuit driving right now, but public tests are expected in 2018.

It's not shocking that Yandex would rush into the autonomous vehicle game. Russia is more than a little eager to reduce its dependence on foreign technology, and that's bound to include self-driving cars. The question is whether or not Yandex can move quickly after this. It doesn't need to offer a full-fledged transportation service at the same time as rivals like Waymo, but it also doesn't want to risk seeming perpetually behind. Still, this is good news -- it shows that driverless cars are rapidly gathering support around the globe. Don't be surprised if you're hailing a robotic ride if you visit Moscow in the coming years.

Source: Yandex

Plastic-eating caterpillar could solve problem of discarded shopping bags

PA

Moth larvae which munch on plastic bags could solve the problem of discarded shopping bags, scientists believe.

But scientists discovered – by accident – that they will also eat plastic, munching through plastic bags as happily as other moths eat woolly jumpers.The larvae of the greater wax moth normally thrive on beeswax – and beekeepers hate the grubs.

Understanding how the larvae eat plastic could provide a biotechnological method of disposing of bags and packaging, a major source of land and sea pollution, say scientists.

Dr Paolo Bombelli, a member of the international team from Cambridge University, said: ‘If a single enzyme is responsible for this chemical process, its reproduction on a large scale using biotechnological methods should be achievable.

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‘This discovery could be an important tool for helping to get rid of the polyethylene plastic waste accumulated in landfill sites and oceans.”

The caterpillars, known as “wax worms”, are commercially bred for fishing bait and in the wild live as parasites in bee colonies.

A member of the research team from Spain, who happens to keeps bees, spotted their penchant for plastic while removing the pests from her hives.

Dr Federica Bertocchini, from the Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology of Cantabria in Santander, placed the larvae in a plastic shopping bag and later found it was full of holes.

In a follow-up test conducted in Cambridge, 100 wax worms were let loose on a plastic bag from the British supermarket.

Holes began to appear after just 40 minutes, and over a period of 12 hours 92mg of plastic was consumed.

What is polyethylene - and why is it so hard to get rid of?

Polyethylene is largely used in packaging and accounts for 40% of the total demand for plastic products across Europe.

Up to 38% of discarded plastic in Europe is buried in landfill sites. In the oceans, plastic waste breaks down into small particles which pose a serious health risk to the fish that ingest them.

Each year, some eight million tonnes of waste plastic from around the world ends up in the sea .

Dr Bertocchini said: “Plastic is a global problem. Nowadays waste can be found everywhere, including in rivers and oceans.

“Polyethylene in particular is very resistant, and as such is very difficult to degrade naturally.”

Beeswax consists of fatty compounds with a chain-like chemical structure similar to that of polyethylene, said the scientists.

The wax worm larvae are thought to digest beeswax and plastic in much the same way, by breaking down their chemical bonds.

Research published in the journal Current Biology showed that the grubs transformed polyethylene into unbonded molecules of ethylene glycol.

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Malaysia Airlines will be first to monitor its planes by satellite

Hopefully watching from space will prevent another MH 370 disaster. 

Olivia Harris / Reuters

Three years ago, Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappeared over the South China Sea, starting an multinational hunt for the plane. Despite rumors of a sophisticated hijacking or seizure of the aircraft by a foreign government, it was presumed lost in the ocean. To prevent another disaster over open water, the UN pushed for particular plane signal system that can be tracked from the ground or by satellite. But Malaysia Airlines just struck a deal to use a network of the latter that will enable them to monitor their planes anywhere they fly on earth -- including over the polar ice caps.

Most international flights already transmit signals that can be picked up by ground or satellite via the UN-urged method, Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B). But Malaysia Air's deal with Aireon LLC will enable the airline to use the company's forthcoming satellite network (due to be finished in 2018) to monitor its own fleet. But as Bloombergpoints out, it's unclear if space-based tracking would have helped MH 370. That plane's transmitter was shut off for unknown reasons, which would have made it invisible to satellites.

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Chrysler and Waymo unveil the design of first fully self-driving electric Chrysler Pacifica; 100 of them produced for test fleet

In October, we got our first look through spy shots at the Chrysler Pacifica minivans that Google has been outfitting with its self-driving technology. Today, Chrysler and Waymo, the new Alphabet company created out of Google’s self-driving effort, have officially unveiled the final design of a Chrysler Pacifica with self-driving hardware.

When announcing Waymo last week, John Krafcik, Google’s lead on self-driving and now Chief Executive Officer of Waymo, said that the new company will focus on integrating its technology to vehicles made by automakers instead of developing its own vehicles.

The Chrysler Pacifica is the first example.

It’s interesting that they also chose the first plug-in minivan. Chrysler produced the first 100 vehicles for Waymo’s test fleet with the Chrysler Pacifica hybrid, which is equipped with a 16 kWh battery pack allowing for an all-electric range of 33 miles.

In a press release, Chrysler wrote that the vehicles have been “uniquely built” to receive the self-driving hardware, but Waymo is the one installing the sensors, which is reportedly currently underway.

Krafcik commented:

“The Pacifica Hybrid will be a great addition to our fully self-driving test fleet. FCA’s product development and manufacturing teams have been agile partners, enabling us to go from program kickoff to full vehicle assembly in just six months. They’ve been great partners, and we look forward to continued teamwork with them as we move into 2017.”

The overall integration is far from seamless, but we have seen worse when it comes to self-driving sensor integration. They released a gallery of images:

The 100 minivans will join Waymo’s fleet of Lexus SUVs and in-house prototypes next year.

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Let there be light: German scientists test 'artificial sun'

In this March 21, 2017 photo engineer Volkmar Dohmen stands in front of xenon short-arc lamps in the DLR German national aeronautics and space research center in Juelich, western Germany. The lights are part of an artificial sun that will be used for research purposes. (Caroline Seidel/dpa via AP)

Scientists in Germany flipped the switch Thursday on what's being described as "the world's largest artificial sun," a device they hope will help shed light on new ways of making climate-friendly fuels.

The giant honeycomb-like setup of 149 spotlights—officially known as "Synlight"—in Juelich, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of Cologne, uses xenon short-arc lamps normally found in cinemas to simulate natural sunlight that's often in short supply in Germany at this time of year.

By focusing the entire array on a single 20-by-20 centimeter (8x8 inch) spot, scientists from the German Aerospace Center, or DLR , will be able to produce the equivalent of 10,000 times the amount of solar radiation that would normally shine on the same surface.

Creating such furnace-like conditions—with temperatures of up to 3,000 degrees Celsius (5,432 Fahrenheit)—is key to testing novel ways of making hydrogen, according to Bernhard Hoffschmidt, the director of DLR's Institute for Solar Research.

Many consider hydrogen to be the fuel of the future because it produces no carbon emissions when burned, meaning it doesn't add to global warming. But while hydrogen is the most common element in the universe it is rare on Earth. One way to manufacture it is to split water into its two components—the other being oxygen—using electricity in a process called electrolysis.

In this March 21, 2017 photo engineer Volkmar Dohmen stands in front of xenon short-arc lamps in the DLR German national aeronautics and space research center in Juelich, western Germany. The lights are part of an artificial sun that will …more

Researchers hope to bypass the electricity stage by tapping into the enormous amount of energy that reaches Earth in the form of light from the sun.

Hoffschmidt said the dazzling display is designed to take experiments done in smaller labs to the next level, adding that once researchers have mastered hydrogen-making techniques with Synlight's 350-kilowatt array, the process could be scaled up ten-fold on the way to reaching a level fit for industry. Experts say this could take about a decade, if there is sufficient industry support.

The goal is to eventually use actual sunlight rather than the artificial light produced at the Juelich experiment, which cost 3.5 million euros ($3.8 million) to build and requires as much electricity in four hours as a four-person household would use in a year.

Hoffschmidt conceded that hydrogen isn't without its problems—for one thing it's incredibly volatile— but by combining it with carbon monoxide produced from renewable sources, scientists would, for example, be able to make eco-friendly kerosene for the aviation industry.

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Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-03-scientists-artificial-sun-german-lab.html#jCp