Tech Tuesday: Post Work Edition

March 31st was my last day at Siemens, for now at least (I’ve been told by multiple layers of my management to call them when I’m ready to get back to work – can’t tell you how good that feels…).

So in honor of my former employer, here’s one from Siemens.

TT01: Siemens is building a recyclable 115 m turbine blade.  GE is doing something similar.  This is good news because to date, wind turbine blades, when they’ve reached the end of their useful life, are basically chopped up and tossed into a landfill.  That’s an awful lot of carbon fiber, fiber glass, and other composites, along with epoxy resin, that will take a very long time to decompose (if ever).  These new blades will be assembled using a resin that can be depolymerized, leaving the various composites behind to be recycled.  It’s good to see companies building with an eye towards how the end of life of a product will be managed.

TT02: Another common (read: inexpensive) material that can efficiently store and release heat energy.  The proposed application is industrial waste heat storage.  The temperature range is interesting, in that it stores heat when the material is heated to above 200 C, and releases is when cooled to below 120 C.

TT03: Speaking of energy storage that is triggered by temperature changes, PNNL has a hibernating battery (also called a “freeze-thaw” battery).  It’s a molten salt battery, but it’s a salt that is molten at a lower temperature (180 C).  When the salt is liquid, it acts as the electrolyte in the battery and charge can move around.  Let the battery cool to below 180 C, and the salt becomes a solid, locking the ions in place, causing the battery to hibernate and preserve the charge.  Also, no exotic or rare materials are involved.  Application wise, this would be a seasonal battery.  Using the PNW as an example, we actually get lots of sun from late spring through early fall.  Especially east of the Cascade Mountains.  You could use solar panels to charge up a large array of such batteries all summer long, then when the solar production falls off in autumn, start discharging the batteries as needed to maintain the grid.  Since each battery would charge and discharge only once per year, the battery life should be quite long.

TT04: Greening concrete.  As I am sure most everyone knows, the production of concrete is a significant source of CO2 that gets released into the atmosphere.  This isn’t just from the heat and power required to make concrete, but CO2 is also a byproduct of making the Portland cement, which is the part of concrete that undergoes the chemical reaction with water to transform from a grey powder to a rock-like substance.  The cement ingredients are heated to form ‘clinker’, and it’s during this process that a chemical reaction takes place that releases a lot of CO2.  To that end, a ‘clinkerless’ cement is undergoing testing.  The new cement uses slag from the metal processing industry to create an alternative clinker that doesn’t release CO2.  Additionally, there is a push to create concrete mixes that are considerably more durable and thus don’t need replacing as often (ergo we don’t need to make as much concrete to replace old concrete).  One such mix replaces the sand in concrete with ground up tire rubber.  So far, it looks to be more durable and longer lasting than traditional concrete.

TT05: This one is an interview with an organic chemist who studies the sugar molecules on our cells, and how they relate to cancer (among other things).  If you don’t feel like listening to it, there is a transcript.  I was fascinated by the interactions of these sugar molecules with the immune system and cancer.