4 new ways to solve the energy challenge
1. Building a 500-mile car battery
The holy grail in the electric-car world is beating range anxiety: the fear you’ll run out of juice in the middle of nowhere. Today’s electrics, like the Nissan Leaf, have a range of about 100 miles, but scientists at IBM (IBM) are in hot pursuit of a better technology. In the 1990s researchers hypothesized that they could create energy by combining lithium with oxygen, making what is now referred to as a lithium-air battery. (See diagram below.) Today IBM and some 50 other labs globally are working on versions that would let an electric car go 500 miles a charge — a potential game changer for models like BMW’s i3 concept vehicle (above).
The challenges are massive — recharging the battery is tricky, and durability is an issue. Also, to get the battery to release power quickly enough for passing requires expensive nanotechnology. “It remains a long shot, but we’re excited by the potential,” says Winfried Wilcke, IBM’s lead researcher on the project. Big Blue sees a prototype by 2013 and commercialization as early as decade’s end. –A.V.
2. Harnessing the sun’s power
Ever since cold fusion flopped spectacularly, the idea of finding an affordable way of replicating the sun’s method of generating energy has become almost a joke. That may be about to change. Yes, the two major fusion reactor designs being explored in the research world — one is called a tokamak and the other is inertial confinement systems — show promise, but they are 20 to 30 years off. Also, they require either gigantic superconducting magnet systems or extra-fierce laser arrays and will cost tens of billions at best.
A small Canadian company called General Fusion has a new technology called magnetized target fusion, which could end up costing a fraction of what the other designs do. The privately funded project has attracted $32 million from investors including Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos. This is not the way things are traditionally done in Big Science, where only governments with deep pockets can afford to fund the R&D and construction of huge experimental machines. “If we had a 20-year project, we would never get the money. But we’re promising to demonstrate a net energy gain in five years, and we’re meeting our milestones,” says CEO Doug Richmond. –S.F.B.
