Alternative Energy Unit

We’ve been working our way through a new spiraled unit in chemistry, dubbed “Alternative Energy”.  The unit takes students through big concepts of stoichiometry, thermodynamics, kinetics and molecular geometry.  Our unit challenge requires student teams to suggest innovations to cut carbon emissions as part of an engineering team working for a startup automobile manufacturer.  I’ve been trying to take relevant video of interesting bits of the coursework to share, so here they are, with corresponding activity sheets (feel free to use and modify as you’d like).

Unit Instructional Plan

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Activity 3: Creating Balance (Micromole Rockets)

This lab is always so much fun, and is a great gateway into discussing stoichiometry.

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Here’s some footage from the testing phase of the experiment:

Later on, I demonstrated a larger scale example of the reaction occurring within the rockets:

 Activity 4: Field Ration Heaters

To begin discussing kinetics and the laws of thermodynamics, as well as stoichiometry, we look at the chemistry utilized by deployed soldiers when they heat their MREs.

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Our unit challenge is scheduled for a week from Friday.  Here’s an overview of the project and expectations.

Tags: alternative energy, chemistry, thermodynamics

On Site at Nevada Solar One

Research facilities, like Sandia Labs Solar Thermal Test Facility, are very different from actual solar thermal production facilities.  Earlier this week, I visited Nevada Solar One, a privately owned facility operated by Acciona.  They use concentrating parabolic troughs to generate thermal energy from a concentrated beam of sunlight.  Their solar field spans over 400 acres of mirrors, and is capable of producing in excess of 64 MW of energy.  The entire Las Vegas area is a hotbed for solar thermal energy generation, with an average of 300 sunny days per year.  Nevada Solar One facility functions by using a heat transfer fluid to concentrate thermal energy. The heat transfer fluid is heated within the range of 630 – 740 F and pumped to heat exchangers which generate steam for use in traditional high and low pressure steam generators. Many thanks to Nat Lewis, one of the Acciona engineers who showed me around the powerplant.

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Tags: acciona, alternative energy, energy, nevada, solar, solar thermal

Local Communities Need More Places Like !Explora!

!Explora! in Albuquerque, New Mexico

On Friday, I toured !Explora!, a science museum located in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  What I found was not a typical series of exhibits, but an intriguing and thoughtful layout geared towards inquiry and open-ended investigation by “kids” from ages 1-101.  Kristin Leigh, the Educational Services Director at !Explora!, described the mindset of the facility as we slowly navigated through the nooks and nodules of the layout.  Every inch was thoughtfully conceived and well executed.  Each area of the museum featured hands-on manipulatives that would illustrate scientific phenomena.  Rather than having concept areas, the museum tends to focus regions on common terms such as “water” or “light”, with a variety of experiences built within each area.

One of the primary goals of !Explora! is to provide hands-on experiences to local public schools (their theme is “Ideas You Can Touch”); experiences that the students would not normally be able to have on their own due to budget constraints.  While there are a multitude of programs available for educators on-site, !Explora! also has the capability to bring the experience to the classroom, which is especially beneficial to remote, rural communities.  Currently, !Explora! has outreached to 95% of New Mexico public schools.

Kristin Leigh, Ed Services Director, shows me around an Explora learning lab

Now, I’ve been to the children’s and science museums in Indianapolis and Chicago(my neighborhood), and non

e hold a candle to the experiences that I saw students having at !Explora!.  There are no static exhibits, and you are not likely to just traverse the museum flo

or by floor as your child (or students) walk slowly through.  Instead, students tend to dissolve into small experiential groups, which the !Explora! layout facilitates excellently.  As I toured the facilities, I observed small groups of children, parents and adults interacting with the exhibits, discovering all along the way.

In education we talk all the time about creating authentic open-ended experiences for our students within our classrooms.  Visiting !Explora! has encouraged this design pathway and illustrated open-ended inquiry in a novel way that many museums could learn much from.  If you are in the Albuquerque area, you’ve got to check out !Explora!.

Check out the slideshow below for a view of the “exhibits”.

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Tags: education, explora, lilly grant, museum, science

It’s Solar Power Tower Time!

The Solar Power Tower at Sandia Labs in Albuquerque

Sandia Lab’s Solar Power Tower

There are many ways to harvest solar energy; almost all rely upon reflecting mirrors to concentrate the sunlight.  The Solar Power Tower at Sandia Labs in Albuquerque utilizes a field of 218 heliostats to focus an incredible amount of concentrated sunlight onto a central point (the tower shown in the photo at left).  When all of the heliostats are focused on the tower the beam produces a whopping 4000 “suns” of concentrated solar energy.  Experiments can be designed to utilize this concentrated sunlight for a variety of purposes.

The day started with a tour of the solar tower, a enormous structure more than 160 feet tall.  The tower has several test bays starting at 120 feet, where today’s experiment was setup and can be seen in some of the photos in the slideshow below. The tower has several calibration areas; these are water cooled regions where the solar flux can be measured prior to moving the heliostat beams onto the target.  Even the roof has test areas and had frequently been used for NASA experiments.

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The Experiment

The experiment deals with characterization of a solar jet engine design.  The idea is that in lieu of combusting a fuel to generate a stream of high temperature, high pressure gas, you can use concentrated solar energy to accomplish the same task.  The superheated air can then be used to generate electricity.  The test began with successive heliostats being brought “on target” and internal measurements where recorded.  My role in the experiment involved infrared measurements from the field using an IR camera that “sees” IR emissions within the range of 1-3.3 micrometers.  Some sample images while the target was not on sun can be seen below:

Sample target can be seen in the mid-right of the IR image

IR image with test bay door closed

IR images like this are useful in determining where heat is leaking or building up within a test target or material.  However, the images can be misleading as an intense red color in the images above does not equate to an intense red color when the target is on sun unless the emissivity of the materials is very similar.  This is apparent in the first IR image above.  In this image the entire test bay had not been put on sun yet, but you can see severe variation in IR intensities due to the differing emissivities of the materials.

So the day went on and I took many IR images as the heliostat field was brought to 20%, then 40% and working up to 80% at the end of the solar window for the day (around 3:15 PDT).  Experiments need to be completed within +/- 2 hours  of solar noon, which was around 1pm today.

Tomorrow, we continue testing!

Tags: alternative energy, energy, heliostat, sandia, solar, solar energy, solar power tower

Solar Furnace Test Utilizing Cerium (IV) Oxide

Earlier this morning, I was able to participate in a test reaction in solar furnace CR5.  The test utilized a heliostat controlled remotely through large shutters.  The heliostat mirrors directed sunlight onto a focusing dish which was projected onto the reaction vessel.  The reaction vessel contained four discs containing fingers of cerium (IV) oxide, which are rotated in opposing directions throughout the course of the reaction.

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As the sunlight was slowly ramped up, the temperature inside the reaction vessel climbed, ultimately reaching a temperature in excess of 1400 C.  Once the vessel reached 1200 C, a flow of carbon dioxide was initiated.  Ideally, the expected result would be the reduction of cerium (IV) to cerium (II) to form cerium (II) oxide as shown below:

Reduction of cerium

This initial process occurs around 1400 C.  After the cerium has been reduced, it is subjected to a flow of carbon dioxide gas which causes the cerium to be oxidized to a +4 state.

Oxidation of cerium using carbon dioxide

This reaction is key to the formation of a useable fuel precursor (CO gas).  The reaction kinetics require a high temperature above 900 C for this process to occur.

Once the vessel had ramped up to temperature and gases began to flow, we began to notice erratic disc behavior.  What at first was minor rapidly evolved into a complete disc failure.  As soon as the discs ceased rotating, the experiment was shutdown and the furnace shuttered until the vessel could be torn apart for failure analysis.  It was interesting to note that while the experiment was ongoing, little CO was being measured, but upon cessation of the flow of gases a measurable amount of CO was detectable.  If this process can be optimized, it seems completely plausible that concentrated solar sources can be used to revert carbon dioxide into usable fuel precursors which can then be processed into traditional liquid fuels.

Tags: energy, sandia, sandia labs, solar, solar energy, solar furnace, solar thermal test facility

First Day Reflections

Tour of Sandia

My first day at Sandia began with a visit to the badge office.  Since the lab is on Kirtland AFB, you need clear identification to designate where you are and are not allowed on base.  The badging didn’t take long, and soon I was through the base gate on my way to the solar test facility.  Getting to the actual facility was quite a drive; about 15 minutes from the time that I entered the base.  Beautiful scenery surrounds the trip to the facility.  Once I arrived, I watched a short safety video (some of the equipment on site is capable of producing over 3000 “suns” of concentrated solar light!) and then toured the facility campus with Nate Siegel, whom I will be working with for the remainder of the week.

There is a multitude of solar energy devices on site, each one with a different purpose.  Some, like the focusing dishes shown below, use stirling engines to generate electricity using focused sunlight.  Others, like the power tower, use a system of focused mirrors to provide concentrated sunlight for flux experimentation and materials testing.  On Tuesday morning I will be participating in an experiment with solar furnace “CR5″, which is a dish type solar furnace that utilizes high speed shutters for tests

Experiment overview

cerium (IV) oxide test disk

Later this morning, I will be participating in a solar experiment using a dish solar furnace.  The experimental goal is take carbon dioxide and convert it into useable fuel, with the end goal being the production of a sustainable source to generate liquid fuels using carbon dioxide as the primary starter.  To generate fuel, we will need to convert the carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide.  This is accomplished using cerium (IV) oxide along with a generous contribution of energy courtesy of the sun.  I don’t know the activation energy of this reaction , but it must be tremendous.  The basic idea is that the energy of the sun, when focused on the cerium (IV) oxide, causes the oxide to reduce.  When the reduced form (cerium (II) oxide) is exposed to carbon dioxide, it readily removes an oxygen atom, forming carbon monoxide.  This process recycles the cerium oxides and can be a continuous source of carbon monoxide while the furnace is in operation.  My part in the days experiment will be to operate a FLIR camera to thermally map the reaction zone.  The reaction occurs optimally at very high temperatures, and the infrared camera allows us to map out the entire reaction vessel to identify hot and cold spots.  We tested the FLIR camera yesterday using a black body radiator at 1000 C, later ramping it up to 1200 C.

Blackbody emitter

FLIR Infrared camera

Tags: energy, engineering, sandia, solar, solar energy, solar thermal test facility

On Site at Sandia National Labs Solar Thermal Test Facility

Thought you’d all like to see some photos from Sandia Labs.  Today I have toured the solar thermal test facility, and will be participating in a “C5″ test using the solar furnace tomorrow.  Enjoy!

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Tags: alternative energy, energy, photovoltaic, sandia, solar, solar energy, solar furnace, solar thermal test facility