Future Energy eNews

May 2019, Volume 20

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Hello Tom,

Glad to announce that we have a full roster of great speakers coming up for our Eleventh Conference on Future Energy (COFE11). Visit www.futurenergy.org for the complete announcement and speakers list. Our Plenary Speaker is Dr. Bruce Cornet who is an expert on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) and will be addressing the technical, propulsion aspects of his first hand evidence, which has also been documented in his book, to be released in time for COFE11. Other presentations, mostly by PhD and MDs, relate to “Biofield Imaging”, “EM Propulsion Systems”, “Emerging Scientific Paradigm”, and “The Dark Side of Solar”, among over a dozen talks, in conjunction with the ExtraOrdinary Technology conference  in the same hotel. Register today!

We are happy to finally present to our readers a FREE Modern Meditation Training Seminar online, which was professionally edited over the past year and uploaded to YouTube. We also are providing a TinyURL that is easy to remember, so you can pass it on to friends and relatives. There also is a companion book, Modern Meditation: Science and Shortcuts, which has some of the reference articles and explanations not in the video. The Training Seminar not only will teach you the best meditation technique in only 45 minutes but it is full of scientific discoveries about the benefits of such practice, including making the prefrontal lobe of the brains in older adults to be as thick as 25-year olds. Click here to start your scientific modern meditation training: www.TinyURL.com/ModernMeditation.

One of our affinity groups, the Space Studies Institute (SSI) started by MIT professor and father of space colonies, Gerard O’Neill, is having its 50^thanniversary conference this year on September 9-10, 2019. Registration information is available at https://ssi50.eventbrite.com. I actually met Dr. O’Neill years ago when he lectured at an IEEE event and I’m proud to have his signature on his book, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space.

Our first story published in Nature Communications analyzes vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) flying cars. They report a physics-based analysis of primary energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of VTOLs vs. ground-based cars. Sustainable mobility is the catch phrase which really relates to the amount of GHGs are being saved compared to ground based cars.

The second story is a potential breakthrough for helping the future of a hothouse earth. Similar to phase change insulation materials (e.g., BioPCM, etc.), plastic crystals have been found to change their entropy under pressure, which could be used for refrigeration.

Story #3 is a celebration of the European Union’s critical awareness of the superiority of perovskite solar cells, which have been easy to synthesize compared to silicon cells. Oxford PV plans to deliver solar cells based on perovskite and silicon to the market by the end of next year, using a German factory it acquired in 2016 from Bosch Solar. The two materials will come in a package that otherwise looks, ships, and installs the same way as a standard solar panel, in a kind of half step that the company believes will make it easier to introduce the technology to the market.

Story #4 updates our former COFE speaker, Eric Lerner, with his famous proton-boron approach to fusion, also called “focus fusion” since it focuses a beam of high voltage electricity toward a target of pB11 which happens to be a fuel that is four times as productive compared to any other fusion source. For those not familiar with this clean, safe (no neutrons), and low cost fusion method, this article is a great summary, along with their improvements which have been well funded so far.

Our last story may be the most important. It is a boost to the renewable natural gas (RNG) industry, which I learned about on Capitol Hill at a panel discussion a few years ago. For those not familiar with the concept, RNG is produced using decomposing organic waste at landfills, wastewater treatment plants and agriculture, which to us, is really amazing and very welcome. Furthermore, Clean Energy Fuels’ Redeem RNG achieves at least a 70% reduction in lifecycle GHG emissions when compared to conventional diesel or gasoline. Now UPS has contracted with them for 25 million gallon equivalents on an annual basis. UPS said it has more than 6,100 vehicles that run on liquefied natural gas (LNG) or compressed natural gas (CNG) and can use RNG in Argentina, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Thailand, the UK, and the US.

Onward and upward!

Tom Valone, PhD

Editor



Our Products

A study published in Nature Communications on their environmental sustainability finds that they wouldn’t be sustainable for short commutes. However, they could play a role in sustainable mobility for longer trips.

Now researchers propose that so-called plastic crystal materials could be more effective refrigerants than previously studied solid-state materials (Nature 2019, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1042-5). However, experts caution that major engineering challenges stand between these crystals and your fridge.

Under pressure, the molecules in plastic crystals become more ordered. Imposing order means reducing the materials’ entropy. The resulting energy change could be harnessed for cooling effects