Archives for October 2015

Mcity – Researching an intelligent generation of urban mobility

Mcity - 32-acre simulated urban and suburban environment

31 October 2015 From Paul Münzner Filed Under: MOTORING

The Mobility Transformation Center (MTC) team at the University of Michigan intends to lead a revolution in mobility by developing the foundations for a commercially viable ecosystem of connected and automated vehicles with the Mcity test facility. With the support of Mcity, their central goal is the development and implementation of an intelligent car system in Ann Arbor (Michigan – USA) by 2021.

Aerial view Mcity Test Facility (University of Michigan)

Benefits of connected and automated cars

The intelligent cars partly or fully remove the human from the complex sensing, monitoring, and control processes while driving in the car. A journey with reduced stress, enjoyable on-demand services and better use of travel time shall be possible. 93 percent of US fatal crashes are the result of driver errors. The reduction of car crashes, energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, travel time, and use of infrastructure capacity are main objectives of Mcity. More efficient transport systems with easy transportation accessibilities are especially needed in metropolises with a growing population.

Inauguration Mcity Test Facility (University of Michigan)

For this purpose Mcity, the world’s first urban test environment for connected and automated vehicles, has been officially inaugurated on 20 July 2015 with representatives of the government, the industry and the University of Michigan. The three months old test facility was designed and developed by U-M’s interdisciplinary MTC, in partnership with the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT).

The aim is to support rigorous, repeatable testing of new technologies in a safe, controlled and realistic environment before they are tried out on public streets and highways. Connected technologies mainly means that vehicles talk to the infrastructure or other vehicles to manage, for example, the flow of traffic across an entire region. Also the timing of lights for optimal traffic flow is possible. Various levels of automation, also fully autonomous or driverless cars, will be investigated.

Mcity Facility – Occupying 32 acres at the University’s North Campus

The 32-acre simulated urban and suburban environment includes a network of roads with traffic signs, intersections, building covers, signals, streetlights, sidewalks and construction obstacles. Different road surfaces like asphalt, concrete, brick, dirt or grassy area and a variety of curves and ramps as well as roundabouts, tunnels and hydrants are concentrated on this quite small territory. Mcity is a closed facility due to safety and confidentiality concerns.

Mcity Feature Map - A 32-Acre Outdoor Lab (University of Michigan) — Mcity Feature Map – A 32-Acre Outdoor Lab (University of Michigan)

“We believe that this transformation to connected and automated mobility will be a game changer for safety, for efficiency, for energy, and for accessibility,” said Peter Sweatman, director of the U-M Mobility Transformation Center. “Our cities will be much better to live in, our suburbs will be much better to live in. These technologies truly open the door to 21st century mobility.” The $10 million project broke ground in 2014.

In the end, this new kind of transportation needs to be highly attractive to users throughout society. It also needs to be commercially successful, creating new business partnerships and opportunities. The project is supported by industry, including some of the world’s top automakers, government and science.

Solar cell efficiency – Four recent success stories

There is a strong competitiveness among research facilities and industry

27 October 2015 From Paul Münzner Filed Under: Energy, Science & Innovation

There is still significant scope for further percentage points when it comes to energy conversion efficiency of a solar cell. Obviously, it is important to improve the efficiency factor to enhance its attractiveness. The higher the efficiency of solar cells the higher the area efficiency and possibly also the profitability. Particularly for cities, the area efficiency is an important point due to the lack of space. A couple of research facilities around the world try to increase the light yield. There is a strong competitiveness. Consequently, new efficiency records are announced regularly. In the following some examples.

25.1 percent with TOPCon Technology

The German research institution Fraunhofer ISE recently announced (September 2015) a new efficiency record for silicon solar cells with TOPCon Technology. For a both sides-contacted silicon solar cell, an efficiency of 25.1 percent has been achieved. This record is the highest efficiency achieved to date for both sides-contacted silicon solar cells. They are characterized by having metal contacts on both the front and rear sides.

Fraunhofer ISE achieves new world record for both sides-contacted silicon solar cell: TOPCon technology makes 25.1 percent efficiency possible (Fraunhofer ISE)

“The biggest advantage of our new concept is that we can now contact the entire rear cell surface without patterning. Compared to the high-efficiency solar cell structures presently in use, we offer both a simplified manufacturing process and higher efficiencies at the same time,” explains Dr. Martin Hermle, Head of the High Efficiency Solar Cells department at Fraunhofer ISE. The special feature of the so-called TOPCon (Tunnel Oxide Passivated Contact) technology are the applied metal contacts to the rear side without patterning. TOPCon is developed by Fraunhofer ISE.

TEM-image (Transmission Electron Microscope) showing TOPCon structure developed at Fraunhofer ISE for both sides-contacted silicon solar cells (Fraunhofer ISE)

The researchers developed a selective passivated contact made of tunnel oxide that enables majority charge carriers to pass and prevents the minority carriers from recombining. The thickness of the intermediate passivation layer is reduced to one or two nanometres, allowing the charge carriers to “tunnel” through it. Subsequently, a thin coating of highly doped silicon is deposited over the entire layer of ultra-thin tunnel oxide. This novel combination of layers allows electrical current to flow out of the cell with nearly zero loss. The major solar cells in the photovoltaic industry have an aluminum-alloyed back contact covering the entire rear side. It limits the efficiency. With their latest result, they have surpassed the 25 percent mark. The research was funded within the project FORTES from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and U.S. Department of Energy.

New efficiency record for artificial photosynthesis

Solar energy is not available constantly and not everywhere. Artificial photosynthesis is one hope for storing this energy. This is what every leaf can do, namely converting sunlight to “chemical energy”. It can also take place with artificial systems based on semiconductors. First of all, the individual semiconductor components create electrical power with sunlight. The electrical power splits water into oxygen and hydrogen. Hydrogen from sunlight is still a niche within the solar market. But it does not mean that there is no progress.

New efficiency record: This small device is able to convert 14 percent of the incoming solar energy into hydrogen (M. May)

An international team achieved a significant efficiency improvement for direct solar water splitting with a modified tandem solar cell. The old record of 12.4 percent was held by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the USA. After 17 years a new record value of 14 percent has now (September 2015) been broken by researchers from the Institute for Solar Fuels at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in Freiburg, the Technical University Ilmenau and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Scientific facilities worldwide have therefore been researching for many years how to break the existing record of 12.4 percent.

The tandem cell is covered with a catalyst for hydrogen formation (M. May)

“We have electronically and chemically passivated in situ the aluminium-indium-phosphide layers in particular and thereby efficiently coupled to the catalyst layer for hydrogen generation. In this way, we were able to control the composition of the surface at sub-nanometre scales”, explains Matthias May, active at TU Ilmenau and the HZB Institute for Solar Fuels. Admittedly, it is difficult for lay people to understand. In former times, the samples only survived some seconds before their power output collapsed. After about one year of optimization, they remain stable for over 40 hours. A long-term stability goal are 1000 hours. The hydrogen generation from sunlight using high-efficiency semiconductors with an efficiency level of 15 percent or more is assumed as being economical.

Panasonic – 22.5% efficiency with solar cells based on mass-production technology

The Eco Solutions Division at Panasonic Corp., based in Japan, announced in October 2015 a 22.5 percent efficiency on a commercial-sized prototype using solar cells based on mass-production technology. Panasonic claims, that the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) confirmed the result. AIST is one of the leading centers for independent verification of solar cell performance results under standard testing conditions. The 72-cell, 270-watt prototype incorporates newly developed enhanced technology that will eventually be scaled into volume production.

In addition, Panasonic Eco Solutions announced the launch of the powerful photovoltaic Module HIT® N330, the latest addition to the company’s high-efficiency heterojunction photovoltaic Module product line. HIT® N330 achieves 19.7 percent Module-level efficiency with a nominal power output of 330 watts. The new 96-cell Module returns approximately 27 percent more peak-power compared to mainstream 260-watt multicrystalline modules. The new Module will be available in the UK and other European markets from March 2016.

46% with multi-junction solar cell confirmed by French-German cooperation

Soitec and CEA-Leti, France, together with the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, Germany, confirmed a new record for a multi-junction solar cell in December 2014. The cell converts 46 percent of the solar light into electrical energy. Multi-junction cells are used in concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) systems. to produce low-cost electricity in regions with a large amount of direct solar radiation. It is the cooperation’s second world record within one year. It clearly demonstrates the strong competitiveness of the European photovoltaic research and industry.

New record solar cell on a 100 mm wafer yielding approximately 500 concentrator solar cell devices (©Fraunhofer ISE/Photo Alexander Wekkeli)

Multi-junction solar cells are based on a selection of III-V compound semiconductor materials. The world record cell is a four-junction cell. One quarter of the incoming photons in the wavelength range between 300 and 1750 nm are converted precisely by each sub-cell into electricity. When applied in concentrator PV, a very small cell is used with a Fresnel lens. It concentrates the sunlight onto the cell. The new record efficiency was measured at a concentration of 508 suns and has been confirmed by the Japanese AIST (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology).

”This is a major milestone for our French-German collaboration. We are extremely pleased to hear that our result of 46% efficiency has now been independently confirmed by AIST in Japan”, explains Dr. Frank Dimroth, project manager for the cell development at the German Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE. “CPV is the most efficient solar technology today and suitable for all countries with high direct normal irradiance.” Jocelyne Wasselin, Vice President Solar Cell Product Development for Soitec, a company headquartered in France and a world leader in high-performance semiconductor materials, is optimistic that 50 percent efficiency in the near future can be achieved.

UrbanData2Decide – Exceptional approach for urban decision-making processes

UrbanData2Decide extracts and processes information from public social media and open data libraries

25 October 2015 From Paul Münzner Filed Under: Science & Innovation, Tools

The environment around urban decision makers grows ever more complex. They are faced with issues such as exceptional challenges or innovative opportunities. Nowadays there is sea of information available for nearly every issue. It may happen that probably important sources remain untapped. UrbanData2Decide shall support local governments towards a sustainable, well-founded and holistic decision-making process. For this purpose the project aims to extract and process information from two rich sources. These are public social media and open data catalogues. They will be combined with advices from expert panels. In this way the views and perspectives of all relevant stakeholders are taken into account.

Concept of UrbanData2Decide - Click to enlarge (CC BY 4.0 UrbanData2Decide) — Concept of UrbanData2Decide – Click to enlarge (CC BY 4.0 UrbanData2Decide)

Cities, decision maker, institutions and residents are more and more connected. For example, plenty accounts at Twitter are dealing with urbanisation. The content is growing rapidly has not yet been fully exploited to understand views and perspectives. It is therefore the ambition of this project to profit from all the relevant data by developing new methods to combine expert knowledge and existing big data pools into one optimal framework.

Project Elements

The UrbanDataVisualiser aggregates, structures and visualises the data of social media content and open data sets. On the other hand the UrbanDecisionMaker complement this bottom-up approach with advisors and external experts. They use tools such as the Delphi method and so-called scientific multi-round expert integration methods. The Delphi method is an interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts.

But of course, a decision-making process is not only influenced by available information sources. There are other main factors like institutional embeddedness, administrative structure, funding, spatial scale, duration of the project and the stakeholders itself. Urban decision-making is sensitive to political and institutional trajectories of local governments. Approaches are not directly compatible to other cities. Funding may influence, inter alia, the time planning of a project or forms of citizen participation. The decision-making process can be affected in different ways depending on the numbers and type of stakeholders.

The project started in September 2014 and has a total duration of 26 months until October 2016. It is co-funded under the Joint Programming Initiative Urban Europe. The consortium members comprise the SYNYO GmbH (Austria), the University of Oxford, the Malmö University (Sweden), the Open Data Institute (UK), the IT University of Copenhagen (Denmark), the Centre for Social Innovation (Austria) as well as city partners of the Major Cities of Europe Network. The SYNYO GmbH coordinates the EU project.

Asia and the Pacific – Sustainable urbanisation scarcely manageable

By 2050 it is expected that the urban population in Asia and the Pacific will reach 3.2 billion

21 October 2015 From Paul Münzner Filed Under: URBAN PLANNING

The speed and extent of urbanisation in Asia and the Pacific is unprecedented. The region’s cities grew by around one billion people between 1980 and 2010. The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) launched a comprehensive report. It calls attention to increasing gaps between current urbanisation patterns and what is needed.

More than half of the population in Asia and the Pacific is expected to live in urban agglomerations in 2018. Given the fact that 55 percent of the worldwide urban population is living in Asia and the Pacific. An additional one billion people will live in region’s cities by 2040. By 2050 it is expected that the urban population in this region will reach 3.2 billion. Now 17 megacities with more than 10 million inhabitants each are situated in Asia and the Pacific, including the world’s three largest: Tokyo, Delhi and Shanghai. 2030 further five megacities will be added. In all regions the urban growth is higher than the overall population growth.

Urban Economy

Cities in Asia and the Pacific are key factors when it comes to economic growth and transformation. They lifted millions of people out of poverty. Their contribution to the GDP of several sub-regions underlines the economic importance. Now, some urban economies are exceeding the GDP of some nations in Asia. But global economic power and global city status characterise only a minority of cities in the region. Smaller cities are often disadvantaged by a lack of resources to take advantage and participate in global trade. The still existing and high number of urban poverty is a reason why a third of the regions urban residents has no access to safe drinking water and sanitation, clean energy and adequate shelter. The report also outlines how to reduce poverty and economic inequalities. For example, it is recommended to invest substantially in urban infrastructure to increase the competitiveness and efficiency. To achieve higher incomes, a shift to higher value-added and technologically advanced goods and services is necessary. This in turn requires investments in human capital. University-centred cities, research institutes, high-tech zones or attracting foreign professionals by offering a high quality of life and high incomes are recommendable. It takes time for the results to materialise.

Urban Environment and Climate Change

As a result of the developed urban economies many cities are confronted with challenging environmental problems. Air pollution, poor sanitation, contaminated soils and an inadequate drinking water supply are well known health risks. Less than 15 percent of the urban population relies on upon unimproved sources of drinking water in the Least Developed Countries in Asia and the Pacific (Exception: Laos). Around 15 percent of the total water supply in 2008 to Karachi was lost to systematic leakages (Rahman, 2008). Poor sanitary conditions in high-density environments are no exception in many parts of large cities in the region. But there are also a few good news. Phnom Penh, for example, was rehabilitating its water network and installing new pipes and increased the annual production by 437 percent and its customer base by 662 percent between 1993 and 2008. Water losses in Phnom Penh declined from 72 to 6 percent.

The economic growth also changes the volume of generated waste. About 700,000 tonnes of municipal solid waste, roughly 2.7 million cubic metres, are generated per day (World Bank). It is still increasing, according to the continuing growth. It is necessary to invest in sustainable project like the waste-to-energy plant of DC Water in Washington.

In the growing cities is an urgent need of low-carbon economies, buildings, transport and infrastructure. Air pollution is a well known problem in many cities in Asia. The region is home to some of the world’s most polluted and unhealthy cities. An interactive and online-based world map demonstrates the urgent situation in East Asia compared to other regions in the world.

Final Words

More attention needs to be paid to quality instead of quantity of growth. The region’s cities are very vulnerable to natural disasters and a few mega cities (Jakarta, Manila, Tokyo, Shanghai) are located by the sea. The urbanisation is one of the biggest challenges facing the Asia and Pacific region’s governments. Without doubt, the region faces an urban future for which it must prepare. In more concrete terms, ensuring medical care, drinking water supply and sanitation, clean air, affordable and modern energy supply, wastewater treatment and affordable housing will be scarcely manageable.

Washington DC – US Capital Generates Clean Energy From Waste Water

Challenges as part of the solution – DC Water uses wastewater to provide electrical energy

16 October 2015 From Paul Münzner Filed Under: Energy, Waste

Collection and treatment of large quantities of wastewater in cities is a challenging task, especially in megacities. Of course, it is technically, organisationally, and economically feasible. But instead of understanding this issue as a challenge or compelling necessity, it can be seen and used as a renewable energy source. Wastewater is a chance to create an additional mainstay of a sustainable energy supply. Wastewater is classified as a renewable energy source.

On 7 October 2015 DC Water officially unveiled its waste-to-energy project. It provides a net 10 megawatts of electricity from the wastewater treatment process. The clean and renewable energy covers one-third of the Blue Plains plants energy needs. The Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant is the largest in the world. DC Water distributes drinking water for approximately 600,000 customer and provides wholesale wastewater treatment services for about 1.6 million people in and around Washington, D.C. They operate, among other things, more than 1,300 miles of pipes, five reservoirs and four elevated water storage tanks.

“This is yet another example of the District leading the nation in the adoption and implementation of sustainable practices,” said District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser. “DC Waters Blue Plains facility is converting waste to clean water and a nutrient-rich soil by-product, producing energy and helping to put the District on the path towards a zero waste future.”

DC Water CEO and General Manager George S. Hawkins, said “This project embodies a shift from treating used water as waste to leveraging it as a resource. We are proud to be the first to bring this innovation to North America for the benefit of our ratepayers, the industry and the environment.”

The $470 million plant includes a dewatering building, 32 sleek thermal hydrolysis vessels, four concrete 80-foot high anaerobic digesters that hold 3.8 million gallons of solids each and three 5 Megawatt turbines the size of jet engines. The project broke ground in 2011. For the waste-to-energy process, the CAMBI® thermal hydrolysis process is used. It is, according to DC Water, the first in North America and the largest installation in the world.

Functional principle

High heat and pressure to “pressure cook” the solids left over at the end of the wastewater treatment process is used to weaken solids cell walls as well as the structure between cells. In this way the energy is easily accessible to the anaerobic digestion, the next stage of the process. Four digesters with 3.8 million gallons and a dense population of bacteria and archea produce methane. The digesters are able to convert more of the solids into gas, as a result of the hydrolysis process. The gas is captured and fed to three large turbines to produce electricity. Steam is also captured and directed back into the process. All these points make the process highly efficient.