Nanotech’s grand challenge: energy self-sufficiency, says von Ehr

September 11, 2002 | Source: KurzweilAI

“Nanotechnology needs a ‘grand challenge’ project, and energy self-sufficiency is one that would pay huge benefits to both the USA and the world,” says James R. von Ehr II, President & CEO of Zyvex Corp.

He presented this idea at the recent White House Economic Forum, which brought together leaders from various sectors to discuss the fundamentals of the economy and the President’s agenda to increase economic growth for the future.”We need to be realistic that the goal is a big one and our energy usage is immense, so solving the energy self-sufficiency problem will take time,” he says. “However, we can’t just throw money at the problem and wait 20 years; we need some intermediate milestones.”

Von Ehr proposes a multipronged approach:

  • Energy efficiency: low-hanging fruit. Lighter, stronger materials will make cars and planes lighter while retaining strength. Nanotube emitters can make electric lights ten times more efficient than low-efficiency street lights. And nanoelectronics is already making more energy-efficient computers.
  • Energy conversion: the big win. Using Gretzel cells, for example, which use nanomaterials to make cheaper solar photovoltaic cells; nanostructured membranes for better fuel cells; harvesting and converting thermal energy to electric; converting natural gas to easier-to-handle liquid methanol (there is about 10,000 times more methane on the ocean floor than all the petroleum reserves known — nanocatalysts could facilitate this conversion by sticking an oxygen atom into a methane molecule.
  • Energy storage: better batteries (such as nano-structured lithium batteries), flywheel energy storage using nanomaterials for high-performance flywheels, hydrogen storage, and supercapacitors.

    “With appropriate R&D programs, appropriate milestones and appropriate private-sector incentives, we can start to see the fruits of this within a few years. Or we can muddle along with business as usual, and give more money to ‘the usual suspects’ and keep it as fruitless research projects for another couple of decades,” says von Ehr.

    “It’ll probably take investment of a few billion per year to start this right, but we already spend (as of a couple years ago anyway), $60 billion a year defending the Mid-east oil fields. Wouldn’t a few billion on a forward-looking program be worth it?

    “Moving to a renewable energy future will pay dividends to the USA and the rest of the world as well. We can be leaders, or we can buy our technology from others; as one example, Japan is very interested in this, and spending a lot of money on it.

    “It’s a great rallying cause. We need to assure the money is spent on competitive programs, both university and corporate, and not frittered away in huge government-run bureaucracies. Those are useful for some things, but we need competition and nimbleness to move at the speed required.”