Gregoire's CleanTech Blog

Quelques indications sur le projet HOME

L'Agence de l'Innovation Industrielle (AII), présidée par Jean-Louis Beffa, a décidé de soutenir le projet HOMES - Habitat et bâtiment Optimisé pour la Maîtrise de l'Energie et les Services - présenté par Schneider Electric, parmi le premier groupe des 5 projets retenus.

L'AII, créée en 2005 à la demande du Président Jacques Chirac, soutient des programmes de recherche et développement très innovants ayant un grand marché potentiel, pour renforcer la compétitivité de l'industrie. Le projet HOMES a été retenu par l'AII comme répondant particulièrement bien aux critères définis : produits de haute technologie visant un large marché, très forte innovation, impact fortement positif pour l'industrie européenne, capacité de l'industriel chef de file à le mener. HOMES représente un investissement de plus de 80 M€ pour les partenaires du projet et bénéficiera d'un financement de l'AII à hauteur de 45% sous forme de subventions et d'avances remboursables, sous réserve de l'acceptation par la Commission Européenne.

Face à des coûts d'énergie en augmentation constante et à l'exigence croissante de protection de l'environnement, les économies d'énergie représentent une solution indispensable. Le projet HOMES vise à faire évoluer en profondeur les systèmes de distribution électrique et de contrôle des bâtiments, neufs ou à rénover, tertiaires ou résidentiels afin qu'ils offrent l'ensemble des fonctions nécessaires à une gestion optimisée de l'énergie. HOMES, qui permettra de réaliser des économies d'énergie pouvant atteindre 20%, s'inscrit ainsi dans la stratégie de développement de Schneider Electric dans le domaine de l'efficacité énergétique.

HOMES définit de nouvelles architectures pour le contrôle et la distribution de l'énergie dans le bâtiment, intégrant des technologies innovantes de capteurs, de contrôle et de puissance, pour mettre sur le marché les produits et solutions nécessaires à une meilleure efficacité énergétique et permettre le développement de nouveaux services. Grâce aux capteurs communicants répartis dans chaque zone du bâtiment, à la collaboration entre les différents systèmes du bâtiment et au "contrôle actif" de l'énergie : chaque " goutte " d'électricité sera utilisée de façon optimale. Il sera en effet possible d'en contrôler l'usage en fonction de l'occupation d'une zone, de la mesure de la qualité d'air dans une pièce, de la luminosité ambiante, …

HOMES rassemble, derrière le chef de file Schneider Electric, des leaders européens dans leurs domaines respectifs, maîtrisant les technologies clefs indispensables au succès du projet : Ciat, Edf, Philips Lighting, Somfy, ST Microelectronics, TAC, Delta Dore, Polyspace, Radiall, Watteco, Wieland, le CEA, le Centre Scientifique et Technique du bâtiment et le laboratoire IDEA.

Source : Schneider Electric

Premier FCPR dédié aux énergies renouvelables

Après la Société Générale, c'est au tour du Crédit Agricole de proposer à ses clients d'investir dans les énergies renouvelables. Le marché des énergies renouvelables est promis à un fort développement et nécessite des besoins de financements croissants. Rappelons que la France a pris, dans le cadre du protocole de Kyoto, l’engagement de produire, à horizon 2010, 21% de son électricité à partir des énergies renouvelables contre 15% en 2005.

Dans ce contexte, Crédit Agricole Private Equity créé CAPENERGIE, premier FCPR institutionnel dédié aux énergies renouvelables : éolien, biomasse, solaire thermique et photovoltaïque, géothermie, biogaz, biocarburant, cogénération...

CAPENERGIE a pour stratégie d’investir dans des entreprises telles que des développeurs, des promoteurs spécialisés, des équipementiers, des opérateurs...mais aussi dans les financements de projets énergétiques.

Ce fonds, d’un montant minimum de 80 M€, a été souscrit par le groupe Crédit Agricole et sera proposé aux Caisses régionales et à des institutionnels tiers à compter de mi 2006.

CAPENERGIE s’inscrit dans l’offre environnement du groupe Crédit Agricole et dans sa stratégie de banque responsable en matière environnementale.

Source : Enerzine

Better than Hybrids : A proposed engine design approaches the efficiency of gas-electric hybrids, but could be far cheaper.

Consumers hoping to cut gasoline spending, with average gas prices nearing $3 a gallon, could opt for hybrids. But even with gas prices high, the added cost of hybrid cars can cancel money saved at the pump, suggesting the need for lower-cost alternatives.

A new type of ethanol-boosted, turbocharged gasoline engine could be the answer. The engine would be almost as efficient as gas-electric hybrids, but cost much less, according to its MIT inventors -- Leslie Bromberg and Daniel Cohn, plasma science and fusion center researchers, and John Heywood, professor of mechanical engineering.

The new engine would improve efficiency in two ways. The first is to decrease the size of the engine, which reduces friction, thus saving fuel at light engine loads, such as during city driving. When more power is needed, a turbocharger kicks in. It uses exhaust flow to compress air, making it possible to combust more air and fuel in a smaller space.

The second approach is to engineer the engine to have a higher compression ratio -- the ratio of the volume of air and fuel before and after it is compressed in an engine. A higher compression ratio "makes the engine more efficient, because you expand the burned gases more and extract more energy out of them," Heywood says.

Neither of these are new ideas. But in the past, such efforts have been limited by a phenomenon called knock: high compression ratios and extreme turbocharging cause gasoline to spontaneously combust when the engine is under heavy loads, such as during acceleration or at high speeds, potentially causing serious damage. The MIT researchers have found a way to prevent knock, allowing them to crank up the turbocharger and increase the compression ratio -- and thereby increase the power of an engine by 250 percent.

If this increase in power is taken advantage of to reduce the size of the engine -- which would go against long-time trends emphasizing performance over fuel economy -- it could save gas. "This allows very large pressure turbocharging, very large downsizing of the engine, and makes it possible to have a small engine with much higher efficiency," Cohn says.

The researchers solved the knocking problem by injecting into combustion chambers precisely controlled amounts of ethanol at moments when the engine is working hard enough to cause knock. Compared with gasoline, ethanol has higher octane, a rating of how much a fuel can be compressed before it combusts spontaneously, that is, before it causes knocking. The injected ethanol also cools the mixture, so it effectively increases the octane rating of the fuel mix to about 130 -- as good as high-performance racing fuels, Cohn says.

The system would use relatively little ethanol, about

1 gallon

per

20 gallons

of gasoline, so Cohn estimates the separate ethanol tank would have to be refilled about as often as an oil change. Furthermore, since it would require relatively minor modifications to existing technologies, Cohn says the design could be in production vehicles as soon as 2011 -- with the help of a recent collaboration between their startup, Ethanol Boosting Systems (EBS), Cambridge, MA, and Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, MI.

The MIT researchers estimate their engine would add only $500-1000 to the cost of a vehicle, which includes the added costs of the high-end turbocharger, a direct-injection system, and a stronger, smaller engine. This modest premium compares favorably to that of hybrid cars. According to a review in Consumer Reports (April 2006), "none of the six hybrids we tested recovered its price premium in the first five years" -- even factoring in federal tax credits and gas prices that rise to $4 a gallon. In contrast, Cohn says, their engine would pay for itself in two to three years.

The new engine should be 30 percent more efficient than conventional engines, based on a computer model the researchers say accurately reproduces the behavior of internal-combustion gasoline engines. In comparison, a Toyota Prius gets about 30-35 percent better fuel economy than a comparable vehicle, according to tests by Consumer Reports. In the same review, the magazine showed a $5,700 price premium for the Toyota Prius over a conventional vehicle.

Rodney Tabaczynski, former director of powertrain research at Ford (who is not involved with EBS), says the ethanol "will definitely help the octane problem" and existing electronic controls and feedback systems should make the controlled injection feasible.

The challenges EBS is likely to encounter he says, have more to do with logistics -- two fuel tanks in a vehicle can be hard to implement, and there's the challenge of making sure ethanol is available at the corner gas station. Also, the engine will need a system that ensures it isn't damaged if the driver forgets to fill the ethanol tank.

Tabaczynski also cautions that real fuel savings will depend on an individual's driving habits. As with hybrids, cars with these engines will get their best mileage when driven in a city, not at 70-

75 miles

per hour on the highway with the throttle wide open.

By Kevin Bullis

Source : Technology Review

Clean Diesel from Coal : A novel catalytic method could let you fill up your tank with coal-derived diesel, cutting U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

As the cost of oil soars and worries over the U.S. dependence on foreign petroleum escalate, coal is becoming an increasingly attractive alternative as a feedstock to make a range of fuels. Now chemists have invented a new catalytic process that could increase the yield of a clean form of diesel made from coal.

The method, described in the current issue of the journal Science, uses a pair of catalysts to improve the yield of diesel fuel from Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) synthesis, a nearly century-old chemical technique for reacting carbon monoxide and hydrogen to make hydrocarbons. The mixture of gases is produced by heating coal. Although Germany used the process during World War II to convert coal to fuel for its military vehicles, F-T synthesis has generally been too expensive to compete with oil.

Part of the problem with the F-T process is that it produces a mixture of hydrocarbons -- many of which are not useful as fuel. But in the recent research, Alan Goldman, professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University, and Maurice Brookhart, professor of chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, use catalysts to convert these undesirable hydrocarbons into diesel. The catalysts work by rearranging the carbon atoms, transforming six-carbon atom hydrocarbons, for example, into two- and ten-carbon atom hydrocarbons. The ten-carbon version can power diesel engines. The first catalyst removes hydrogen atoms, which allows the second catalyst to rearrange the carbon atoms. Then the first catalyst restores the hydrogen, to form fuel.

Diesel fuel produced in this way has several potential advantages. Ordinary diesel contains molecules, called aromatics, that, when combusted, produce particulates, Goldman says. But the diesel formed by the new catalysts does not include aromatics, so it burns much cleaner, overcoming one of the major objections to diesel fuel. This could lead to more vehicles using diesel engines, which are about 30 percent more efficient than gasoline engines.

But the biggest advantage may be that the United States has huge amounts of coal: "We have as much energy in coal as the rest of the world has in oil. That's enough to last us the next hundred years or so," Goldman says. Thus, a more efficient, and so less expensive method of converting coal to diesel could significantly cut U.S. dependence on foreign oil, and do so for a long time.

"When I saw this I thought it was really a terrific contribution that could be very important," says Richard Schrock, professor of chemistry at MIT, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2005, with two other scientists, for discovering the type of catalyst used in the second step. Combining two catalysts this way "is pretty rare," he says. "You can't just throw any two things together and expect to get the results you anticipated."

According to Robert Grubbs, professor of chemistry at Caltech, who shared the Nobel prize with Schrock, "The key is finding catalyst systems that are compatible, and will operate at the temperatures where you can do both processes together."

At this time, the new catalytic method is still a proof-of-concept, and not ready for commercial use. For example, the second catalyst tends to break down. But Schrock says this problem should be solvable: "It's theoretically possible that this could become practical. I e-mailed Alan Goldman and said, 'Look, we've got a lot of catalysts, and I can think of some things that might be thermally more stable.' So I'm going to send him some catalysts, and he's going to try them out."

It also might be possible to make catalysts that use products from the first reaction to regenerate themselves. "Then the catalyst wouldn't die, and you could in fact keep the reaction going," says Schrock.

By Kevin Bullis

Source : Technology Review