Fuel Cell Nation

Looking for New Consulting or Employment Opportunities

Thanks for your help!

Hello Everyone!

Thanks to all of you for following my blog. Rather than writing about some hot clean energy topic, this message is more personal. The time has come where I am looking for new opportunities and challenges in my professional life.

Since graduating from MIT with BS and MS degrees in Chemical Engineering Practice, my experience in the clean energy/green energy/alternative energy industry has been broad and deep. My energy work spans much of the hydrocarbon and electricity value chains, with biomass and nuclear work included. A sampling of my projects includes laboratory- and commercial-scale fluidized bed gasification of biomass, designing an economical cogeneration/district heating/district cooling system for a university hospital complex, computer modeling to automatically determine the minimum system weight of a hydrogen fuel cell-powered unmanned air vehicle (UAV) flying a two-week mission at a 70,000 foot altitude, and developing a water electrolyzer that will be capable of directly filling a fuel cell vehicle’s tank with 5,000 psig hydrogen. That's just the beginning. Ask for my resume for a complete overview.

I have also done a fair amount of pharmaceutical and biotech device development work. My pharmaceutical work involved aseptic fill and finish operations of a controlled-release human growth hormone formulation, while my device development work has included developing the cooling subsystem for a new portable human organ persufflation/transportation device, as well as a portable methanol-fueled infusion fluid warmer. It seems that even my bio-related work involves energy!

My commitment to and interest in the energy field is evident. My recent participation in MIT Sloan’s “Clean Energy Ventures: Creating Innovative New Businesses Through Entrepreneurial Management,” as part of their Executive Certificate program, is testament to that ongoing dedication to the field.

Please contact me by posting a comment below if you have (or know of) consulting or employment opportunities that jibe with my experience, would like to network, or to request a copy of my resume. A good overview of my experience and interests can also be found in my LinkedIn profile HERE. Or feel free to contact me through LinkedIn; be sure to request a connection so we can stay in touch.

This is an exciting and upbeat time for me as I seek out new opportunities for work challenges. Thanks for your help and consideration.

 

Hello Everyone!

 

Thanks to all of you for following my blog. Rather than writing about some hot clean energy topic, this message is more personal. The time has come where I am looking for new opportunities and challenges in my employment life.

My experience in the alternative energy/green energy/clean energy industry is broad and deep. My energy work spans much of the hydrocarbon and electricity value chains, with biomass and nuclear work included. A sampling of my projects includes laboratory- and commercial-scale fluidized bed gasification of biomass, designing economical cogeneration/district heating/district cooling systems for a university hospital complex, computer modeling to automatically determine the minimum system weight of a hydrogen fuel cell-powered unmanned air vehicle (UAV) flying a two-week mission at a 70,000 foot altitude, and developing a water electrolyzer that will be capable of directly filling a fuel cell vehicle’s tank with 5,000 psig hydrogen. That's just the beginning. Ask for my resume for a complete overview.

I have also done a fair amount of pharmaceutical and biotech device development work. My pharmaceutical work involved aseptic fill and finish operations of a controlled-release human growth hormone formulation, while my device development work has included developing the cooling subsystem for a new portable human organ persufflation/transportation device, as well as a portable methanol-fueled infusion fluid warmer. It seems that even my bio-related work involves energy!

My commitment to and interest in the energy field is evident. My recent participation in MIT Sloan’s “Clean Energy Ventures: Creating Innovative New Businesses Through Entrepreneurial Management,” as part of their Executive Certificate program, is testament to that ongoing dedication to the field.

 

http://sloanm.it/I568RU

Please contact me by posting a link on this post if you have (or know of) employment opportunities that jibe with my experience, would like to network, or to request a copy of my resume. A good overview of my experience and interests can also be found my LinkedIn profile HERE. Or feel free to contact me through LinkedIn; be sure to request a connection so we can stay in touch.

 

http://www.linkedin.com/in/keithdpatch

This is an exciting and upbeat time for me as new opportunities for work challenges open. Thanks for your help and consideration.

MIT Sloan Clean Energy Ventures Thoughts

Some of the most interesting numbers out of my recently-completed MIT Sloan Executive Education class Clean Energy Ventures: Creating Innovative New Businesses Through Entrepreneurial Management involve Massachusetts, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT.)

Regarding Massachusetts, I learned that there are currently 5,000 clean energy companies here, which currently employ 1.5% of the state's work force! I had no idea that there was that much clean energy development going on locally!

Regarding MIT, over 26,000 startups have been spun out over the years. Annual sales from these companies total about $2 trillion, which would make it the 11th biggest economy in the world.

The May/June 2012 issue of Technology Review: Can Energy Startups Be Saved?  echoes many of the same issues faced by startup companies in the energy arena that were discussed in my Clean Energy Ventures class. The article states "...given that energy is a highly competitive commodity business dominated by entrenched corporations and infrastructure, commercializing new energy technologies requires much more than a large infusion of money. Scaling up innovations in energy production also requires exceptional acumen in business, engineering, and understanding markets."

This was a primary thrust of the class, that it is much harder to start a new energy company, compared to a software or Web-based startup. The skill set required in energy goes well beyond the business and technical arena, and includes public policy and environmental abilities. Furthermore, you must be patient in the energy arena, as you can't make a company and sell it in 18 months for a billion dollars, as the Instagram founders did with Facebook recently. Energy companies take years to develop (often at least a decade).

The best thing about learning all these skills is that since the energy arena seems to be the toughest to do business in, my new skills should translate well into any business area.

MIT Clean Energy Prize Audience Choice

As a part of the MIT Sloan Clean Energy Venture program I'm attending, I am just back from attending the final awards ceremony for the 2012 MIT Clean Energy Prize.

Here's Spindrift Energy, winners of the Audience Choice Award, hamming it up after the along ceremony, along with their check for $10,000. Spindrift Energy is an MIT startup helping to solve the world’s energy problems by way of their patent-pending wave energy device.

Earlier in the evening, Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and currently at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, participated in a "fireside chat" that was streamed live on the Internet.

More later, as I have to get up early to get back to MIT Sloan early tomorrow for another day of the Clean Energy Ventures program.

TED 2012 and Batteries for the Smart Grid

As part of the pre-program reading material for my upcoming MIT Sloan Clean Energy Ventures class, we had a variety of required reading and video posts to review. One of the most interesting videos was the 2012 TED Talk of MIT's Professor Donald Sadoway, "The Missing Link to Renewable Energy". In the talk, he discusses reinventing the battery.

Without dumbing-down the subject matter too badly, he is able to describe the advanced work that he undertook at MIT making an economical liquid metal battery. He doesn't mention it, but Bill Gates is a financial backer of his startup that came out of his research, Liquid Metal Battery Corporation. In brief, he is attempting to make a battery that is technically advanced enough for the Smart Grid, but cheap enough to be used without government subsidies.

The most interesting thing I took away from this was his quote, where he states that it is important to have "passion for science in the service of society, not science in service of career building."

Is Carbazole the Energy Carrier of the Future?

This post was originally published in the Hydrogen Fuel Cars and Vehicles Blog.

N-ethyl carbazole

According to Wikipedia, N-ethyl carbazole (C₁₄H₁₃N) was used as a chemical weapon (irritant) in World War I. Now it (and related organic compounds) is being investigated as a hydrogen transport material for fuel cell vehicles.

In 2011 I read some news out of Germany about a “new” method of carrying hydrogen in fuel cell vehicles: Professors Wolfgang Arlt and Peter Wasserscheid (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg) published “A future energy supply based on Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers (LOHC)”, which described a scenario where an organic liquid (such as N-ethyl carbazole, or carbazole) is used to carry hydrogen in unpressurized tanks on hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles. On-board the vehicle, a reactor uses a heated catalytic reactor to strip hydrogen gas from the carbazole, providing hydrogen fuel to the fuel cell. Later on at a gas station, the spent carbazole is removed from the vehicle’s fuel tank and replaced by fresh, fully-hydrogenated carbazole. The spent carbazole is returned from the gas station to a processing plant to have hydrogen added to it, preparing fresh hydrogen-rich fuel that is ready to be transported back to gas stations. It is a complicated process, but being touted as a potential solution to the problem of efficiently carrying hydrogen on-board vehicles.

The idea has been picked up by numerous German news outlets including Spiegel-online, Financial Times Deutschland and AutoBild. In addition to the flurry of interest in the German press, several German TV channels have broadcast stories. Furthermore, Rainer Bomba, State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development (BMVBS) has been quoted as saying "This is the future in the automotive industry." Accordingly, the BMVBS has pledged 400,000 euros to the project.

Professors Arlt and Wasserscheid admit that their “new” technology is based on a 2004 patent from Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. Arlt and Wasserscheid do not supply any new data, and apparently are only beginning to explore the utility of carbazole in the hydrogen economy.

Some history now: starting April 1, 2005, Air Products began a U.S. Department of Energy-funded study on using carbazole as a hydrogen carrier for fuel cell vehicles. Air Products worked on a reactor that used heat and a catalyst to strip hydrogen from the carbazole, as well as process economics and other tasks. To address toxicity questions with carbazole, Air Products conducted various tests. 2008 toxicity test results can be summarized by:

“Toxicology testing revealed that neither N-ethylcarbazole nor perhydrogenated N-ethyl carbazole are mutagenic, as judged by the negative Ames test. However, perhydrogenated N-ethyl carbazole was found to be corrosive and acutely toxic using other standard tests. Thus, while perhydrogenated N-ethyl carbazole remains a suitable model compound for reactor research, it could present concerns for commercial use.”

However, this is not why the DOE stopped work on this project. Carbazole research was halted because it was projected to have no hope of meeting the energy storage goals of the DOE. In the July 02, 2010 DOE Hydrogen Program Record #9017, On-Board Hydrogen Storage Systems – Projected Performance and Cost Parameters, the carbazole system capacities are well below the DOE 2010 targets of 4.5 wt% and 28 g-H2/L:

“Assessments of the liquid organic n-ethyl carbazole for vehicular storage yielded capacities in the range of 2.1-2.8 wt% and 18-21 g-H2/L that are also below the 2010 system targets indicating this will not be a viable vehicular option unless materials with much greater quantities of releasable hydrogen and lower reaction temperature can be found.”

Below is a graph from DOE Hydrogen Program Record #9017, which illustrates how inadequate carbazole is, relative to the universe of alternative hydrogen storage methods. The brown oval (in the lower left corner) labeled LCH2 (Liquid organic Carrier H2) uses data from a 2009 TIAX report to show that carbazole is well below the required 2010 U.S. DOE volumetric and gravimetric hydrogen storage goals. Only Cryo-Compressed Hydrogen [CcH2, or hydrogen pressurized (e.g., to ~350 bar) and stored at cryogenic temperatures] is able to meet the 2015 DOE hydrogen storage goals; all of the other storage methods fall well short of Cryo-Compressed H2.

Carbazole is Well Below U.S. DOE Hydrogen Program Hydrogen Storage Goals

A June, 2011 Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) report (Technical Assessment of Organic Liquid Carrier Hydrogen Storage Systems for Automotive Applications) discusses ANL’s latest technical and economic assessment of carbazole. ANL states:

“... The challenge has been to find suitable organic carriers that have sufficient hydrogen capacity, optimal heat of reaction (∆H), rapid decomposition kinetics, low volatility and long cycle life, and that remain liquid over the working temperature range. Air Products and Chemicals Inc (APCI) investigated many candidates for potential liquid carriers but no one material could satisfy all the requirements for a viable hydrogen storage system. … a practical storage system cannot be built with this polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon. The assessment, however, does show the potential of meeting the storage targets with other yet-undiscovered organic liquid carriers that may have the right properties.”

As the DOE and ANL analyses summarized above show, it will require one or more major breakthroughs in order to meet the 2015 DOE hydrogen storage goals, almost tripling the current hydrogen storage performance of carbazole. Good luck to Professors Arlt and Wasserscheid as they try to come up with such a significant breakthrough. The DOE has given up on carbazoles; hopefully the Germans can find an organic liquid that meets all the necessary requirements for a practical energy carrier!

DOE SBIR Webinar April 10

Sorry for the late notice, but the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is having another live webinar on Tuesday, April 10, 2012 from 2-2:30 p.m. Eastern time. The webinar is being held to highlight additional information on specific changes and elements of the DOE's FY 2012 SBIR/STTR Phase I (Release 3) Founding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). The funding opportunity was released Tuesday, April 3, 2012.

The agenda for the webinar includes:

• Release 3 Schedule of Activities and Important Due Dates

• Required Pre-Application Form, including the DOE's Evaluation and Feedback

• Revisions to the FOA Topics since their Release on March 5th

• SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Update on Eligibility and Impacts to the Policy Directive

• 15 Minute Question (via Chat Text Box) and Answer period

You can register for the webinar at this site.

DOE SBIR Webinar March 19

Sorry for the late notice, but the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is having a live webinar on Monday, March 19, 2012 from 2-4 p.m. Eastern time. The webinar is being held to provide detailed information on energy efficiency and renewable energy R&D topics for small businesses interested in an upcoming funding opportunity. The upcoming funding opportunity is DOE's FY 2012 SBIR/STTR Phase I (Release 3), which is expected to be released in early April.

The agenda for the webinar includes the eight topics areas and 30 available subtopics planned under the solicitation. In addition, it will address questions submitted in advance (during the registration process) by webinar registrants and others. It will conclude with a live question and answer session with the webinar participants. The two-hour webcast is free of charge, but advance registration is required to obtain an Internet URL for the presentation.

You can register for the webinar at this site.

New PNNL Nickel-Based Catalyst

The Center for Molecular Electrocatalysis, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), has published details about another new catalyst (see previous post New PNNL Catalyst.) The work was conducted by Smith, S. E., Yang, J. Y., DuBois, D. L. and Bullock, R. M. (2012), "Reversible Electrocatalytic Production and Oxidation of Hydrogen at Low Overpotentials by a Functional Hydrogenase Mimic," Angewandte Chemie International Edition, doi: 10.1002/anie.201108461.

The new reversible hydrogen catalyst is based on a nickel-based complex, and has been developed for more than two years. Nickel was selected due to its low cost and abundance, relative to platinum (the conventional reversible hydrogen catalyst.) But unlike solid platinum, this new catalyst is a homogeneous catalyst. In other words, unlike platinum, this catalyst dissolves in a solution. This is a problem for a conventional fuel cell, in that a soluble catalyst will get "washed out" of the fuel cell, and not be available for chemical reactions. Future PNNL work will likely be aimed towards immobilzing the catalyst, so that it can be used in conventional electrochemical conversion devices.

The new bis(diphosphine) nickel(II) complex (see picture) is has a nickel core, with phosphine ligands extending from the nickel center. The catalyst has reversible electrocatalytic activity for hydrogen production and oxidation at low overpotentials, which are characteristic for hydrogenase enzymes.  "This [catalyst] has a lower overpotential than we usually find," said Morris Bullock, PhD, Director of the Center for Molecular Electrocatalysis. "Sadly, it is also slow."

Hopefully Bullock and associates can continue improving the catalyst, including improving its speed (the kinetics), and make a catalyst that is useful for electrochemical energy conversion. Good luck!

Electrolysis Suggestions for US DOE

In my recent blog post DOE Electrolysis Working Group Meeting, I described the Fall 2011 U.S. Department of Energy Fuel Cells Technology (FCT) Water Electrolysis Working Group Meeting. Industry, the National Renewable Energy Lab, and DOE participated. The aim of the Water Electrolysis Working Group, inaugurated in May 2007, is to bring industry, academia, and national laboratories together to overcome the technical barriers to commercializing electrolysis technology for the production of hydrogen for transportation and industrial use.

The Electrolysis Working Group has been tasked with helping to improve the Electrolysis sections of the current DOE Multi-Year Program Plan, which can be found at: DOE MYPP Hydrogen Production, 2011 Interim Update. The complete Interim MYPP/MYRDD can be found at: U.S. DOE Fuel Cell Technologies Program Multi-Year Research, Development and Demonstration Plan.

If you have any suggestions that you'd like me to forward to the Electrolysis Working Group, feel free to leave a comment on this post. If you'd prefer to not have your suggestion be visible as a comment, please ask, and I will only forward it privately to the DOE.

DOE Electrolysis Working Group Meeting

I'm back from the Fall 2011 U.S. DOE Fuel Cells Technology (FCT) Water Electrolysis Working Group Meeting. Industry, the National Renewable Energy Lab, and DOE participated. The aim of the Water Electrolysis Working Group, inaugurated in May 2007, is to bring industry, academia, and national laboratories together to overcome the technical barriers to commercializing electrolysis technology for the production of hydrogen for transportation and industrial use.

In this 2-day meeting, the biggest news we were presented with were the changes in DOE's assumptions that have gone into updating Version 2.1.3 of the H2A (which stands for Hydrogen Analysis) program to get the all-new new H2A Version 3. (H2A is an Excel spreadsheet that is intended to allow the economics of various advanced hydrogen technologies to be fairly compared, through use of consistent, reasonable assumptions.) The big news on H2A is how with the switch from 5,000 psig to 10,000 psig hydrogen, compression, storage, and dispensing (CSD) costs have markedly increased. What was previously $1.82/GGE (gallon of gasoline equivalent) for 5,000 psig CSD is now $3.23/GGE for 10,000 psig! This significant increase in CSD costs is making it difficult for all hydrogen production pathways to match the energy cost of gasoline. A recommendation of the Working Group was to investigate the economic benefit of electrolytically generating hydrogen at a significant pressure, thereby potentially decreasing the corresponding CSD costs, and reducing the delivered cost of hydrogen.

I was able to find public versions of the Interim U.S. DOE Fuel Cell Technologies Program Multi-Year Research, Development and Demonstration Plan that were presented at the meeting:

• DOE MYPP Hydrogen Production, 2011 Interim Update
• DOE MYPP Hydrogen Storage, 2011 Interim Update 

As a footnote for the plan, the DOE says:

This document is currently being updated. The existing document on the Web shows the previous name of the Program within the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) ­ the Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and Infrastructure Technologies Program. The Program's name was changed to the Fuel Cell Technologies Program in 2009. Furthermore, the DOE-wide program formerly known as the DOE Hydrogen Program (which integrates hydrogen and fuel cell activities in the Offices of EERE, Science, Fossil Energy, and Nuclear Energy) has also been changed, to the DOE Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Program. 

Whew! That's a mouthful!