Florida is headed in the right direction when it comes to electric cars. Since 2008, Florida ranks 4th out of all 50 states in the number of electric vehicles sold and has installed the 2nd-most publicly available charging stations in the nation, according to a new report released today by Environment Florida Research & Policy Center.
energy
Hopping, Green & Sams Welcomes Eileen Stuart as Government Affairs Shareholder
Hopping, Green & Sams (HGS), one of the state’s top environmental, land use and special district law firms, today announced the addition of Eileen Stuart as Government Affairs Shareholder with the firm.
“We are thrilled to welcome Eileen to the firm. Having worked closely with her over the last decade, we appreciate firsthand Eileen’s substantial talents,” said Gary Hunter, shareholder, Hopping, Green & Sams. “Her deep relationships, substantive command and understanding of the key levers in state and federal government will greatly enhance our growing presence in the Florida government affairs arena. Most important, our clients will benefit from her expertise.”
A well-respected name in Tallahassee, Stuart most recently served as Vice President, Government and Regulatory Affairs for The Mosaic Company, directing the Fortune 500’s state and federal government affairs strategy and engagement in Tallahassee and Washington, D.C. She also previously served as Vice President, Public Affairs and led the company’s strategic communications and community engagement.
Prior to joining Mosaic, Stuart’s experience included positions in the Executive Office of the Governor where she served as Deputy Policy Director. She also has served in roles in the Florida Senate, the Florida Public Service Commission and on a gubernatorial campaign. Her expertise in environmental, energy, permitting and tax issues will complement HGS’ deep roster of professionals.
“Hopping, Green & Sams is a powerful combination of the state’s top environmental and land development lawyers along with a robust and loyal client base. The firm’s widely recognized expertise and reputation provide an unparalleled platform, and I am excited to work alongside the exceptional team at HGS to help our clients achieve their objectives,” said Stuart.
Stuart earned her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida and her Juris Doctor from the Florida State University College of Law. She and her husband live in Tallahassee with their two sons.
UCF Invents Way to Trigger Artificial Photosynthesis to Clean Air, Produce Energy at Same Time
A chemistry professor in Florida has just found a way to trigger the process of photosynthesis in a synthetic material, turning greenhouse gases into clean air and producing energy all at the same time.
The process has great potential for creating a technology that could significantly reduce greenhouse gases linked to climate change, while also creating a clean way to produce energy.
“This work is a breakthrough,” said UCF Assistant Professor Fernando Uribe-Romo. “Tailoring materials that will absorb a specific color of light is very difficult from the scientific point of view, but from the societal point of view we are contributing to the development of a technology that can help reduce greenhouse gases.”
The findings of his research are published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A.
Uribe-Romo and his team of students created a way to trigger a chemical reaction in a synthetic material called metal–organic frameworks (MOF) that breaks down carbon dioxide into harmless organic materials. Think of it as an artificial photosynthesis process similar to the way plants convert carbon dioxide (CO2) and sunlight into food. But instead of producing food, Uribe-Romo’s method produces solar fuel.
To see a video explaining the process, click here.
It’s something scientists around the world have been pursuing for years, but the challenge is finding a way for visible light to trigger the chemical transformation. Ultraviolet rays have enough energy to allow the reaction in common materials such as titanium dioxide, but UVs make up only about 4 percent of the light Earth receives from the sun. The visible range – the violet to red wavelengths – represent the majority of the sun’s rays, but there are few materials that pick up these light colors to create the chemical reaction that transforms CO2 into fuel.
Researchers have tried it with a variety of materials, but the ones that can absorb visible light tend to be rare and expensive materials such as platinum, rhenium and iridium that make the process cost-prohibitive.
Uribe-Romo used titanium, a common nontoxic metal, and added organic molecules that act as light-harvesting antennae to see if that configuration would work. The light harvesting antenna molecules, called N-alkyl-2-aminoterephthalates, can be designed to absorb specific colors of light when incorporated in the MOF. In this case he synchronized it for the color blue.
His team assembled a blue LED photoreactor to test out the hypothesis. Measured amounts of carbon dioxide were slowly fed into the photoreactor — a glowing blue cylinder that looks like a tanning bed — to see if the reaction would occur. The glowing blue light came from strips of LED lights inside the chamber of the cylinder and mimic the sun’s blue wavelength.
It worked and the chemical reaction transformed the CO2 into two reduced forms of carbon, formate and formamides (two kinds of solar fuel) and in the process cleaning the air.
“The goal is to continue to fine-tune the approach so we can create greater amounts of reduced carbon so it is more efficient,” Uribe-Romo said.
He wants to see if the other wavelengths of visible light may also trigger the reaction with adjustments to the synthetic material. If it works, the process could be a significant way to help reduce greenhouse gases.
“The idea would be to set up stations that capture large amounts of CO2, like next to a power plant. The gas would be sucked into the station, go through the process and recycle the greenhouse gases while producing energy that would be put back into the power plant.”
Perhaps someday homeowners could purchase rooftop shingles made of the material, which would clean the air in their neighborhood while producing energy that could be used to power their homes.
“That would take new technology and infrastructure to happen,” Uribe-Romo said. “But it may be possible.”
Other members of the team who worked on the paper include UCF graduate student Matt Logan, who is pursuing a Ph.D in chemistry, and undergraduate student Jeremy Adamson, who is majoring in biomedical sciences. Kenneth Hanson and his research group at Florida State University helped interpret the results of the experiments.
Energy Grant to UCF to Accelerate Biofuel Research, Mainstream Adoption
The adoption of highly efficient, low-emission alternative biofuels just got a boost thanks to $7 million worth of Department of Energy grants announced earlier this month.
The University of Central Florida landed two grants worth more than $1.25 million, which will help the Department of Energy accelerate the introduction of affordable, scalable and sustainable high-performance alternative fuels for use in high-efficiency, low-emission vehicle engines. UCF and seven other teams won a total of eight grants.
Competition was stiff and the UCF team bested hundreds of other multi-university teams. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, also successfully won a grant. Its team includes UCF Engineering Professor Subith Vasu, who also is working with the UCF team.
“We are honored and excited to be the recipient of two of eight awards from this highly competitive program,” said Debra Reinhart, associate vice president for research and scholarship. “These awards place us in an elite group of researchers who are paving the way toward maximizing fuel-use efficiency while minimizing environmental impacts.”
The federal agency announced the awards as part of its Co-Optimization of Fuels and Engines initiative, which “aims to simultaneously transform both transportation fuels and vehicles in order to maximize performance and energy efficiency, minimize environmental impact, and accelerate widespread adoption of innovative combustion strategies.”
But the challenge isn’t just finding the best fuel that works with high-performance engines. To achieve widespread adoption, there are many other challenges that must be solved. For example, can the new fuel be piped into stations without leaking into surrounding soil and damaging the environment? Will special seals be needed in engines or at distribution points to protect engine parts and humans from fumes?
UCF’s project will not only look at the viability of compounds and their potential use in high-performing engines, but the team will put the compounds through nine tests that will provide information about the likelihood of being able to safely, efficiently and cost-effectively mass produce and deliver the alternative fuels.
“We will be looking at hundreds of compounds,” said UCF Engineering Assistant Professor Kareem Ahmed, who is the lead investigator for the UCF-led project. “Some of them have never been tested, so we will be putting them through an array of tests to explore and evaluate fuel-spray atomization, flame topology, flame speed, auto-ignition, volatility, viscosity, soot/coking, and compatibility.”
These tests will provide the DOE information that will help the agency and engine manufacturers determine which fuels might be good ones to pursue for further development.
UCF’s experience with similar fuel studies for aircraft engines helped position the university to be competitive, Ahmed said. And the Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research (http://cater.cecs.ucf.edu/) on the main campus is positioned to test and provide the data.
“This effort aims at holistic or comprehensive characterization of biofuels or any other alternative fuel,” said UCF Engineering Professor and CATER director Jayanta Kapat. He is also a member of the team. “Most prior research efforts have been aimed at production of fuels and/or evaluation of a few properties. However, automotive applications, and supply-and-delivery logistics require a plethora of properties to be within prescribed ranges for such fuel to be classified as a ‘drop-in’ replacement. This is the need that this project will address.”
Kapat said he believes this is the first effort in holistic or comprehensive characterization of biofuels in a U.S university.
Vasu’s work with MIT is unique, as well. The project will construct computer models to predict the combustion chemistry of proposed biofuels, which can then be used to determine which of the proposed fuels will have high performance in advanced engines. Vasu’s role will be to provide data from experiments in his lab, which will feed the computer models.
“MIT is a pioneer in this field of computer-generated models,” Vasu said. “They are the main people doing it in this country. I’m happy to be partnering with them. The shock tube experiments in my lab will provide data to calibrate their models and hopefully accelerate the process of finding the best fuel options among a sea of hundreds.”
Vasu will also work on the UCF-led team.
UCF researcher Richard Blair, who is also a member of CATER and UCF’s Cluster for the Rational Design of Catalysts for Energy Applications and Propulsion, is providing his expertise in chemical and physical characterization of fuels to the project. Blair’s work will provide new insight into the temperature-dependent properties of gasoline-equivalent fuels.
“We have seen that bio-derived fuels can have compositional differences that add challenges to realizing a drop-in fuel,” Blair said.
Ahmed said the development of this technology is critical not just for science’s sake, but for the nation’s security and economic future.
“Gasoline and diesel-fuel combustion is the dominant source of automotive power generation,” he said. “There is a broad desire to develop alternative fuels and blended fuels for automotive combustion for the foreseeable future. The depleting availability of fuels has had a destabilizing influence on the economic security of the nation, while emission of carbon dioxide from combustion continues to impact the environment. In this context, there is a critical need to explore and implement these alternative biofuels in combustion systems that have high conversion efficiencies and minimized environmental impact.”